Have you ever been in a writing workshop where the instructor/leader gives an exercise to do, and everyone gets excited and gets beautiful results they can't wait to share, while you sit there like a dolt looking at your blank sheet of paper? I have. It ain't fun. All of us who write have tried methods, strategies, workshops, etc., that are wildly touted, and just don't work for us. It's wildly disappointing and more than a little humiliating. In my writing classes, though, I tell students not to forget those activities, the ones that don't work for them -- because they might work, later, for something else. I've had that happen to me. I sat in a writing seminar in my graduate creative writing program while everyone went nuts over a mind-mapping exercise, and I got exactly nothing. However, years later, in the midst of a huge block preventing me from finishing a book, I remembered that day, drew a mind map, and finished the manuscript that became my first book, Two Mothers Speak. I don’t usually talk about books on this blog - I’m not a book reviewer; I don’t review others’ books. I’ve also taken to being sure any political posts I put up go on my other (personal) blog, because the purpose here is about documenting and sharing a writer’s journey to create, sharing strategies, thoughts, and methods. But, today, I AM going to talk about a book.
The current manuscript I’m working on has an underlying theme that deals with maps - maps and cartographic terminology function as metaphors throughout the story. So, being the insane research geek that I am, early on I immersed myself in learning about maps - interviewed cartographers, dug out 20-year old notes from when I worked in a county map room, and, of course, read books. I ordered a number of books about maps from Amazon, and, as they do, Amazon made me recommendations on that basis.
One of them was titled Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking. It sounded like it might be about making “art” maps, and I thought one of my characters would be very interested in that, so I ordered a copy. Personal Geographies, however, is more of a how-to book on making maps as keepsakes. It’s fun- there are instructions and color plates and the whole thing is very eye-appealing and inviting. I was about to set it aside as possibly a gift for someone else when I took a closer look at two of the sections. Titled, Mapping the Self and Mapping Your Experience, these sections encourage you to use the projects in the book, while suggesting a few more approaches, to explore yourself and your experience - in order to solve problems, relieve stress, understand yourself better, etc. 
It struck me that, while I’d done many similar exercises in the past for myself, I’d never considered them an activity for exploring and deepening a character. In the following days, I mapped to the outline of a head memories and secrets and trials and joys of one of my main characters. It’s not particularly artistic, (not the point of it, anyway) but I came out of it, through this mapping and the both visual and kinesthetic experience of creating it with a much deeper understanding of what drives this person, and what haunts him.
This may have worked particularly well for me for this character because of the fact that maps are a frequent metaphor in this character’s story, but I think it could work in exploring the depth in character’s in any story, and I highly recommend it. Besides, it’s fun.
A link to the book for your consideration:
Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed Media Mapmaking
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