by James Dowd
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #6: Make buckets.
As part of filtering your thinking, as well as managing the stored-up information you’ve uncovered, try thinking in buckets. Different buckets should represent different things, so your ideas exist in diverse categories. Brand pillars, content pillars, story acts, chapters — these can all be associated with buckets. Try coming up with a few ideas and then matching them up into common threads. Those threads are your buckets, so just start dropping ideas in. If ideas overlap buckets, they might be too complex or unclear. If the buckets are empty, you’re probably not done ideating. When they’re full, simplify, even as far as single words. For example, “This is my emotional idea, this is my inspirational idea, and this is my aspirational idea.”
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #7: Flip it on its head.
Challenge everything. If it’s a holiday-themed ideation for a scene or a brand promotion or even a Christmas card, reconsider what you know. If everyone thinks the holidays are happy, what if they’re actually stressful for your reader? What if people don’t want to cook for family, but instead they really just want to escape and not think of recipes at all and they want you to talk about, because then they won’t feel alone, or weird, or Grinchy? Coming up with ideas can sometimes be inspired by coming up with the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to be thinking about. If it’s, “How can we come up with the world’s most comfortable mattress?” Instead try, “What is everything I hate about mattresses?” This alternative thinking often leads you to new thinking by taking an unexpected path to the idea. Flip things on their head, look at them differently, and accept nothing as fact or gospel. Allow both the Head and the Heart chances at ideating and providing a point of view.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #8: Talk it out.
Your singular mindset will always be limited. It’s only one point of view, even with the dual Heart and Head concept. You’ve lived one life, and have one very specific way of thinking, writing, and ideating. That’s why it’s extremely powerful to get outside your own head, not just to get a new mindset but also to allow yourself the chance to process your ideas in a different way. So, take someone for a walk and explain your thinking. Say it all out loud. Give them everything. In fact, explain it to them like they’re an idiot so you don’t leave anything out, only trying to sound great by giving them the juicy stuff. Give them the opportunity to help you grow your ideas. Let them ask questions and poke holes in things. This is not a time to impress. This is a time to be dumb, to share your dumb ideas, and to not allow your ego or sensitivity prevent ideas from living and growing.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #9: First idea, worst idea.
Never settle. If it was your first idea, it was everyone’s first idea. This can mean it’s basic and needs to die, or it can be so good and right that everyone got there for a reason. When you share it, like in the previous tip, and everyone loves it, consider it. But, otherwise, keep ideating. Your first idea is just the beginning. If ideating were easy, you wouldn’t need tips and tricks for it. It’s outside our everyday way of living. It’s complicated. But, it’s also quite fun, if you let it, so get to idea two, then three, and keep going. You have to put in the effort. You’ll find that it’s an amazing thing in that you can predict how little effort most people are going to put into their work. From Writers to their readers, we’re all tapped for time, and looking for shortcuts. That’s why in order to get to the big, great, memorable ideas — the ones that make people forget about time altogether — you have to abandon your first ideas. Assume your competition is settling, but never yourself settle.
I began this practice of never stopping at my first idea not through writing but through art. In college art classes, when a project was given to the class, I would recognize the first big idea that came to my brain, and then immediately abandon it, because I knew others would have the same idea, and then every project looked the same and I wanted to stand out. For example, back in the early 2000s, a hate crime was perpetrated on my college campus. In response, our professor tasked us with using the remains of equal rights books that were destroyed during the crime as papier mache to create pieces that reflected the pain that members of the LBGTQ community faced every day. If the books were destroyed in hate, they would find new life in love and support. It was a great project, but I knew what everyone was going to do, because it was my first thought, as well. We were still experiencing the aftermath of the Matthew Shepard case from a few years before, in which he was brutally tortured and beaten, and left to die on a fence in Wyoming. I knew immediately that the professor was about to see 30+ papier mache fences, because it was an obvious idea, and people are lazy. So I made something else. At the following class, there were 30+ fences and one weird thing I made. Was mine good? Hahaha, no, definitely not. I was, and to this day remain, a terrible artist. But, I got an A, because mine stood out. The professor enjoyed and appreciated mine more because it was not everything else she was seeing and experiencing. The same can be said about movies, books, blog content, social posts, emails from a vendor — anything someone will read and experience in their daily lives. And, only now after all these years do I see the symbolism of the fences figuratively holding everyone in creatively and artistically. Yay, writing!
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #10: Get weird.
The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity. Weird inspires. It brings energy to the moment, it makes the process of writing and ideating fun. So, put the weirdest, most out-there thing you can think of on paper, and be comfortable doing so. Let the imaginative Heart speak up for a moment. (Like, using human hair from barber shops inside coats for recycled warmth and limiting the use of down! No, you’re weird.) Feel free to not just step but LEAP out of yourself and your comfort zone to spark creative thinking. Never stick to routines or you’ll come up with routine ideas. (Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m expecting a call from Patagonia about my brilliant hairy jackets idea.)
