Expanding Your Creativity
My last post talked about my thoughts regarding the general worth of ideas. Shifting to something more practical for sifting through your own ideas, this post will deal more with some helpful tips on how to grow your ideas.
What does it mean to grow your idea? I think of it as spending more time than just a few seconds on an idea that captures your attention. Without getting into the science of it – because I don’t know the exact science of it – our mind races throughout the day and we have several thoughts and ideas that come and go. If you are the creative type that enjoys exploring some of these fun fleeting ideas, here’s a few thoughts I’ve had relating to digging into the interesting ones for use in your writing, discussions, etc.
First, don’t force a thought into your already preconceived idea for your story. Many times, I’ll be trying to think of something that will just make a section of my book click, that will provide a bridge that will lead from one moment of the story to the next in an epic way. An idea that I am looking for rarely pops into my head immediately. However, I still will have some interesting thought processes along the way that may work in other situations. If an interesting idea for your story arises but doesn’t seem to fit the way you want it to, write (text) it down, and store it for another time.
Second, to fully explore the possibilities of your interesting idea, stretch it out and take it to extraordinary results. I had a dream not too long ago about being able to stand at a certain point on Earth, and at that spot the moon seemed enormous and close enough to drive to within a short amount of time. I could let this idea stay there and imagine a world where stunning visuals of heavenly bodies seem beautiful and near to home, and that may be good enough. Or I can extend that idea even further. What if the moon did actually move close enough to this planet so that those on this special observatory could reach out and touch it, or even hop on for a ride? What repercussions would that have? In this world, how does gravity account for this phenomenon? Is it a phenomenon or does it happen frequently? If frequently, then does something like this even seem special to the characters in the story? You see, by stretching out an idea and testing it against how it would function in a story, several aspects of your idea come to light. This can help shed some light on whether your idea is something you want to use in the future, shelf indefinitely, or completely do away with. At the very least, this provides an excellent means of flexing your mind and expanding your creativity.
Finally, consistently exploring your thoughts can lead to exciting ideas that you will eventually put into your story. Most of our ideas will not make the pages of our manuscripts. Many that do will ultimately be scrapped. However, there is something very exciting when you finally flesh out an idea and conclude that it is an idea that fits perfectly into your story. Typically, these lightbulb moments draw an emotional response from me because it’s difficult to contain the excitement when an idea fits just right into the story.
The topic of ideas can be a lengthy one. People formulate ideas differently, minds work differently, and a simple idea to one person may seem abhorrent to another and yet fitting to someone else. The important thing though is that we explore our potentially good and exciting ideas to see how they may fit in our story, to stretch our creativity, and ultimately settle on the ones that fit just right.
