Brainstorms All Day! (1) A Quota of Alternatives

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 18:35:02 JST

How do you get your ideas?

Almost every book about writing answers this, sometimes with suggestions about reading, journaling, or filing, sometimes with vague (if inspiring) words about using what's around you.

However, I'm convinced that the real problem isn't getting ideas - we are all bombarded with masses of ideas in the news, magazines, friends' gossip, dreams, books, music, and other interactions that happily fill our time. The real problem is developing ideas - taking ideas and re-creating them into IDEAS, the kind of new and different notion that makes the editors sit up and beg for more of your writing. Perhaps some people have time to wait for ideas like that to turn up, and can patiently collect them, then write stories based on them.

I'm not that patient. I hope you aren't either, because I want to show you how to take whatever ideas you may have right now and develop them into whole sprays of new and exciting ideas.

That skill - the care and breeding of alternatives, if you will - receives little mention in most of the writing books. I won't swear to make you a great writer, but if you try these exercises, I think you'll become a better imagineer - and that's a critical part of the writer's toolkit.

So hang on tight, and let's plunge into the wild side of the brain, where connections and logical thinking aren't as important as the slides and slips, the sudden vistas, of intuitive leaps.

What we're going to do is tramp through some exercises. Each one focuses on a single point, or theme, intended to help you develop ideas. While the points are borrowed from Edward De Bono's "Lateral Thinking", I've aimed quite specifically at re-creating the exercises for writers. (For anyone interested in building up a toolkit of methods to stimulate ideas, De Bono has a series of books).

Exercise 1. Just One More!

Set a specific number (at least 5; probably less than 20 at least to start) of alternatives that you will create. Then pick some of these and write those lists! Making yourself meet a quota of alternatives is one of the first steps in exercising your imagination.

1. Descriptions - a farm; a townhouse; a flower; item of your choice. Make the alternative descriptions as completely different as possible - even though they should be the same item!
2. Partial pictures - take a picture from a magazine that shows people in action. Block (or cut) the center of the action away. E.g. in a picture of men hanging posters, cut the wall and the posters out. Now - describe the action you see, the people. How many different "centers of action" can you think of?
3. Points of view - take the exact same short scene or plot and write it up from a variety of points of view. Each person in the action is obvious. But what about the omniscient? Or the spy on the hill? Or the dog sniffing in the background? Flashback? Newspaper reporter trying to put the witness's reports together into a whole?
4. Shift the significance or emphasis. Again, take a scene - but by changing wording, etc. shift the significance or emphasis of the scene as far as possible. E.g., take an emotional tragedy and convert it into a farce, then into "hard-boiled action", then into... Or make the waiter's entrance and exit (that spear carrier) the center of the whole piece...
5. Problems. This is an exercise in creating problems. Take a problem (the conflict) that you have used, intend to use, or just wonder about. Now, create alternatives - other problems. Stretch the problems from the absurd to the asinine. Don't just let your characters deal with "cliche" problems - make them face up to the wonderful difficulties of life, ranging from Aunt Sue shredding the tent to a pet cat carefully depositing dead mice in the toes of shoes.
6. Solutions. This is the other half of the last exercise. Take one of those problems, and consider the possible solutions. If there is an obvious one, go ahead and put it down, but then think of the less obvious. Is there a way for magic to help? Could a horoscope solve the problem somehow? What would the five-eyed slugs of Bentnor do to solve it?
   

Now, if you tried those, don't slide back! Whether you are plotting, picking a color for your character's house, or just playing with words - try out alternatives until you've met your quota. Then go back and use the best.

BTW - Even if you are sure you have found a great idea, KEEP GOING! Meet your quota, then go back and select the best one. Far too often, stopping with the first idea, or the first one that seems good, keeps us from ever digging up that gem that comes out when you are meeting your quota. Really - make it a habit to always meet your quota BEFORE you stop and pick one to use.

Ref: Lateral thinking: creativity step by step
Edward de Bono
Harper Colophon Books, 1970

Weather Report: Brainstorms All Day! (2) Why, and again, Why?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Sun, 6 Feb 1994 18:35:01 JST

Hard question: What was the point of the first article in this series?

<silence>

Don't stop with the first answer, set a quota of alternatives and keep going until you've made your quota!

(For anyone tuning in at this point - We're going over a set of exercises intended to exercise the most important muscle in a writer's body - the one between the ears. And like any good muscle-building course, we started with the basics - repetitions. It doesn't do any good to come up with one idea and stop - set yourself a quota and keep on pumping!)

Exercise 2. Why? And again, Why?

Challenge assumptions and boundaries

One of the reasons that an adult can handle most events more easily than a child is that they have an enormous "backlog" of assumptions and boundaries set up to identify and handle whatever is happening. However, these assumptions and boundaries also blind us, and we as writers have to watch for them and challenge them. It isn't easy to see them, but it can be fun.

Trying to do this sometimes seems to be one of the most difficult points for adults - and yet there is a little child's "teasing" that will help you. Have you ever dealt with a child who is at the point where they ask "Why?" repeatedly? Even when you provide one answer, they just keep repeating the question?

Babysitters and parents are fairly wise to this trick, and often go for the simple "because" of authority, the enraged "BECAUSE I SAID SO" of frustration, or the effective "How about an icecream cone?" of diversion.