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #11: Keep your ideas simple.
As legendary SCAD advertising professor Luke Sullivan says, “Your idea should fit on a Post-It Note.” Great ideas are complex but seem simple. Bad ideas are often simple but seem complex. If it’s hard to explain now, it will be impossible to explain to someone else, so keep it simple. Write it short and make it sticky. (FREE human hair + jacket = affordable, sustainable warmth!)
Don’t force complexity into ideas or stories. Allow them to exist as simply as possible. By doing so, you not only make it easier to understand, you allow yourself to see it as achievable. Complex ideas are daunting. And, people get bored listening to them. Your fearful, anxious, practical human side will come out to whisper in your ear how little time you have to dedicate to ravelling and unravelling this beast of an idea. Shut that jerk down by tricking it into thinking your idea is so simple that it would be foolish not to see it through to the end!
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #12: Drink, don’t think.
A beer can help stimulate your creativity, and it helps you relax while you come up with bunches of ideas. And, a bourbon works harder than a beer. Trust me, it’s science! The more relaxed you are, the less self-conscious you are, and the fun will flow in the form of ideas worth writing. Whether you’re in a group or riding solo, fun, happy, relaxed brainstorming is good brainstorming. When you loosen up, ideas flow, and everything seems like a good idea. Good ideas inspire more good ideas, but remember that the time to edit comes later. Don’t kill an idea before it has a chance to live and grow. Later, when you’re done with your bourbon-fueled ideas, swap the booze for a coffee so you can focus and edit out things that were just too damn weird for the world, like putting human hair inside a Patagonia jacket. Christ, who came up with the dumb-dumb idea?
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #13: Pretend you’re high.
You could just get high, but here’s a low-cost shortcut: By pretending to be high, you abandon yourself and let your unrestrained self come through. Ask yourself, “How would this look & sound if I were hi
gh? Would it be funny? What colors would it sound like? How would my body respond? Is hair growing out of my face?!? Why am I walking weird? Wait, I’m not walking, I’m sitting and the room is walking!!!!” By pretending your brain is chemically altered, your brain is actually slightly, yet safely, altered and so will your way of thinking. At the very least, it will be fun, and the creative juices will take over.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #14: Be a kid.
Act like a curious child and view the world with wonder and amazement. Take a quick walk outside and look at the clouds like you did when you were little. Play with acorns. Talk in funny voices. Write with your opposite hand. Write a poem in crayon. Even a simple use of rhyming or alliteration that you otherwise would have never paid any attention to can be astonishing if viewed the right way, especially when written in crayon. Anything really can be seen as awesome and more memorable when viewed through the eyes of a child. Like, type some words real quick on your laptop. Watch the blinking line turn into letters, like really fast. It’s awesome, isn’t it? I just wrote that! And that, too! The world’s a wonderful place, if you let it be. And, this shift in perspective allows you to abandon your adult experiences in which you may have become cynical of work, and writing, and critics, and clients, and everything else.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #15: Take off your headphones.
Writers became stunted in the early 2000s. That’s because we were introduced to those little white earbuds in the iPod, and later the iPhone. They became so commonplace that walking out of your home without them felt uncomfortable. City sidewalks were covered with people subtlety blocking out the world with Apple earbuds, and the result is that we stopped listening to the world around us. We ended up becoming one dimensional in our writing, because we lost a valuable channel of content flowing into our ears throughout our daily lives. So, surround yourself with people and their noise, like at a bar or cafe, and listen to not just what they say, but how they say it. Listen for emotion, conflict, strife, slang, personality. Discover new ways of viewing the world. This will help your escape your point of view, and will diversify your way of thinking to match with people you passively encounter.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #16: Get moving.
It’s an absolute myth that writing happens in a stationary position. Writing requires energy and blood, so get your blood pumping. Your movement will break you out of a lull or routine, increasing your heart rate and releasing adrenaline, which fuel your thinking.
True story: Once while brainstorming ideas for the car maker Mini, we were absolutely stuck. A room full of creatives, no ideas, and a deadline coming fast. We’d been sitting there all day, and that was only making our ideas worse. Luckily, someone randomly tossed a football into the room — something you wouldn’t find odd in the creative department of an ad agency, I guess. As soon as the football hit a designer’s fingertips, he had an idea. He tossed it to the next person, and they built on the idea. Soon, the ball was flying around the room, and the ideas were back. We spent hours in the room, and the winning idea came in minutes, only after we started moving our bodies.
