Idea Cruncher in Writing Projects
Imagine you're about to start a new project (e.g., an essay, article, report, presentation, proposal, etc.). You sit down with a notepad and start planning. As you get into it, your mind starts bombarding you with ideas. The ideas are good, but they're coming in more-or-less random order. Notepads weren't designed for randomness; the only way to re-organize is to rewrite. You spend a lot of time flipping pages and copying by hand.
Idea Cruncher gives you an easier way to capture your early ideas and work them into an outline. As the outline evolves, you can quickly move ideas around and incorporate new ones. Before you've written the first word of your first draft, you have a detailed, coherent plan.
Here are some suggestions for including Idea Cruncher in writing projects:
- It might help to start big and gradually work the outline down into finer levels of detail. These first items might represent the major sections of the document. After that, more detailed ideas can be added directly to the section you believe they will ultimately be found, or they can go into the tree in the same order that they come to you. You can reorganize the outline at any time, simply by dragging and dropping ideas with the mouse, or using the cut and paste commands.
- As you reorganize the outline, try to think of each top-level entry as a section, and each second-level entry as a paragraph within its section. Third-level items are individual ideas to include inside the paragraph. Check for logic and flow, and move ideas around until you are happy with the overall outline.
- Write the first draft of each paragraph in the notes pane associated with the paragraph entry in the tree. That is, click on a (second-level) item in the tree that represents a paragraph, and write a draft of that paragraph in the notes pane on the right side of the window. Refer to any third-level ideas that you have made for inclusion in that paragraph as you go. Organization problems that become apparent at this stage of the process can still be dealt with by moving ideas around in the tree. You can print the outline with corresponding notes at any point in the process to see how the paragraphs are fitting together.
- These draft paragraphs are essentially the first draft of your document, but they are stored separately from eachother in individual notes panes. In this next step, you will move to a more coherent second draft by rewriting each paragraph in the draft pane at the bottom of the window. Start by selecting the first paragraph in your outline and looking at the corresponding rough paragraph in the notes pane. Move to the draft pane at the bottom of the window and rewrite the paragraph there. (If the paragraph is perfect, you can just copy it with the copy and paste commands, but retyping tends to be a more effective way to improve the writing.) When you are finished with that paragraph, click on the next one in the tree. While the notes pane changes to reflect the notes for the currently selected idea, the draft pane remains constant, making it possible for you to construct your entire document there, paragraph by paragraph.
- When you are finished with the rewriting process, the draft pane should contain a complete second draft of the document. At that point, you can copy the contents of the draft pane to your word processor and work on it there, or you can keep editing right in the draft pane.
- As with to-do lists, the Zoom-in command on the View menu can be useful, especially in the early parts of the writing process, if you want to temporarily focus on a portion of your outline without being distracted by the other parts. This command can really help clear the mist away if the outline is getting overwhelming.
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