Article: Mind maps allow you to place your thoughts on paper in a highly visual way. They are simply an organized drawing with the themes of your ideas highlighted through the placement on the page. They can be as messy or as structured as you like, and making multiple drafts may help with getting your ideas organized. The size varies based on how involved the project is. While a mind map for deciding a yes or no question may be less involved, the thought map for a research paper or a novel may be much more involved. This will give you room to think through your ideas in a visual way. There are also many online apps for mind mapping. Make sure the circle is big enough so that it will stand out from the subtopics, but not so big that you don’t have much room to write your ideas around it. The topic itself should be as precise as you can make it, so that you can organize your thoughts more easily. Instead of using the topic “Global Warming,” for instance, you might use “The Effects of Global Warming,” or the “The Theories Surrounding Global Warming.” These will be topics related to your main topic, but you can write more than you will use in this section. Doing so will help you select the most important parts of the thought map, as you see how the sections relate to each other. If you want to get really detailed with your topic, you may want to draw lines from the subtopics, and write details about the subtopics. This is where it is really useful to have larger paper or a poster board, so you’ll have plenty of room to go into as much detail as you’d like. Writing out these details will help you organize your thoughts further as they will help you see the connections between subtopics.
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Make a mind map, or visual organizer. Start with a large piece of paper or poster board. Write your overall idea or them in a circle in the middle of the paper or poster board. Draw lines leading from the circle, and write the ideas that stem from the main idea. Draw lines leading from the main lines to indicate subtopics.