by Jennie Ruby
Circles, boxes, and lines on large paper have long been the
tools of writers in search of an outline. Add colors, sketches, faces, and
numbers, and you have a writing tool called mind mapping. Mind mapping is a way
to get your thoughts, plans, and ideas from abstract and random to concrete and
organized.
The pressure to write an outline in list form can block your
thoughts. Mind mapping allows you to scribble, scrawl, or draw your individual
ideas in any order, in any position. You take a blank sheet and start with
whatever is on the top of your mind. Write that in the middle of the page. If
stray but related thoughts occur, you write them wherever there is room. Later
you can draw arrows and lines connecting related ideas and illustrate
importance by coloring and underlining.
If thoughts occur to you in pictures, sketch rather than
write them. A drawing of what a computer-based training (CBT) screen should
look like may work better than a paragraph of description. I recently sketched
two heads labeled "learner" and "simulation partner," and then drew a third
person whispering into the learner's ear what to say next while interacting
with the partner. The third person represented the voiceover narrative in a
CBT. My sketches were no more than stick figures, but they communicated the
point of view the narrative should take.
Once the ideas are out of your head and onto the paper, most
of the hard work is done. Putting them into a logical order to create your
outline is a matter of numbering and prioritizing. And starting from an outline
makes writing technical materials much easier.
Using mind mapping to get from ideas to outline does not
have to be solitary project. You can take the notes from a brainstorming
session or a client meeting in mind map form and then work from the map to
create a summary, a plan, or an outline.
More information on mind mapping can be found in
the book Mind Maps at Work, by the
inventor of mind mapping, Tony Buzan.
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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007"
to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years
of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
Jennie teaches two classes popular online classes: Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts and Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts.