Scapple is a still-in-beta project from Literature & Latte, the amazing developers who brought the blessed Scrivener into the world.

I’ve enthused about Scrivener before, so I’ll refrain for now. But the folks at L&L have an amazing focus on writing and the tools of the trade, and have given us one more tool to make the whole process easier.

Scrivener is a great tool for the actual writing part of writing. You can layout the sections you want to write, get a general idea of the shape of the document you’re putting together, and then fill in the blanks as the mood moves you to write a specific section or chapter or however you’ve split up your text. But Scriv isn’t quite as great at the brainstorming part. All your notes have to be in folders or Drafts or anywhere but drafts or whatever, and you don’t quite feel as free to just throw things out there. That’s where Scapple comes in.

Scapple is a brainstorming app, if you have to give it a name. It’s not quite a mind mapping app, because it doesn’t follow “the rules” of mind mapping. Your notes can be thrown willy-nilly onto the sheet, with our without any relation to any other note anywhere. As you scribble down ideas you can link them all up as the linkages become obvious, letting the pattern of what you’re thinking emerge organically.

In addition, all the little bells and whistles you want are there, not cluttering up the plain paper aesthetics of the app, but available if you want them. In true OSX style most of them can be accessed via a free-floating inspector window, and with just a few steps you can color or style individual notes (or groups of notes, for that matter.) No meaning is imposed on anything, so you can use link styles, colors and text sizes to mean whatever you want them to mean.

In general this is a tool that is extremely adept at getting out of your way and letting you think, then popping back into view when you want to tinker a little bit. I found that after throwing a few notes on there about a writing project I wanted to line a few things up to show that they’re equal, if not connected. This was exactly as easy as you would expect: I command-clicked the notes I wanted to line up, right clicked, and there was the align menu. No extra steps, no fuss.

To sum up, this is a great little app that can be a major addition to any creative professional’s workflow. I strongly recommend checking it out. The final retail version should be out soonish, but the beta is free through the end of April. Give it a try.