As I mentioned in my last post, I use specific categories when I’m creating my mind map. Most of them a pretty self-explanatory, but there are some you might not be familiar with.
Let’s start with the easier ones first.
Story Garden Mind Map
This is where we plant the seeds from our Story Seeds brain dump.
Characters
These are the main character/s of your story. It could be one, two, or fifty (although fifty is a little extreme 😉 )
For the purposes of my story (which is a romance with two main characters) I have Scarlett and Archer.
If you are doing a mind map for an entire series of books, then you would list all your characters here, but I’m just doing it for one book, so I’ll stick with my two MCs.
You don’t need to list side characters here, you can put them into the character mind map when you start drilling down, this is just the top-level mind map.
Location/Setting
This is where your story is going to take place. It could be a town name or a country or a planetary system.
My story is set in Australia in a small town called Hope Springs, so that’s what I put here. If you have several locations and/or your story is set in a different time or universe, then you could list it here.
Tropes
I know some writers look down on tropes, but when you are writing marketable, popular fiction, your readers are going to look for the tropes they like. Tropes are not bad, and they can really help to tighten your story if used correctly. It’s important to know what tropes you want to explore (or subvert) because it helps you to hit the relevant story and emotional beats that your readers will be looking for.
Now we move into the more complex categories…or at least the ones you might be less familiar with (or maybe you know what they are in an abstract sense but you haven’t given them a label).
Themes
Themes are a little more difficult to pin down…or maybe not. Maybe you already know what themes you want to explore in your story. A lot of the time the theme doesn’t really hit until after the story is written, but if you already know it, then jot it down. Sometimes a reader will pull a theme from a story that the writer didn’t even know they’d put in there.
Themes should be a seasoning, not the main ingredient.
Knowing your theme can help you be more intentional in your writing, but be careful. Themes should be subtle. Don’t bash your reader over the head with them. You want your reader to walk away from your story feeling like they’ve discovered something about themselves or the world, but you don’t want them to feel like they’ve been preached to.
Main Conflict
Conflict is probably one of the most important things about your story. Yes, characters and plot are important but if there is no conflict then there is no story.
Conflict can often be misconstrued. It doesn’t necessarily mean the characters hate each other or are constantly at odds. Conflict can come from all sorts of places.
I write romance, so for me, the story is all about the characters. The characters need to evolve throughout the book. They need to grow and change and for that to happen they need conflict.
It took me a long time to understand the concept of story conflict. I am usually conflict-averse in my real life. But a story without conflict is about as interesting as watching paint dry. There needs to be tension, but it doesn’t need to be negative tension.
According to Google, this is what the word conflict means:
noun: conflict; plural noun: conflicts
/ˈkɒnflɪkt/
a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one.
“the eternal conflict between the sexes”a prolonged armed struggle.
“regional conflicts”a state of mind in which a person experiences a clash of opposing feelings or needs.
“bewildered by her own inner conflict, she could only stand there feeling vulnerable”a serious incompatibility between two or more opinions, principles, or interests.
“there was a conflict between his business and domestic life”
Too often, when looking at story, we focus on the first two meanings; a serious disagreement or argument and a prolonged armed struggle. But how does that fit into a romance? Sure, an enemies to lovers story can be great, but we don’t want to see the characters continually at odds with one another. For me, conflict in story is more about the last two meanings of conflict—the internal conflict or the conflict between the life the character has opposed to the life they want.
The main conflict of the story is your main plot point. What is your story about? My story is about two people who come from two different worlds and how they can each change so they can be together. The conflict comes from what they believe about themselves and the life they’re living and who they want to be and what they really want their life to look like.
*Warning–author opinion following*
One thing I’ve noticed about some romance stories (or stories with romantic elements) is that the conflict too often comes from a so-called ‘love triangle’ that isn’t really a love triangle at all. Love triangles are absolutely a valid trope in romance and a much-loved one by readers, but if your ‘love triangle’ is only there to introduce additional conflict between your characters, then maybe it’s not needed. Having conflicting feelings about a love interest is one way to have conflict in a romance but it is not the only way. Neither is having a scorned ex. Sure, these can be useful in your story, but keep in mind there are many other ways to show conflict between two people other than just having a third party involved.
*End rant*
Misbeliefs
The characters’ misbeliefs are the next most important thing in writing an engaging story. We want our characters to change over the course of the story. They need to grow. But in order for them to grow, they need to have some flaws to start with.
What is a misbelief? This is something the character believes about themselves or the world they live in—a core belief––that isn’t true. Not only do they believe this but that belief has an effect on their daily life.
How do you find a character’s misbelief? You need to look at what is holding a character back from achieving their goals. Or perhaps it was something that happened in their past that makes them think a certain way about themselves or the world. For example; a teacher or parent told this character that they were not smart enough to achieve anything in their life. Consequently, the character has gone through their life believing that they will never amount to anything.
