>>> Item number 25093 from WRITERS LOG9401E --- (92 records) ----- <<< Date: Sun, 30 Jan 1994 18:35:02 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: EXERCISE: Weather Report: Brainstorms All Day! (1) 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. a. 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! b. 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? c. 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? d. 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... e. 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. f. 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 ---------------------------------------