Creativity Workshop: More ideas than you can write

This is the first of a series of twelve articles on increasing and refining your creativity and your productivity.  This article is tailored towards people who:

• have trouble coming up with ideas;
• struggle to identify ‘good’ ideas;
• have difficulty writing something new and different.

If you find ideas come easily to you, then you will probably already know most of the information in this post.  But I hope that you might still find it useful, by learning a new technique, or even just coming to a better understanding of how ideas are generated.

In this post, I will demonstrate:

1. Where ideas come from;
2. How to generate ideas on demand;
3. How to train your brain to see ideas in everything.

This is a very long, very involved post.  So get yourself a drink and make sure you go to the bathroom before you start.  Have your notebook and pen handy.  Ready?  Let’s go.

The Creativity Toolbox

To begin, I want to introduce everyone to their most important writing accessory: the Creativity Toolbox.  The creativity toolbox contains three tools:

• eyes
• ears
• brain

These three tools are all you need to ensure that you never run out of ideas.

Your brain

There won’t be any complex neuroscience in this section.  I just want to outline some concepts about how the brain deals with information.  These concepts help to explain how we get ideas, and where creativity comes from.

When your brain learns something new, it does two things.  Firstly, it attempts to categorise the information in some way.  The majority of this categorisation goes on while you are a baby, and tapers off as you get older, but it still happens throughout your life.

For example, you have a category in your brain for “house”.  When you are a child, your “house” category contains mostly images of your own house.  Gradually the category expands as you gain new experiences, to include images of your neighbour’s houses, friend’s houses, different shapes and styles.  You learn that an igloo is a house, or a tent.  That houses can have many different types of roof, of window, different stories.  Your “house” category expands.

The other thing your brain does with information is make associations.  So you learn to associate houses with certain things.  Parents. Furniture. Family.  Dog.  Garden.  Car.  Street.  Suburb. City. And each of those items has its own category and associations.

Your brain has constructed a complex, multi-nodal network of information, where everything is related and connected.  And this is fundamental to the concept of how ideas are generated.

You know those exercises, where someone says a word and you have to write down the first ten things that you think about?  That’s your brain making use of those connections.  These connections are the key to generating ideas.

Associations = ideas

When you think of an item, say a chair for example, your brain immediately brings up the closest connection, and presents an image of a chair.  If you think further, you will come up with more chairs.  These will be chairs that you have seen, and have been stored in your memory.

But you can easily come up with imaginary chairs, by consciously changing the colour or the shape or the size or the number of legs on the chair.  Your brain is choosing different options from within the category of “chair”, and the categories of “colour”, “fabric”, “size” etc.

It’s a simple concept, but is the fundamental basis for generating ideas.  But how do we go from changing the features of the chair, to generating a new type of chair?

This is where our brain excels.  Because not only can it make associations with things that are connected, it can also make associations outside.  Think long and hard enough and your brain will start to look past the connections you already have, and make new connections.  This is where your creativity comes from.

Eyes and ears

The more information you have categorised in your brain, the more associations you can draw from.  That’s where your eyes and ears come in – they are your information gatherers.

There is a tendency as we get older to stop learning.  This is detrimental to your creativity!  But the busier we get with work and family, the harder it is to remember to slow down, observe, absorb.

It doesn’t mean that you have to visit the museum once a week, or learn a new language.  But to maintain your creativity you must make the effort to gather experiences and observe the changing of the world.  Those observations feed your creativity and ensure that you are always learning.

Ideas on demand

Now I’m going to show you how I generate ideas.  I found this section very difficult to write, because a lot of this happens subconsciously.  But I wanted to step you through the process from start to finish.

Here is a picture of a tree.  I deliberately chose a very plain, very simple picture for my prompt.

And really, what’s to write about?  It’s a tree.  If you had asked me, years ago, to write a story from this picture, I would have spent a lot of time describing the tree, possibly embellishing from my imagination, but mostly just telling the reader about the tree.

Not very creative.

But the tree is just the image we use to kick-start our brain.  So lets give it a try.

When first presented with the image, our brain goes through the closest associations.  So you get tree, green, leaf, branch, trunk, forest, flower, fruit.  If you push it, you then get wider associations.  Possum.  Fairy.  Koala.  Rain.  Climb.  Swing.  Ants.  Mushrooms.  Wind in the leaves.  Dappled shade.

These are the simple connections, the clichés.  Discard all of these, and keep pushing.  What else do I see?  Rot.  Deforestation.  Deep roots clinging to the earth.  Wide avenues.  Palms beside the beach.  Branches crashing down in a storm.  Lightning strikes?  Tree rings.  Passing of time.  Carved initials.

Ah.  Now there we have a spark.  And just as an aside, that was extremely difficult to write down.  My brain reached “carved initials” before I finished the first sentence, and I had to backtrack to write down what I remembered, and I forgot most of it.  But I think you can get the idea.

Anyway, my brain has settled on carved initials, so I’m going to follow that up.  Who carves their initials?  Lovers?  Vandals?

Now we play the What If? game.  What if the boy who carved the initials was killed in a war?  What if the girl just disappeared one day?  What if the initials are in a strange language?  An alien language?  (There’s the SF writer coming out.)  What if the scientist sent to investigate wants to cut down the forest to look for more evidence?  What if it’s an old-growth forest with a group of activists trying to protect it?