So, grab a football, or grab your extremely warm, low-cost, environmentally-friendly Patagonia Human Jacket, and get your butt moving. Escape the usual distractions in front of you, and ignite some blood and adrenaline in your body. Besides, if you’re at your desk, you’re probably going to screw around online. Trap yourself in your own mind by getting away from tech, but still feel free to explore the world around you. There, you’ll find new sounds, new places, new faces, and a bit of fresh air that will liven up your thinking. Just remember to record your ideas or they may get lost out there.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #17: Make mashups.
Find fresh ideas in old places by thinking like a DJ, but like...less lame. Take people, places, things, objects, and platforms, then remix them in new and novel ways. “It’s like UberEats…but for books and magazines!” “It’s a tattoo parlor….for kids!” “It’s an Amazon Echo….attached to a drone!” Do the same with stories. “It’s Terminator meets Mary Poppins!” By combining story elements and commonly known concepts, we instantly feel more connected to the idea, no matter how bad it is, and our mind explodes with more ideas as it fills in the blanks, like “Does it mean the nanny is a Terminator? Wasn’t that the premise for Terminator 2: Judgement Day?” Yes, yes it was.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #18: Act it out.
Put yourself in the shoes of your characters or readers by actually acting out a scene or a day in their life. Talk like them, move like them, think like them. You’ll loosen up, find some empathy and understanding, and maybe even discover something new about them and what you’re working on. Be the character, be the consumer. For example, brilliant, award-winning Writer of TV, film, and stage, Aaron Sorkin, is known for crafting dialogue and drama by doing this very thing. In fact, he once famously broke his own nose while acting out a scene in his bathroom. So, lock yourself in your bathroom, and talk to yourself in the mirror, but try not to break your own nose, or anything else. It’s not weird! Aaron Sorkin does it. You think you’re better than Aaron Sorkin?!?! That guy broke his own nose for your entertainment. How is that weird?
If acting as a character or consumer is outside your comfort zone, try just immersing yourself in their world in other ways, like reading their content, listening to their music, or even putting on something they would wear. It’s all about getting outside yourself to try to relate to them a little better. Consider the old adage of walking a mile in someone’s shoes, and actually walk a mile in their shoes. For example, while working at MTV, I was writing for a show targeted at teenage girls. The problem was...I am not, nor was I ever, a teenage girl. So, I had to work to understand them better. I had to find their perspective, use their language, and then write in a way that they could relate to. So, I consumed their content, and one day riding home on the subway, while reading the latest issue of Teen magazine, with its bright pink cover and the latest cute boy’s photo, I realized this is a very weird thing for me, a white guy in his late 20s, to be reading in public. Then, I remembered I was on the NYC subway and was therefore obviously the most normal person around.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #19: Sleep on it.
Do your research, do some b-storming, and then get away from the challenge for a full night. While you’re sleeping and are distracted, your subconscious mind will work to solve the problem for you. Let it do its work and let whatever dreams come your way inspire you, but keep a pen and paper nearby, or else you might lose what you thought of through the night.
Dumb Brainstorming Tip #20: Time yourself.
Without a deadline, you’re more likely to get distracted or attempt to craft the perfect idea in your head instead of actually putting many good ideas down on the page to develop. Don’t waste your time looking for more inspiration or trying to build on something when you should be coming up with more. Instead, work in short bursts of time where you aim to deliver a specific number of ideas. Change up your time periods and number of ideas. Aim small at first to get warmed up, and then amp up your target, like 100 ideas in a minute.
Is 20 enough? Sure, you got it. Let’s move on…
Writing With Heart
“I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads
‘Don’t think!’
You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel.
Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.
It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy.”
- Ray Bradbury
Many Writers suffer from, or complain about, writer’s block. It stops us from finishing big projects, and stifles the small ones, as well. But, big reveal here, there is no such thing as writer’s block. There’s only laziness, fear, and overthinking stuff. You’re just using the wrong part of your mind at that moment.
Writing with Heart is the simple solution.
As the wild, wondering, and wandering part of yourself, writing with the Heart is less about planning and outlining, and more about opening a fire hydrant of words and ideas, regardless if they’re useful or “correct.” A so-called “block” is a stoppage of words, so to overcome it, you must deliver words — it’s that simple. You have to deliver those words in whatever way you can, but the easiest is merely to stop thinking about them, and just feeling them, allowing your random feelings, ideas, and subconscious thought flow onto the page. You don’t have to use any of it, but at least the block is gone.
Your charge through this stage of writing is just to think less and feel more. Do not worry, do not edit, do not plan ahead. Never use writer’s block as an excuse. The only way to do it is to do it. When you’re stuck, the only way through it is through it. Just keep going. Put words on the page, worry about them later. Stop overthinking it and write. And, the following tips and techniques will help you do just that. They will help you escape your own mind, freeing yourself from methodical Head, and allowing you to bypass the block. You will learn to unleash ideas faster, without critique. Then, in later sections, you’ll learn how to consolidate those ideas, give them structure and form, and focus your thinking and energy to drive you toward a more complete piece of writing.