For the updated version of this article, with more examples, click this link:
http://aj.mosaic.ws/sem
Ever since Jaynin started the Essence Rebellion, I've been wracking my brain over an easier way for newbies to learn essence mapping; and a way to make essence mapping easier to learn. After thinking for quite a while about this, and after writing my own essence maps this way, I am proud to unveil SEM--Simple Essence Mapping. This isn't just a new way to make maps, but it's a hopefully easy way for people who have grasped the concept of essence to learn how to make essence maps.

This post is written for those of you who have tried essence mapping and failed; those of you who’ve decided that it is too hard for you, or that you can’t figure it out. I’m here to tell you that you can do essence mapping. A great resource for taking the beginning steps of learning about essence and essence mapping can be found at here. But when I first read that post, I was confused to death. I could grasp the concept of essence, but this essence mapping seemed beyond me. Well, I decided to do something about it. Today, I’m unveiling Simple Essence Mapping—the very simplest essence mapping can get.

SEM – Simple Essence Mapping
Simple Essence Mapping is a system for the rest of us. It’s similar to firstX (at least, I think it is), and it aims to make it as easy as possible for you to get down the essence of an object without anything getting in the way. But the great thing is : SEM works as an introductory stepping-stone to X+, or it can be the way you essence map for your entire life—it’s up to you. Because of that, a lot of features of X have been kept out purposely. Check out Sir Emeth’s X+ if you feel like really pushing the limit.

Simple and Easy
Have you ever tried to learn X but stopped when you saw all the curly brackets, parentheses, and programmers speak? There’s none of that in SEM (An essence map made in SEM is called a semap, for Simple Essence MAP). Instead, an essence map looks more like an outline. Because really, if you start a category, you’ll be able to see when it ends because a new one will start. An outline doesn’t have marks on it, and neither does a semap. Instead, everything is just indented; it’s the indentations that keep everything tidy. Here’s a quick fragment of a semap, using an example of a character:

Appearance
 Hair
  - The wind rustling through the trees
  Long
   - Flowing stream of water
   - An afghan rippling out across a bed
   - A waterfall of color
 Eyes
  Warm
   - The sun shining down on a meadow
   - Walking briskly with a heavy coat on in the winter-time
  Deep
   - A well with the sunshine shining down in it.
 Face
  Round
   - A big pumpkin
   - The rotundness of a snowman
  Friendly
   - An old man having a dinner party with friends.
   - A man who buys a boy an ice cream cone

Now, if you were paying attention to the example map, you might have noticed something about it. The actual metaphors of the map actually had a dash before them. But didn’t I say that I had gotten rid of all that extra stuff? Well, there’s actually a very good reason for the dashes. But before I explain that, let’s look at the building blocks of a semap: categories and metaphors.

The Syntax
One of the sticklers of essence is getting the syntax down. SEM tries to simplify this. Everything in a semap is a category or a metaphor. The categories sort the metaphors that apply to the thing you are making the semap of. Let’s go back once again to our example of a character. A semap is like a big box; and in this box you put all the metaphors that apply to your character. In our example, some of the metaphors that applied to our character were “An old man having a dinner party with friends,” “Flowing stream of water,” and “A well with the sunshine shining down in it.” But just writing a list of metaphors won’t get them sorted. We don’t know how our character is like “a flowing stream of water.”

This is where categories come in. Categories sort and organize your metaphors. There are three main types of categories. The broadest category is called an aspect. So, if I were describing a character with a semap, for example, some of my aspects might be ‘Appearance,’ ‘Mind,’ and ‘Spirit’; these are the very broadest parts of the essence of the character.

Classes are the next kind of category—they always go inside aspects. So each aspect has several classes that go to it. In our example, we had three classes inside of the ‘appearance’ aspect: hair, eyes, and face. So a class sort of sub-divides your aspects in to more manageable chunks.

Last is a characteristic. Characteristics work much the same way as classes, except they subdivide classes, instead of aspects. So a class subdivides an aspect and a characteristic subdivides a class. For example, in our example map we had two characteristics subdividing the ‘eyes’ class: ‘warm’ and ‘deep.’ Inside the characteristics is where the metaphors are usually put. So now, we can see that the metaphor “a flowing stream of hair” relates to our characters long hair, which is a part of her appearance. That’s all that categories do: sort and simplify your metaphors.

Most importantly, don’t get stressed out about the names of the different categories. They’re mainly helpful when talking with others about SEM and semaps. Just remember that they’re subdivisions of your character—they sort your metaphors. That’s all.

Flexible Metaphors
A semap brings attention to the metaphors—that’s ultimately what the bulk of the semap will be. A metaphor is just any phrase or sentence that describes your character figuratively. It’s basically just like a metaphor or simile in a sentence. When I write “Flowing stream of water” in our example map, I don’t literally mean that my character’s hair is a flowing stream of water—instead I mean that her hair flows like a stream of water. Metaphors are a figurative way of describing your character’s attributes.

Metaphors are a bit special though. Unlike the categories, which sort and organize the metaphors, and must always go in a specific order, the metaphors themselves aren’t actually tied to a specific place. You could, for example, put a metaphor under an aspect. In our example essence map of a character, I put a metaphor directly under a class. “The wind rustling through the trees” was a general metaphor that I felt described the character’s hair in general. You could even put a metaphor directly under an aspect, if you wanted to.

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So that's it. That's all that there is to SEM. But just because I've come up with this, please don't think I'm trying to detract from Jay's system in any way at all. SEM is just a simple way to get a grip on essence mapping. If you want to move on to X when you're done with SEM, that's fine. If you want to make semaps your whole life, that's fine too. SEM is an option to help you. Let me know what you think of it.

eruheran

This is really good Eru, very simply explained. For someone like me who had never heard of it before I came here, you explain it really well. Later on when I have some me time I'm going to have a go at another one! Or maybe work on my present one that I haven't completed yet

Thanks, Elanor! =) Glad that it was easy to understand--being simple was one of my goals.

eruheran

Thank you, Eruheran! That was brilliant!

Thank you, Jaynin. =)

eruheran

Hmm...thank you, Eruherhan. ^.^ Makes things much simpler. As someone who had originally looked at Essence Mapping, and then decided to give it a pass, this made me have second thoughts.

Thanks, RedWing. That was my intention--to simplify. =)

eruheran

Your intentions played out well.

YO, PEEPS! Quit making different ways to essence map or I'll never sit down and learn any of them!

JK

I think it is easiest to work level-by-level up to the most difficult, and this is an excellent corner stone. It's not terribly different from what I do on my own for character-building, and yet introduces the skeleton basics of essence mapping that are necessary to understand higher levels.

So, apparently SEM is now unnecessary, at least according to Jay. He's got some super-simple thing worked out. I wonder if it will be easy?

eruheran

All I can say is that this very much helped me finally "get" essence mapping, and I have since done a few maps. Thanks so much for writing this up, Andrew!

Thanks, Philli! =)

eruheran