And you go on, letting your brain wander at will and make more connections.  What if the tree is the centre of a children’s game that goes wrong? (Horror)  What if the tree is growing on a boundary between two properties, and one owner wants to cut it down?  (Contemp) What if the tree is blown down in a storm, and there are bones tangled in the roots?  (Mystery)

You can play the What If? game endlessly.  Once you’ve got an interesting What If?, then add a Who? and a Where? and a Why? and you’ve got yourself a story.

Brain training

Creativity, like any skill, needs to be used regularly so you become adept at using it.  Imagine if you were learning to paint, but you only picked up a paintbrush once a month.  Would you even progress?  Most of your painting session would be spent remembering the skills you learned last time, leaving you less time to learn new skills.

Creativity is like that.  Ignore it and you will find yourself struggling to be creative when you need to be.  Use it every day, and it becomes a subconscious act.  You won’t have to concentrate on getting ideas, because your brain will happily work away at it in the background, and produce an endless supply whether you like it or not.

It’s true.  I’m up to 10 notebooks worth of ideas.  I will never have the time to write them all.  Some of them aren’t worth writing, but I have a lot of interesting stuff in there.  I don’t ask my brain to supply these ideas; they just appear, associations made from things I have seen and heard.  Some of them are great.  Some are mind-bogglingly bizarre.  But that’s the nature of creativity.  You get everything, and filter out what’s useful.

So how do you train your brain to be creative?

1. Daily practice

Make an effort to sit down every day and generate some ideas.  Do this until you don’t need to do it any more.  You’ll know when that is.

FlickrCC is a great site for your daily inspiration.  It generates a set of random pictures.  Pick one, sit down and play the What if? game.  It will be hard at first.  You’ll look at the pictures and your brain will give you all the close associations (i.e. cliches) and then it will shut up.  Keep pushing!  Keep looking, let your mind wander.

Write down everything that comes to mind, even the clichés.  Write until you have written yourself dry.  Then take a break, but keep the picture in your mind.  Go do something else.  Keep thinking about the picture.  Vacuuming is great for this, or washing up, showering, driving, walking the dog.  Ideas will start to bubble up.  Write them down, keep thinking.

At the end of the day, have a look at your list.  Circle the most exciting ideas and play the Who Where Why? games, and see what sort of stories emerge.

It is vitally important to keep thinking past the initial ideas.  Those are the lazy-brain ideas, the clichés, the unimaginative concepts.  Push on.  Better ideas await.

2. Look and listen

Open your eyes and ears.  Make a conscious effort to look around you every day.  Be a stickybeak!  There are so many opportunities to observe.  Driving (with care!).  On the commute.  Walking to lunch.  Coffee.  Going to the library.  Shopping.

Look at people.  Listen to what they say.  Classify them.  Who might make a good character?  Who’d be a great villain?  What are they talking about?

Be subtle, or you’re going to be embarrassed a lot.  Practice a bright smile for when you get caught. Write down interesting people, clothing, actions, snippets of dialogue.  File it all away in your brain, and build those associations.

Good ideas, bad ideas

You’ve got a new idea, but you’re not sure whether it’s good or not.  How do you tell?

The most important thing to do when you get a new idea is to wait.  Don’t rush to write the story as soon as you think of it.  Let the idea simmer.

If you fall out of love with the idea in a day or two, there’s a good chance that there wasn’t enough substance there to make a story.  If the idea sticks with you, it deserves more attention.  Throw things at it, see what sticks.  What if you change the main character?  What happens if you change the setting?  Can you see a definite conflict forming?

A lot of new writers have this impression that only the big, flashy ideas are worth writing.  That you need an earth-shaking conflict and larger than life characters.  But you only have to look around to see that isn’t true.  Simple ideas, real people, make excellent stories.

Pull a couple of books off your shelf.  Cut away the worldbuilding, the plot, the characters, and see if you can identify the idea behind the book. What if the European gods emigrated to America? (American Gods, Neil Gaiman)  What would make someone lie all the time? (Liar, Justine Larbalestier)  What if a boy could move his soul into the bodies of others? (Wild Seed, Octavia Butler).

From such simple ideas are great books made.  Remember, the idea is not the story.  The idea is just the spark.  It only takes a tiny spark to make a bushfire.

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you won’t find out if an idea has gone bad until you write it. It happens.  But if you’ve discarded all the clichés and let the idea mature for a while, there’s a good chance it will make a good story.

In the end, experience is the best barometer.  The more you write, the more you will get a feel for a good idea.

Exercises

Creative Commons via Moriza

Creative commons via bslmmrs

Creative commons via Cobalt123

The exercise for this week is to create three distinct ideas from each of the pictures below (for a total of nine ideas).  Try to identify clichés and take them out of your list.  (For more on clichés, keep an eye out for the gust post by romance author Jody Hedlund, coming up on 14 July).

Don’t generate only three ideas for each picture!  Do the daily exercise, generate as many ideas as you can, and pick the three that speak to you the most.  You can either post your results in their own blog post, or put them in your weekly wrap up post on Sunday.

At the end of your post, rank the pictures from easiest to hardest, and think about why.

This Wednesday our guest post is Inspiration and Intimidation by Johanna Harness.

Best of luck with your writing, and have a creative week!