I’m willing to bet that most of you have never made a mind map, and that those of you who have haven’t done so since a teacher made you. To both groups I say this: You’re missing out.

Mindmapping is a prewriting exercise in which you create a branching tree of concepts for your writing project. For example, here is the one I made for this article.

Freemind sample map

Of course, that’s a pretty simple map, but you get the idea.

At the far left, you see the root concept: Mindmapping with FreeMind. That’s the topic of the post, and the kernel of thought that led to me to write. Moving to the right one level, you have three more concepts: What is mindmapping?, How mindmapping helps, and Freemind. Once I had the root idea, I knew that these were three concepts I needed to deal with. On the far right, the deepest level, are the finest details of each of the subtopics that I mapped.

Benefits of Mindmapping

Mindmapping is just one of the many exercises you can do to prepare yourself for any writing project; it also happens to be my favorite. Essentially, you sit down at your keyboard or with a piece of paper and draw out your writing. By getting out the big concepts on paper without worrying about the little details such as wording and spelling, you free yourself to really think about what you’re going to write instead of how you’re going to write it.

Mindmapping also helps you fill in the blanks. Seeing an idea just sitting there allows your mind to free associate, asking questions and going on tangents you wouldn’t otherwise think of. This higher view transcends words and gets down the ideas stored in your tiny little neurons. (Please don’t take that seriously. I’m an editor, not a neuroscientist.)

Finally, it naturally creates an outline for you. If you’ve ever tried to outline a written piece before you’ve actually written it, you know just how frustrating it can be to try to guess what you’re going to write. But by the time you’re done, you’ll already have organized all your concepts without even thinking about it. Look again at the map above and see how naturally each level corresponds to sections, headers and paragraphs.

Introducing FreeMind

FreeMind is the only way I mindmap anymore. It is a free, open source program that makes mindmapping quick, easy, and fast. It runs on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, so you have no excuse not to use it.

A basic mindmap, such as the example above, takes only two keys to create: Insert and Enter. Insert creates a child node, such as Prewriting to What is Mindmapping? and Enter creates a sibling mode, such as fast to Simple. Because the interface is so streamlined, you can keep up with your racing thoughts as you hit the mother lode of ideas. Essentially, the program just gets out of your way and lets you think.

That’s not to say it’s limited, however. Various icons are available to classify ideas, as you can see on the left of the screen.

Freemind Interface

FreeMind is kind of like Microsoft Word, in a way: It’s got a lot more power than most people will ever need. I’ve probably never touched 90% of it. But if you’ve got a larger, more complex project than a 600-word article, it’s definitely got everything you need to plan it.

So, next time you’ve got a lot of white space you’ve got to fill, give mindmapping and FreeMind a shot. I guarantee it’ll make for easier planning and better writing.

This article was written by John Roach http://prowritingtips.com John is a writer and copy editor. You can follow him on twitter at @johnwroachiii. To see more posts click here

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