How To Be Creative

Being creative doesn’t just mean sitting around waiting for inspiration. There are methods one can use to shorten the leap from what is to what could be.

Map The Possibility-Space:

Plants are generally immobile and fixed to the substrate, while animals are generally mobile and free. What about organisms immobile and free (like tumbleweeds)? What about organisms mobile and fixed (like barnacles and flytraps)? Use your imagination to make new combinations.

Solids hold their shape and their internal parts do not flow. Liquids have no regular, repeating patterns. What about materials that move in some dimensions but not others (like liquid crystals)? What else can you come up with?

Use Constraints:

Constraints of Classification: If you have already decided your world has mammals but no insects, and you want to add an animal with horizontal jaws, think of all the ways those jaws could be homologous to mammalian structures. Could they be modified forelimbs? What other, similar animals could fill that clade?

Constraints of Evolution: If you have already decided that all life on your world evolved from bony fish, what structures or behaviors might your spider-analogues retain to make them less like Earth spiders?

Constraints of Environment: If the seas of your world are highly acidic, what adaptations will your animals and plants need to survive? What if there is no water? What if it is very cold?

Consider Your Starting Point:

Life on Earth is assumed to have begun as aquatic and microscopic. What if it didn’t? How would it have to be different? What new possibilities does that raise?

Have you been assigned to improve on another’s advertisement ideas but don’t know where to begin? Maybe you can easier create your own ideas from scratch and then modify them until they fit the parameters given.

Doodle:

Just make up your drawings as you go. I like to start with a random line, ask myself what it kind of looks like, and make another line to fit that idea. Sometimes I find it starts to look like something else and I pivot. Sometimes I challenge myself by skipping the obvious answer that comes to me first and looking for another. Sure, it looks like a set of jaws, but what if they were limbs or ears? Maybe it’s not an animal, but actually a spaceship. Maybe it’s both. Doodling can also mean playing with clay or Tinkertoys.

Change The Context:

One thing that helps me think of interesting biological systems is to read about interesting physics or technology and then ask how life could use the same process. For example, could a brain store its memory on a spinning disk covered with tiny magnets? Could a cell store its genetic information in a sequence of pits and bumps? Scientific American Magazine is a great source of inspiration.

You Are What You Consume:

Want to be a great artist? Look at other art. Want to be a great writer? Read. Let others inspire you. Take the best parts and drop the parts you don’t like, creating a new synthesis. Over time, you will find your own unique style.

Keep Records:

Most importantly, when you do get an idea, write it down. Keep a notebook everywhere you go. Writers don’t necessarily have more ideas than everyone else; they just remember them so they can be recombined and used later. The longer one does this, the better they get at recognizing a good idea when it comes along.

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