I made some remarks in my last post about how I was going to go about reading book one in its current "Reviewing the Troops" edition. Well, I am going to start putting those ideas into practice now.

To go into more detail, I am going to start at the beginning and take mind map notes on the relationships and content as I go. A lot of this stuff is of course in my head... maybe I should spend a little time to do some maps of what I already know to avoid the tedium of exhaustive diagramming?

That deserves a little more explanation. One of the tools I have in my toolbox for writing software is the use of structural diagrams. They are a way to capture complex interactions between software subsystems that helps me think about how things plug together. I have also been subjected to one instance of exhaustive analysis, where I was on a team and we drilled down into every nook and cranny to draw diagrams and write model descriptions of those elements.

The system worked in the end, but it took far too long to finish. In the end we had a two inch thick stack of paper that was obsolete before it had even finished printing out.

Overall, my approach these days is to use diagrams for initial thought and to explain high level structures.

I need to remember that balance as I move into mapping my novel.

But that is rather more than five minutes.

Posted by Dunx at February 22, 2009 09:07 AM