Misbeliefs feed the main conflict of the story
We all have misbeliefs about ourselves. These are the self-limiting beliefs that hold us back. In the case of our characters, these misbeliefs also feed into the main conflict of the story. My characters both believe that the worlds they live in are enough for them, even though they dream of something more. Scarlett doesn’t think anyone can love her if she isn’t the famous pop star Ruby, and Archer believes that his small town is enough and that his family could never survive without him if he was to chase a bigger dream. With them both thinking this way, they can’t possibly see how they could exist in the other’s world and they don’t see a way for them to be together.
Metamorphosis
This is the flip side of the coin to the character’s misbelief. This is the person we want them to be at the end of the story. This is the goal of the story. If you know where you want your character to be at the end, then it can help you hit the right beats along the way through the story.
Think about what your character’s world would look like if they achieved their goals. If they could overcome their limiting misbeliefs, what type of character would they be? Where would they be? What would they be doing?
Character Mind Map
Some of the categories overlap with the Story Garden Mind Map. You can just copy them over, or you can dig a little deeper into each one, teasing out more details.
Do one of these for each main character.
Family/Friends
This is where you list the relevant members of the character’s family and friends and any little distinguishing characteristics that are relevant to the story. If there are side characters who are neither family nor friend, list them here but be sure to mark down how they fit into the story.
Career
This is pretty self-explanatory. What is your character’s career? What do they do for a living or not do? How do they spend their days?
Fears
This is not just about being afraid of spiders (unless your character needs to defeat an army of spiders to achieve their goal, of course…or, your character is a spider but thinks all spiders are bad and so therefore thinks they are bad and will never be the hero…).
Fears and misbeliefs go hand in hand in sabotaging the characters goals. As in our example in the Misbeliefs section, we have a character who believes they are not smart enough to ever achieve anything (misbelief) so they are afraid to even try because they are afraid of proving everybody right (fear) which means they can never become the trial lawyer they so desperately want to be (goal). The misbelief feeds the fear and the fear feeds the misbelief keeping our character away from what they really want in life. They don’t try because they’re afraid and therefore they never achieve anything proving the misbelief correct. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Misbelief feeds fear and fear feeds misbelief
In my story, Scarlett has a misbelief that no one will love her if she isn’t the famous pop star Ruby and her fear is being alone for the rest of her life, but her goal is to find someone who loves all of her, not just the famous part of her. This creates a cycle where she is afraid to let anyone get to know the real Scarlett, because her misbelief tells her no one will love the ‘real’ Scarlett, therefore she feels alone and unable to attain her goal.
For Archer, his misbelief is that his family can’t survive without him. His goal was to be a police detective in the city, but he had to give that up to look after his family and now he believes that there is no way he can leave his small town and his family. His fear is that if he leaves his family, something bad will happen like it did last time he went after his dream. He can’t become the detective he always wanted to be because he can’t let go of the fear of leaving his family.
Fears can both manifest out of a character’s misbelief or be the cause of the characters misbelief.
Goals
All characters need a goal. There needs to be something they want, even if they never believe they will ever achieve it. It can be something simple, for example; in the 1991 movie Hudson Hawk (starring Bruce Willis) all he wants is a cappuccino, but stuff keeps happening to keep him from his goal. That might be an over-simplified explanation of the plot, but it is a stated goal of the character and something the movie returns to.
As with conflict, if your character doesn’t have a goal, you don’t really have a story. In the very basic of terms, a story is a character overcoming the obstacles (conflict) standing between them and their goal. That goal can be as simple as a character wanting to have a quiet cappuccino or sleep in or even build a multi-billion dollar company in order to crush the man who killed their father (the basic plot of Itaewon Class).
As I am a romance writer, you would think that the goal of all my characters is to fall in love, but that is not necessarily the case. In fact, most of my characters’ goals have nothing to do with love.
Story goals and character goals aren’t always the same thing.
The story goal of a romance book is for the characters to get their happy-ever-after, but that doesn’t mean it is the character’s goal. In a lot of cases, the story goal runs contrary to the character’s goal (creating interesting conflict). While we, as the reader, want to see the character achieve their goals, we also want more from them. We want them to achieve more than their, often materialistic, goals. We want to see them evolve and change, which might mean they don’t achieve their original goal at all.
Back Story
We’ve all heard that we shouldn’t info dump backstory into our books, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know at least some of your character’s back story. A the very least, you should know what caused their misbeliefs and fears. You should know about their immediate relationships. This doesn’t need to end up as pages of exposition in your manuscript, but it does help you create a character who is more than just a cardboard cut-out. You also don’t have to write pages and pages of their life from birth in your production journal (you can if you want, but you don’t have to). Just a couple of sentences that explains who your character is and why they are the way they are is enough to get you started.
