Using Sketchnotes to Generate Ideas for Writing

I was just about to take the photograph of a lifetime. Think National Geographic (if Nat. Geo. were interested in a pic of my dog in my backyard). 😉

But my camera’s storage was full. I frantically hit delete, delete, delete. But it was too late.

Some good did come out of it, because while hitting that little trashcan, I came across some photos of a writer’s notebook activity that we did earlier in the year. I always have my friends keep lists and templates to generate ideas that we can draw on later. This is one we used to store ideas for personal narratives and memoirs.

Pinterest is full of awesome sketchnote ideas, and I thought my friends would like trying out an idea page that was a combination of doodles, sketches, words, phrases, and anecdotes. The only sketch that was necessary was the foot outline, so the non-artist types (like me) didn’t feel pressure to include drawings. They just had to have some fun sharing the summer travels they went on. With their feet!

The foot above is the one I created to demo what it might look like. As I stated, I’m no da Vinci, so my sketches had to be pretty basic and drawn with a pencil first. I “cheated” on the dog by hand-copying a sketch of a dog that looks like mine, which I did because I couldn’t bear to leave him out.

The foot below is one that another non-artist did. Although it seems like he didn’t write much, he actually planted some seed ideas for what could be some pretty cool writing pieces. He included anecdotes about a personally satisfying hike up a mountain with some friends that can translate into a memoir. And he wrote a little bit about a fun night in an amusement park that resulted in getting kicked off the Ferris wheel line, which would make an interesting narrative.

Do you smell a story in there? I do! Better than a smell emanating from that sneaker!

The next foot also has a lot of potential. This girl wrote about her fun experiences at summer camp. It appears that she fell in love with Harry Potter and roller coasters, her friend fell out of a boat, and there’s a camp ghost named Callie. My favorite? During a basketball game, my friend scored. But the shot she sank was in her opponent’s basket! This later became an impressive personal narrative. She took that tiny idea and dug deeper to tell the story of that moment. It was awesome!