I sometimes feel like I don’t know how to deliberately come up with ideas at all, but I’m not sure if I’m actually like that (it’s probably just insecurity or something, lol).
Do people like that actually exist, though? If so, why are they like that? And how do they learn to deliberately think of ideas?
Not sure if that is a thing. From what I’ve been taught:
When you concentrate on something your brain will tend to use familiar thought patterns and not be creative.
When you relax and un-focus you get more creative.
So in a way you can’t try to deliberately come up with ideas. The way around it is to focus on something you want ideas about for a few hours, then get up and do something mindless, have a walk or a bath or something.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’ve been trying to learn to write lyrics for the last year or so, and the one thing I know for sure about creativity is that it’s not a switch.
Ideas come to me walking down the street and I have to jot them down for later. If I want to come up with something new on the spot, I just start singing without thinking about it and usually something good eventually falls out of my mouth.
Zack Freedman has a great video on training yourself to be creative: https://youtu.be/6r8-o2WpoCA
Yes. They’re called politicians.
I’m not sure I’m understanding what you’re communicating.
If you can’t deliberately come up with ideas, how do decide what to eat? Have you never had the idea of something specific you’d like to eat? Does someone else select all of your meals and put it in front of you?
What am I not understanding about your question?
Hmm… I guess I mean more like deliberately coming up with ideas for more opened ended/creative stuff? Like coming up with an idea for how the main character of a story survives against the main villain’s super nuke attack. Or coming up with ideas for what a certain painting represents.
This sounds a little like “decision paralysis” apparently also known as “analysis paralysis”. Basically, if you have an open ended situation where a variety of ideas would work, it can be hard to settle on a single option.
There is a process called “learning how to learn.”
Essentially its a series of questions or question-templates you ask to gain deeper understanding of something beyond what the source material you are learning from provides.
The basic versions of them include “how” and “why”, where the “who”, “what”, and “when” matter less in most cases (and if they matter more, it will be extremely apparent).
Then, listing out every answer to each of those questions you can possibly think of and testing them against logic and evidence.
“How do apples fall to the ground?”
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Warping of spacetime?
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flat disc that we stand on accelerating through space?
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The pull of the aether?
You would then test each of these ideas by gathering evidence and eliminating others. Eventually in the example through rigorous testing, logic (including mathematics), you’d come to the correct conclusion of the warping of spacetime.
Then, if you are trying to come up with new ideas, you apply this method of thinking to the unknown and reverse it a little. Take facts and evidence that exist, and ask the same questions against the unknown. For example, if you’re writing a story, the who and the what become important in the reversal, but the how and the why stay relevant.
“What would the main character do after they realize they were betrayed by the grand duke of blahshire?”
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Who+Why: what are the main characters beliefs and convictions? What drives them?
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How: What kinds of actions has the main character taken in the past? Have they grown since then?
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What is the current sociopolitical climate that the story is taking place in? What kinds of behavior is expected of the main character and those around them? Are things like revenge frowned upon, or is not exacting revenge considered weakness? Maybe both depending on who you ask?
You can also apply this to general ideas, making yourself or a project/concept/etc. the main subject.
This kind of thinking is a muscle you have to exercise until it becomes natural. Eventually you start doing it without realizing.
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Look at the world as it is today. Imagine what it would be like if it were better. Imagine what that world would look like. What would different about it than it is today? Would things cost the same? Would there even be money? How would your life be different in that better world?
Now, I used the word “better”, but you filled in all the gaps about what “better” means. That definition of “better” is entirely your own. That same set of questions asked of 10 different people would result in 10 completely different answers. Congratulations! You’ve just come up with creative ideas!
Now imagine if the world were worse. And now worse yet. And now worse than that. These are now 3 completely different sets of creative ideas that are completely unique to you.
That, like most aspect of art and creativity, is a skill that takes practice. For writing specifically, you’d have to read more books, watch more films, and generally study how others do it. Eventually you’d be able remix all your previous experiences and other people’s work into something new and your own. It may come easier to some compared to others, but with practice everyone can come up with great ideas.
For paintings, at least for me, it’s less of deciding what the art to represent and more like I have something in my mind that I need to get out into the world, and painting is just one way of doing it. It’s less “I want to put something in the oven, but what?” and more like “I want chicken. Should I roast it in the oven or deep fry it?” if that makes sense lol
Thank you for your response!
Hmm… I would like to see “how others do/did it” sort of content, can you give me any suggestions for those?
Hello Future Me on yt does analysis of stories with a bit focus on the Avatar The Last Airbander.
Bob World Builder and Ginny Di are tabletop role playing game (D&D) focused channels but they have some videos on world building and such that I think can apply to developing stories in general.
Accented Cinema and Every Frame a Painting are two channels that focuses on film making, but they break down on what makes stories work as well.
Riloe is a channel I came across recently that has a lot of videos about what makes fps games works. I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for but it’s a great channel nonetheless lol
But generally more exposure to different works of art cannot be substituted. Watching other’s analysis can get you started on what to look for in other’s works but in the end you have to put the practice in yourself too.