If you’re anything like me, once you start writing your story, your characters start to take on a life of their own and you learn more about them as you write, so you can come back and add to this as you go.
Physical Description
Again, pretty self-explanatory but essential for making sure your story has good continuity. You don’t want your character’s green eyes to suddenly turn violet in chapter seven (unless of course there’s a reason 😉).
Misbeliefs
We covered this in the previous section, but on the character mind map you can go into a little bit more depth. It’s also handy to have a copy here for when you are writing and need to check on something.
Location Mind Map
These are probably easy for you to work out, but I’ll go through them anyway.
Stores/Shops
As the name says, these are the stores/shops that appear in your story. You might think it is overkill to list these, but there have been times when I’m writing the fourth book in a series and have to search through the other three books to find the name of that one shop where something happened. Having an easily accessible list of these places helps with continuity and works as a handy quick reference for things you might forget.
Offices
This category exists for the same reasons as listed above but also to help ground your story in reality. Your book might be set in a small town, does it have a post office? A police station? A local attorney? A newspaper office?
Places of Interest
Not necessarily tourist places of interest, put places of interest within the story for example; the character’s house. What does it look like? Where is in the town?
Or maybe it is something like a particular road or alley where something happens.
Again, this might be something that you come back to once you start writing. You story could lead you to a place where a significant plot point happens, here is where you can make a note of it for future reference.
Weather/Climate/Season
I am terrible at determining the season for my story. I always forget (unless it is relevant to the story for example, a Christmas story). It is important for me to set the time of year in advance so my characters dress appropriately.
But this can also be used to determine what the climate is for the region of your location. For example, is it the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere? Is it set in a region with a lot of snowfall or a desert or on a tropical island?
Maybe your story is post-apocalyptic, and the weather is messed up and they experience violent storms.
All these things help to inform on your world building, and it is a good idea to make these decisions early or at least keep a list of relevant information as your story develops.
Geography and Topography
Where does your location sit relevant to the rest of your world? Is it mountainous? Is it flat and desolate? Does it have access to a water source? Is it accessible by car?
In my story, I chose a real place in Victoria and then changed it to suit my needs. Hope Springs isn’t an actual town, but I based it on a regional Victorian town which is in an area of extinct volcanoes. The extinct volcanoes don’t really inform my story at all, except for the fact that there is a great lookout and an amazing crater lake, both of which my characters can make use of, but it gives depth to the location and makes it feel more real. The idea of basing my town on an already existing one helps to ground my story in the present and in Australia and I can use surrounding landmarks and attractions in my story, limiting my need for extensive world building.
Why not use a real town? By using a made-up town, I avoid the problem of offending readers who might live in that town. I also avoid the problem of getting the details wrong.
Identity
How does your location identify itself? That might sound like a strange question, but it all helps with your world building. My story is set in a small town and it identifies as a small, close-knit community. Maybe you’ve set your story in a high-rise…how do the residents see the building? Is it an oasis away from the unwashed masses of humanity? Or is it like a prison they fear they will never escape from.
Knowing how your location identifies—or how your characters think of the location—helps set the mood of your story.
Landmarks
What are the local landmarks of your location?
Landmarks are great for giving your reader a sense of place, especially if you don’t have a handy map in the front of your book. In my town, there is a centre square. Just reading those words already helps you imagine what my town looks like.
Knowing landmarks also helps with continuity. I’ve said this a few times now, but it is really important, especially over a series of books. You might be writing your books several weeks, months, or years apart and not think these small details matter, but a reader might consume the entire series all at once and they will absolutely notice the little incongruencies.
These are just the categories I use (or am using for my current project). You can add categories to suit your story—that’s the beauty of this system. If you’re writing a fantasy book, you could have a category for magic. In the Story Garden mind map you could list all the magic powers available in your world and then in the character mind map you could list the powers that specific character has and how they work. If you are using a hard magic system, you could even do a mind map for each magic power to further refine the rules and limitations.
If you’re writing a good versus evil story, you could have a category for your antagonist or The Big Bad. I would even give them their own character mind map too. This gives you a place to refine their motivations and build them into a fully fleshed out character. Villains are characters too!
For a murder mystery you could include a category for the clues and red herrings.
A political drama could have a category for each of the political parties or even have a mind map for each political party which lists their objectives and their political manoeuvrings.
The beauty of using mind maps like this is that they are so completely customisable. You can take them down to a very granular level or keep them very surface level depending on how you work.
Remember that mind maps and the categories you use need to serve you. Only do as much or as little as you need. They are a tool, not a prescription. And don’t forget you can come back to them at any time during your writing process if you need to refine your story.
So what happens after you create a mind map?
Stay tuned for the next blog post on the Emotional Arc.