Writer’s Blog

Clustering: Generate Ideas That Connect to Your Story

Use this method to enhance your writing and inspire new creativity.

Clustering is a way to help writers develop a visual map of thoughts and feelings about specific topics, phrases or words. As writers, we can get caught up in our minds and stuck because we struggle to explore the central theme or location fully.

Often we visualize what we want our story to look like but don’t ever explore the other possibilities that could make our work more unique.

The cluster technique enables writers to pull apart and dissect their thoughts on a topic, often leading to more details, more personality and ultimately a more interesting take on the subject.

Clustering enables us to recognize all of the associations we might subconsciously have with the chosen word or word group and then allows us to chose which path we want to take in our story writing.

It’s basically the barebones of a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book.

What is clustering?

Clustering was defined and developed by Gabriele Lusser Rico in her book Writing the Natural Way (1983) her goal in developing this style was to help link the brain and all it’s thought processes together by using images to connect ideas, and scramble linear thinking while still utilizing it as an asset.