{"id":1838,"date":"2017-01-08T07:45:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-08T15:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/?p=1838"},"modified":"2018-10-07T08:28:21","modified_gmt":"2018-10-07T15:28:21","slug":"the-creativity-two-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/the-creativity-two-step\/","title":{"rendered":"The Creativity Two-Step"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Melanie Anne Phillips<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"It is easier to come up with many ideas than it is to come up with one idea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that may sound counter-intuitive, but consider this\u2026 When you are working on a particular story and you run into a specific structural problem, you are looking for a creative inspiration in a very narrow area. But creativity isn\u2019t something you can control like a power tool or channel onto a task. Rather, it is random, and applies itself to whatever it wants.<\/span><\/p>\n

Creative inspiration is always running at full tilt within us, coming up with new ideas, thinking new thoughts \u2013 just not the thoughts we are looking for. So if we sit and wait for the Muse to shine its light on the exact structural problem we\u2019re stuck on, it might be days before lightning strikes that very spot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately, we can trick Creativity into working on our problem by making it think it is being random. As an example, consider this log line for a story: A Marshall in an Old West border town struggles with a cutthroat gang that is bleeding the town dry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Step One: Asking Questions<\/span><\/p>\n

Now if you had the assignment to sit down and turn this into a full-blown, interesting, one-of-a-kind story, you might be a bit stuck for what to do next. So, try this. First ask some questions:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. How old is the Marshall?<\/span><\/p>\n

2. How much experience does he have?<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Is he a good shot?<\/span><\/p>\n

4. How many men has he killed (if any)<\/span><\/p>\n

5. How many people are in the gang?<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Does it have a single leader?<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Is the gang tight-knit?<\/span><\/p>\n

8. What are they taking from the town?<\/span><\/p>\n

9. How long have they been doing this?<\/span><\/p>\n

You could probably go on and on and easily come up with a hundred questions based on that single log line. It might not seem at first that this will help you expand your story, but look at what\u2019s really happened. You have tricked your Muse into coming up with a detailed list of what needs to be developed! And it didn\u2019t even hurt. In fact, it was actually fun.<\/span><\/p>\n

Step Two: Answering Questions<\/span><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just the first step. Next, take each of these questions and come up with as many different answers as you can think of. Let your Muse run wild through your mind. You\u2019ll probably find you get some ordinary answers and some really outlandish ones, but you\u2019ll absolutely get a load of them!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>a) How old is the Marshall?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

a. 28<\/span><\/p>\n

b. 56<\/span><\/p>\n

c. 86<\/span><\/p>\n

d. 17<\/span><\/p>\n

e. 07<\/span><\/p>\n

f. 35<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of these potential ages are ridiculous \u2013 or are they? Every ordinary story based on such a log line would have the Marshall be some common age from our example list, such as 28 or 35: just another dull story, grinding through the mill.<\/span><\/p>\n

Step One Revisited<\/span><\/p>\n

But what if your Marshall was 86 or 7 years old? Let\u2019s switch back to Step One and ask some questions about his age.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example:<\/span><\/p>\n

c. 86<\/span><\/p>\n

1. How would an 86 year old become a Marshall?<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Can he still see okay?<\/span><\/p>\n

3. What physical maladies plague him?<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Is he married?<\/span><\/p>\n

5. What kind of gun does he use?<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Does he have the respect of the town?<\/span><\/p>\n

And on and on\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Return to Step Two<\/span><\/p>\n

As you might expect, now we switch back to Step Two again and answer each question as many different ways as we can.<\/span><\/p>\n

Example:<\/span><\/p>\n

5. What kind of gun does he use?<\/span><\/p>\n

a) He uses an ancient musket, can barely lift it, but is a crack shot and miraculously hits whatever he aims at.<\/span><\/p>\n

b) He uses an ancient musket and can\u2019t hit the broad side of a barn. But somehow, his oddball shots ricochet off so many things, he gets the job done anyway, just not as he planned.<\/span><\/p>\n

c) He uses a Mini-Gatling gun attached to his walker.<\/span><\/p>\n

d) He doesn\u2019t use a gun at all. In 63 years with the Texas Rangers, he never needed one and doesn\u2019t need one now.<\/span><\/p>\n

e) He uses a sawed off shotgun, but needs his deputy to pull the trigger for him as he aims.<\/span><\/p>\n

f) He uses a whip.<\/span><\/p>\n

g) He uses a knife, but can\u2019t throw it past 5 feet anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n

And on and on again\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Methinks you begin to get the idea. First you ask questions, which trick the Muse into finding fault with your work \u2013 an easy thing to do that your Creative Spirit already does on its own \u2013 often to your dismay.<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, you turn the Muse loose to come up with as many answers for each question as you possibly can.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, you switch back to question mode and ask as many as you can about each of your answers.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then you come up with as many answers as possible for those questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can carry this process out for as many generations as you like, but the bulk of story material you develop will grow so quickly, you\u2019ll likely not want to go much further than we went in our example.<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine, if you just asked 10 questions about the original log line and responded to each of them with 10 potential answers, you\u2019d have 100 story points to consider.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, if you went as far as we just did for each one, you\u2019d ask 10 questions of each answer and end up with 1,000 potential story points. And the final step of 10 answers for each of these would yield 10,000 story points!<\/span><\/p>\n

Now in the real world, you probably won\u2019t bother answering each question \u2013 just those that intrigue you. And, you won\u2019t trouble yourself to ask questions about every answer \u2013 just the ones that suggest they have more development to offer and seem to lead in a direction you might like to go with your story.<\/span><\/p>\n

The key point is that rather than staring at a blank page trying to find that one structural solution that will fill a gap or connect two points, use the Creativity Two-Step to trick your Muse into spewing out the wealth of ideas it naturally wants to provide.<\/span><\/p>\n

Need personalized story help?<\/h2>\n

Try my story consultation service for free!<\/em><\/h2>\n

Email me<\/a>\u00a0about your story, one page or less,
\nand I\u2019ll give you some initial feedback and
\ncreate\u00a0a customized story development plan.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Melanie Anne Phillips It is easier to come up with many ideas than it is to come up with one idea. Now that may sound counter-intuitive, but consider this\u2026 When you are working on a particular story and you run into a specific structural problem, you are looking for a creative inspiration in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p36xpN-tE","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1840,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions\/1840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}