Thanks!
Try doing "what if"s. Meaning just come up with a question about a scenario, like “what if the sun suddenly disappeared?” The scenario doesn’t have to be good or make any sense, it’s just a question - “What if?”
You combine real With what ifs, and no restrictions
I knew a guy who had absolutely no creative ideas at all and couldn’t come up with any to save his life. He went into a career for making film and TV.
Given the current state of sequels, prequels and reboots, this makes sense.
Here’s one technique that helps me - internal brainstorming. Don’t try to be serious about coming up with an idea - think about many random vaguely related possibilities, combine them, reevaluate, etc.
Have your mind be in a state of flux jumping from one thought to another but not succumb to the pressure of having the final solution as quickly as possible.After a while several coherent options will crystallize. Then comes the decision paralysis - unfortunately I have no cure for that.
I wasn’t asking for advice, but that’s still good advice! Thanks.
if i could control what thoughts appeared in my mind then i would only think the most optimal thoughts always.
non-dualism is the practice of viewing through this barrier.
The only people I know who can’t do that are robots. Makes me think of that one scene from I Robot with Sonny saying “I can’t make masterpieces like humans” while instantly scribbling a picture of a riot into existence.
I exist. I think. But that’s putting Descartes before the horse. 😊
I am excellent at following directions (be it by command, or through a guide of some kind). If I know the goal, I can usually fill in the blanks with minimal interaction needed. But, to come up with my own ideas is rather difficult for me. I believe it’s tied to the way my brain works — I cannot clearly visualize pictures in my head. It’s blurry and fuzzy, and I easily confuse myself when trying to g to convey my thoughts.
But that’s putting Descartes before the horse.
Well played.
I’m not sure, I can’t really think of anyone like that.
Not sure to understand your point.
Ideas don’t come out of emptiness. They never. There is no such thing as some genius that get a brand new idea all by themselves out of their unique genius mind. Ideas are always the consequence of some kind of interaction with other pre-existing ideas and/or with other persons and situations. Direclty or indirectly (say, by reading a book). Genius may help, but it still requires something for the idea to grow out/on.
Talking about books, someone rightfully mentioned Descartes. Even him, who doubted absolutely everything, the whole universe around him and even he himself existed as an a person, in order to reach what he would consider a trustworthy certainty (cogito, ergo sum, I think therefore I am). Even that dude still needed the existence of a God to be certain that the fact that he was thinking (aka, that his idea of what he was doing) could be considered true or, at least, reliable enough to build upon. Ideas don’t come out of nowhere and never grow out of nothing.
Dislaimer: no René Descartes was harmed during the caricaturing his thoughts ;)
Do you mean you have no memory of a tune, scent, a former home? No techniques to accomplish a goal or solve a problem, no idea how to win a game? You never have a fantasy or a plan? All these are ideas. So are equations, opinions, beliefs , mental pictures and those conversations you create when you are thinking about what you should have said to the boss when she humiliated you in front of the client. So are the shared concepts behind the words beauty, honesty, freedom, calm, ego, self, even, yes, idea. In fact, it would have been impossible to ask this question if you really lacked the ability to deliberately think of an idea, because the question is an idea, made by applying grammar, also an idea, to at least four ideas I can count.
People unable to create an idea may exist – but we can’t communicate with them to know what, if anything, is going on in their heads. If they do, they could only survive in a society that had the resources to keep their bodies alive. They might be among those considered in a vegetative state, but then advances in science have found that many thought vegetative were, in fact, conscious, but unable to respond to their environment.
Gwan wit’ee. Everyone has their own abilities. Stop worrying about what you are not so good at and work on developing your talents.
Huh, I never thought about it, that way! Thanks for giving a new perspective on that.
What do you mean? Of COURSE we do!
It’s scientifically impossible to prove free will exists, so it’s difficult to accurately interpret what it means to “deliberately think of ideas.”
Sometimes I’ll make a joke or have a thought and I can’t tell if I’ve heard it somewhere else before, or if it was an original idea. I used to stress out about not knowing things like that, but I’ve learned that as long as I’m honest with myself I don’t really have to worry.
In a certain sense nothing “new” exists. Everything you think of is already in the past because it has been observed. You don’t know what thought is going to jump into your head next, but I think that with practice you can sort of “train” yourself to be more receptive of different ideas/thoughts.
Stay curious, honest, and believe in yourself. Consciousness is weird, but it allows you to do cool things like make pizza and play games with friends.
I mean a liberal arts education is sometimes said to teach how to think. There are many types of thinking and strategies for them. inductive reasoning, deductiver reasoning, and throwing stuff at the wall which is basically guessing. Really guessing has to sorta be proven out by something like inductive reasoning (testings like the scientific method) whereas deductive tries to take whats already known and come up with a better guess which you may feel is strong enough to go with or you can treat like a guess and test it out. I mean at some point if you utilize the idea it will get tested out based on working or not.