However, I want you to take a chance and ask yourself why for a while. Start with an action or scene and try to identify the assumptions and boundaries you've put behind and around it. Whenever you find one, ask yourself WHY that is necessary - and then ask yourself WHY again.

Just as an example, let's say I've had my character in a stereotyped attempt to get money from a bank. First assumption that pops to mind is that the best place to borrow money is from a bank. Why? Well, that's where you get ordinary loans. Why? They have a lot of money. Why? who knows... - maybe my character should try for a grant? or... is money really a problem? that's an assumption we often make - suppose the character doesn't buy into that world-view, simply takes money as needed (or uses those wonderful plastic cards and lets their credit hang)..

assumption - business before family. U.S. citizens. No aliens. No magic. No selling the first child to the devil, either. and so on and on - the assumptions in a story are always huge.

The boundaries also are high. We tend to look at a problem and classify it almost immediately, then consider only solutions "inside the bounds" of common sense. But for creativity, we need to slip those boundaries. For example, we look at a business going bankrupt, and we say "AHA! Economic problem. Solutions in morale, new products, loans..."

Suppose we let our minds slide a second, and consider what other kinds of problem we might consider this. Maybe it is an ethical problem? How about a communications problem? Elfen influences? Difficulty with solar flares? Do you see how just by considering the problem as belonging to a different category, you start to see it differently, and the solutions that might be appropriate?

And if you get bored with the ordinary categories - try bending and building categories of your own. Warning! This is much harder than it seems - the categories we use to divide up experience are very deeply ingrained... Possible, and very rewarding, but hard.

(what if a man talked "the evil critter" into taking his LAST child - and then kept insisting he was going to have another any day now, just wait, hold on...)

I'm not sure why that slid in here, but I'm certainly not going to push it out. Maybe it's another solution to the bankrupt business...

Now, some points about pushing assumptions and boundaries. First, when you are doing this, suspend judgment - let yourself be wrong. We are using bent, twisted, new, assumptions and boundaries as a way of exploring, as stepping stones to a new viewpoint, so don't stop and try to decide if it could possibly be right or wrong.

Second, try for variety. Remember, you want to meet or beat your quota of alternatives at each step, and you want to try different ways.

Third, look for newness. As you step back through the assumptions and trace the boundaries you are used to working in, an easy way out is to simply use some other conventional assumptions, or other ordinary boundaries. But sometimes a new thread will drift by, a new way of dividing the world will appear. Grab those, and cherish them.

Fourth, as I mentioned before, avoid evaluation - let "where does this lead?" replace "is this true?" This is partly a mental trick, but is extremely important. If you have to check and prove each step along the way, in most cases you will end up following ordinary, routine paths. But you can step on a cake of ice and off quickly without ever noticing that it sinks a moment later. Use motion, and keep going.

Fifth, watch for assumptions: then question them all the time. Take news articles, and list the assumptions made. Watch for markers like "of course", "as we all know", and other give-away phrases that say "HERE IS AN ASSUMPTION." Jump on those little suckers and tear them to pieces. (Warning - some people find it quite upsetting when you point out the assumptions that they prefer to leave unquestioned. Be cautious about pointing these assumptions out to your friends, although you can still keep track of them yourself...)

Practice!

a. Descriptions - a farm; a townhouse; a flower; an item of your choice. (If you did this exercise last time, you may want to use the same one). First, write a description. Now, look for the assumptions you used in writing the description. What about your description would be totally baffling to an alien from Alpha Centauri? How about a bushman from Australia? Or to a baby still learning about the world? Now, push those assumptions - do you really need them? How far back can you trace them? Suppose they were different?

After that, consider the boundaries you used in your description. Perhaps you mentioned people and a building - are they really separate, or are the boundaries merely convention? Consider the flower and the ground it grows from as one whole entity - does your description change when you do that? Or maybe the sky and the flower?

b. Points of view - again, try pushing the assumptions used to determine point of view. Suppose you wrote a piece in first person, but didn't allow the speaker to observe themselves? Or maybe in the middle of the obvious central figure, there are occasional flashes of other's thoughts? What happens if your narrator is the tree in the front yard of the family house? What happens when the narrator is a liar?

c. Conflict or problems. Start with a problem (conflict) that you have used or may use in a story. Now, make a list of the assumptions that make this a problem. Make another list of the boundaries that fit the problem. Then start bending and pushing those, and watch what happens to the problem.

d. Solutions. Again, start with one problem, and make a list of alternative solutions. Now pick one of those solutions and list the assumptions and boundaries that you used to define it. Bend, push, and twist - and watch the solution warp!

Example - one of my friends was upset with work, and insisted that a trip to London was the perfect solution, but claimed they couldn't do it. I asked why, and they said they didn't have enough vacation time. I pointed out that (a) they hated the job (b) they said the most important thing in their life was this trip and so one. Well, they said they didn't have the money. I asked to see their wallet, and pointed out that they had five or six credit cards - certainly enough to get to London. BUT DIDN'T I UNDERSTAND? THEY WOULD OWE MONEY THEN!!

I asked again just how important this trip was, and we talked quite a while about it.