Mind Mapping Before You Write

Posted by Madhavi on Jun 29, 2011 in Web Writing | 0 comments

Writing an article can often seem like a very difficult proposition for many of us. There are usually a variety of thoughts and ideas jostling around in the mind, waiting to come out. But when one sits down to write, you don’t know where to begin. Mind Mapping can serve as a very effective method of getting all those thoughts down in one place and organizing them in a better fashion.

In my own experience, Mind Mapping can be a very useful method, especially when used before writing an article or two.

Today, lets look at the benefits of Mind Mapping before you write an article.

Mind Mapping is a very beautiful way of organizing your disconnected thoughts in a very useful manner. This is a very brilliant technique that gets you to literally empty your mind so that you can make sense of all the points that are floating about.

What Is Mind Mapping?

Mind Mapping is a technique of thought organization that was first popularized by the bestselling author and educational consultant, Tony Buzan. He has his website at http://www.thinkbuzan.com where you can find more information about his books and stuff.

According to Wikipedia, a Mind Map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged around a central keyword or idea.

Mind Mapping is a great way to organize and structure all your different thoughts and ideas in a very visual and attractive manner. I have been using this method for years now, to get my thoughts in order and to structure the flow of my articles.

Mind Map Your Articles

Now, coming back to writing your articles let me talk about how you can use mind mapping for organizing your articles. Here is how mind mapping works in the article writing process:

• The basic concept of mind mapping involves taking your central thought or idea and placing it in the center of your mind map.
• Then you have branches or nodes sprouting off of the central concept that contain your basic or main idea points of the article.
• Those branches or nodes can have sub-branches or sub-nodes that expand that idea even further.

This is a very useful method that helps you organize your thoughts and ideas in a hierarchical and orderly fashion – an important requirement if you are planning to write an article.

Mind Map Your Articles: An Example

Let me show you the mind map I created for this article as an example of how this process works.

As you can see from the image, I first wrote my central concept in the circle in the center. Thereafter, the main points (which later became my headings for this article) were the branches the sprouted from this central point. The sub-branches contained the finer points (which could be sub-headings or part of the content for the headings) that are the different thoughts that related to that main point.

In this manner, I effectively planned the structure of my article and converted my cluttered, disorganized thoughts into an organized and well-ordered manner.

Naturally, this ensured that the flow of thought is maintained well throughout the article.

Also, you might notice that I spotted some SEO keywords too using this process.

Mind Mapping For You

You too can start mind mapping right away. There are several interesting resources on the Internet. I have listed some of them below. Just read through these and you’ll get started right away.

• http://www.mindmapping.com/
• http://www.mindmapperusa.com/whats_mindmapping.htm
• http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm

You can also use a variety of software packages (both free and paid) to mind map. Or you can just use pen and paper too! Here’s a quick list of such interesting apps that I have tried out and used:

• FreeMind (Windows / Mac / Linux)
• XMind (Windows / Mac / Linux)
• iThoughtsHD (iPad)
• Idea Sketch (iPad)

In Conclusion…

Mind Mapping is a very interesting and useful method of organizing your cluttered thoughts so that you can write a great article for your website or blog.

Have you tried mind mapping? What have your experiences been with this brilliant tool? Do share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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