#Mind mapping software scapple full size
Then I use “Add-Existing File” and pick the graphic file to add to my project folder, and it displays full size in the Scrivener window like any other picture would. The way I include the Scapple diagram in my Scrivener project is to take a screenshot of the Scapple window so the contents are now in a graphic file. (If you copy/paste, only the text from the Scapple bubbles pastes into Scrivener). Maybe not ideal if you just want to look at it and not edit, but it does connect the two items. Research), and select “Add…Existing File.” This creates an icon/link between your Scrivener project and the Scapple file, so if you click the link in Scrivener, the Scapple file opens and you can edit it. One way to do this is to right-click the folder in Scrivener where you want to add the Scapple document (e.g. Lastly, I can import the Scapple file into Scrivener to use as reference if I want.
Scapple is so much easier! I’ll never draw another W-plot in Word again! In the past I’d gone to great lengths to use MS Word to make this type of diagram and let me tell you, Word’s drawing tools are majorly time consuming to use. Scapple is perfect for making an electronic version of the W-plot/M-plot. I find the lines very useful for this! One of the things I like to do when I sit down to start a new story is draw up a W-plot chart for my main characters and an M-plot for my villain (based on the plotting method taught by author Karen Docter in her workshop “ The W-plot or…the Other White Meat for Plotters.”). I also used Scapple as a straight diagram tool. I don’t need the lines so I don’t use them, but another writer may find the lines invaluable and the color-coding not so much. Just like Scrivener, it works how you like to work. In my diagram, I added a few simple links between biographical data along the bottom as an example, but I mainly use a color coding system and bubble position to show chronological order.īut that’s the great thing about Scapple, it’s customizable. If you have related bubbles and want to show that relationship in your diagram, just drag one bubble on top of the other to create the connection (a line), and if you reposition either bubble, the line adjusts to keep the connection in place. Is that all it can do? No way! For starters, you can reposition any bubble you’ve created. Instead I could just double-click and focus on the brainstorming. I wasn’t weighed down by “process” or menus or commands. So Scapple’s input and format capabilities are simple but effective. Some were possible scenes I knew the story would contain, others were facts about related characters, and a few more were questions I needed to find answers for later on. Some of these other bubbles I colored differently, depending on how they related to the story. Eventually, I had a circle of ideas floating around my character’s name. Then, as I thought about the various bubbles I was adding, other information about the story started coming to me. I started with a name and then began thinking about the character’s life and double-clicked to add more bubbles floating around the name. You can then format the border, fill and shape of the bubble and font size/color of the text, which again sounds so simple, but it’s a powerful feature you can do a lot with.īelow is my mind-map in progress. Scapple automatically puts the text into a bubble for you. Without a clue what I was doing, I double-clicked in the middle of the Scapple screen and typed a name for one of the major characters in my story.
#Mind mapping software scapple free
The simplicity is what gives your imagination free reign to create. Scapple is simple, but it’s brilliant at the same time. I’d never tried mind-mapping before and when I opened the product to a blank screen, it seemed too simple.Īh, but that’s where its true beauty lies. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of the software. Scapple from Literature & Latte, not to be confused with scrapple, a meat dish I’d rather forget I’ve ever heard of, is a handy mind-mapping tool that I have found very useful for brainstorming new novels.