Book Writing Tools to Strengthen Your Story

Discover powerful book writing tools to strengthen your story. Use apps like SimpleMind to visualize plot events and character relationships.

By: Grant P. Ferguson

Last Updated: January 24, 2025

The Problem and Why I Use Book Writing Tools

While trying to kluge together genres, like thriller, mystery, and romance, there comes a time when there’s just too much to keep in your head, and the mountain of text makes it hard to see the relationships between the characters and plot threads.

This is when a picture is worth a thousand words (or even 50K to 100K!). Using a mind-mapping app like SimpleMind, I can see how the plot events connect to the many characters, including the hero, love interest, chief villain, secondary villain, sidekick (foil character), and many more.

Click to Enlarge

What I love most about this is the creative influence on my mind, generating more ideas that I can spin into an entire series.

You Need Only Paper and Pencil

It’s true.

You don’t need to go out a buy another app (or try a free copy of SimpleMind). Drawing or graph paper will suffice. However, if you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy using an app to create and save different versions until you sense the story will work like you envisioned it in your mind.

Again, you can do that by using paper and pencil, but it gets a lot easier and more precise if you use a mind-mapping app (and fun, too!).

Do you like to draw the relationships between your main plot, subplots, and your characters?

If yes, do you prefer using paper and pencil, or is a mind-mapping app more to your liking?

Tools

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11 responses to “Book Writing Tools to Strengthen Your Story”

wordsfromanneli

What a great idea. I’ve always done the mapping with words, but drawing it out like this makes it so much easier to keep track of who’s who and who did what.

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  I like the opportunity to adjust the flow, saving the file under a different version name. It makes recovering easier if later you change your mind.
  
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  1. wordsfromanneli
    
    Yes, that’s a really good idea.
    
    Reply
Jacqui Murray

I know a lot of people who love this approach.

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  It’s so much fun, you have to be careful and not let it distract from writing. 🤭
  
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D. Wallace Peach

That’s interesting! I haven’t seen a map before that connects characters like that. I can see how it might generate more ideas. I’m also a visual person, Grant, and graphics are immensely helpful to me. Thanks for sharing!

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  Without a map, I’d get lost 😉 Thanks for stopping by, Diana!
  
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lyndhurstlaura

None of it! I’m a pantser at worst, plantser at best, but it’s all contained inside my head and committed to paper via regular brain-dumps of rambling notes. We do what works for us – all the best with yours. 🙂 🙂

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Dana at Regular Girl Devos

Gotta love a good chart! 🤓 Thank you, Grant!

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Priscilla Bettis

I do like to mind map. Strangely, I use it more often for writing poetry than stories. I enjoy the feel of pen on paper, so my mind maps tend to be old-style on paper.

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1. Grant at Tame Your Book
  
  I’m with you, Priscilla. Using colored pencils on drawing paper is so enjoyable, but I switched to an app for revisions and curating the many drawings. Either way, mind mapping is a real boost to creativity.
  
  Reply