Cool Ideas: The Power of Productive Thinking and the #1 Brainstorming Method for Fiction Writers

Learn the Best Brainstorming Method for Fiction Writers

All ye merry ladies and gentlemen, gather 'round!

Today, I'm going to teach you the most productive brainstorming method known to hominids. Yes, you heard that right. I said "known to hominids," all of them who have ever existed and been dug up by later variants.

This method will unlock the creative genius within you, and you'll be coming up with ideas faster than a caffeine-fueled squirrel on a hamster wheel.

But first, let's address the mammoth in the room: creativity is hard.

Coming up with a truly unique and captivating idea is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but instead of a needle, you're looking for a specific type of hay that's slightly off-color.

It's frustrating, it's time-consuming, and it makes you want to pull your hair out. And let's not even talk about the pressure on fiction writers to come up with the next big thing or perish in obscurity.

But I have a solution, and it's not just any solution. It's the real deal. It's the brainstorming method that will make you feel like a creative superhero. And it's not some hocus-pocus, hippie-dippie, new-agey thing. It's based on science.

So, get ready to unleash your creativity and earn that big Homo Sapiens Sapiens brain of yours.

• Why is Creativity so Hard?

• Brainstorming

• What is ‘Real’ Brainstorming?

• Suspend Judgment

• Aim for the Wild Ideas

• Quantity Over Quality

• Combine & Improve

• Conclusion

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Why is Creativity so Hard?

First, we need to examine why we struggle to come up with unique ideas in the first place.

Humans are built for pattern recognition, and this makes sense. It is a lot of work to use our big brains, and for primitive humans, using up all the day's calories on thinking just wasn't very efficient. So we use mental shortcuts to help save precious energy.

The human animal is lazy. You think 'thinking' is any different?

In his book Think Better, Tim Hurson describes this problem as it relates to creativity.

He explains that, in reality, we use very little of our productive thinking brains, instead opting for patterned and instinctual reactionary thinking. Same goes when coming up with concepts for a new book or story.

Hurson describes the early stages of brainstorming and those ideas generated as not ideas at all but rather conditioned responses based on ingrained patterns. Uniquely and sometimes very creatively recalled but not actually produced.

What happens during these stages, he labels "reproductive thinking."

Real productive thinking (new ideas, severed from patterns) does not take place until we have pushed our brain out of its comfort zone enough to be on its own, so to speak.

I have a few tips I can give you. Still, apart from being an exceptionally imaginative individual, I only know of one tried and true method to push the brain far enough into productive thinking mode to create something on par with history's best storytellers (or better). A technique that is mainly based on Tim Hurson's work:

Brainstorming.