Figure 8️⃣, you're pretty great

Mapping out the mess into a book

Author

John Lim
March 08, 2024

The ice skating number issue

Let’s 🗺 out your book

By now you should have an ideation list amidst a pile of crumpled paper balls. If you’re a writer in a 1980s TV sitcom, that is.

While lists are great for getting started, the two-column, top-down format can be confining when it comes to further developing your book idea. This week, I walk you through turning your list into a mind map. For you kids out there, maps are cartoon paper drawings of land masses, bodies of water, roads, and an ancestor to emojis: landmarks, including ⛽️🏨 and my personal favorite: 🍽. This is how we navigated the world, both near and far, before the advent of GPS powered 📱s; back in the horse and buggy days.

For now, I want you to put that magic little black box out of sight, though never out of mind, and take out a large sheet of paper or whiteboard. For you more adventurous types, feel free to break out the chalkboard. However, if you’re bold enough to go Ed Harris, you better be sporting a vest, hand knitted from your spouse.

-John

Moving Forward

Episode 460: Mapping out your book with the ideation map

This week, I cover the next step in the pre-writing stage of your book. Building off of your ideation list from last week, we’re going to transform that into a more visual “spaghetti on the wall” representation of your book idea. The ideation or “mind map” displays your brain dump in a visual format while allowing you to add greater detail and nuance. The map is a network of branches and bubbles that you can view as a very rough draft.

Once you’ve mapped out your ideas, questions, and knowledge points, you can organize them according to a beginning-middle-end (BME) framework that is the arc of any book or content form.

Your map is the bridge that will take you from idea to the first full draft of your manuscript. Bonus: if you have people coming over and the topic of what you’re working on comes up, scribble some equations, take a sip of coffee from a styrofoam cup, and stare at them with a furrowed brow before giving a pithy elevator pitch about your romance novel.

“As you can see from this derivative, boy meets girl at this juncture …”

If you want to learn more about ideation maps as part of a step-by-step plan to write, finish, and self-publish your first book, join my class, which starts in a few weeks. Register here to save your spot. Vests optional.

Learn more on this week’s episode, now playing on Spotify.

❝

An ideation map allows you to see a more visual picture without having to worry about the order of things, just yet.

-Same dude, same podcast

What else on this week’s episode:

  • Why ideation maps are ideal for developing your book idea > lists alone.

  • How to ideate novels.

    • Why ideation maps still work for “pantsers” who do little pre-planning and how to adjust the mapping process accordingly.

  • Examples of the mapping process for non-fiction and fiction book ideas.

  • What to do if the mapping process stalls, and what it likely signals.

  • An overview of the B-M-E framework and how to organize your book map accordingly.

Navigating a mess of ideas with a book map

This week, we take the next step in “ideation” with the ideation map. Once you have your ideation list, it’s time to develop it into a map that is the skeleton of your book. Take your large sheet of paper or dry erase board and write your idea in the middle, and circle it. From there, draw branches and circles, inside which you’ll write down thoughts, concepts, knowledge points, and questions you want to explore. Don’t worry about the order just yet. Continue developing your ideas by branching off smaller circles, fleshing them out even further. Your map should represent your ideation list with greater detail and scope; resembling that model of the solar system you made for your junior high school science project.

For novels, you can use the ideation map to develop character and story. Write your genre or simple premise in the middle and add branches and bubbles for characters, locations, and plot points. You can pick your level of detail depending on whether you’re a plotter or pantser.

Below is an ideation map for a podcast, which is similar to one I might do for a book. In my course, I showcase several examples of ideation maps for books.

Inside joke (that I’m letting you all in on): I use bees a lot in my examples to troll one of my friends.

Once you’ve assembled the skeleton of your book, start earmarking each circle, from main to sub, with B-M-E tags. In other words, start identifying the bubbles that belong in the beginning of your book, the middle, and the end. Optional: once you’ve done this, you can redraw your ideation map according to the three sectors (see photo above) to clearly visualize the order of what will evolve into your book’s chapters.

We have just a few more steps before you start writing your first draft, which we’ll cover next week. In the meantime, start practicing your deep-in-thought-wrinkled-brow-face.

Psst, in case you missed it the first seventeen times, I have a writing course that starts March 28th through The Johns Hopkins Odyssey program. The class is open to all with discounts for Hopkins alum and employees. Space is filling up so save your spot now.

Weekly quirky news

Stanley’s 🥤 floweth over with 💵, 🐻 crashes a 🤵‍♂️👰‍♀️, 🏝🐛🎥 wins the box office, 🍭🍫🎫👎

  • Understanding the Stanley cup craze and how it turned 40 oz into $750M in annual sales.

    • And why a chunk of it will have to cover legal fees over a lead lawsuit.

  • Bears make the worst wedding guests though not quite as embarrassing as that one drunk uncle.

  • Dune 2 sweeps the box office proving that sand, gigantic worms, and dehydration could be a great vacation getaway.

  • A Willy Wonka themed “chocolate experience” that was neither Willy Wonka nor much of an experience. And soon to be a horror movie?

Upcoming

Don’t wait until “one day” to write your first book unless that day is March 28th.

Write and Self-Publish Your First Book With a Step-by-Step Plan with John Lim | Johns Hopkins Events

If writing a book is one of your 2024 goals, take my next writing and self-publishing class, which starts March 28th. It’s through the Johns Hopkins Odyssey program and open to the public (discounts for Hopkins alum).

events.jhu.edu/form/odysseylimterm2spring24

Resources

Teach a man to fish, you know the rest (if you don’t, check these out).

  • Book a coaching call with me on Clarity.

  • Follow me on Goodreads for book recommendations.

  • Check out one of my favorite daily newsletters Morning Brew (affiliate referral link).

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