Creative Thinking for Writers

Creativity Technique Tuesday

Creative Writing Technique – Sound Sensory Lists

Creative Writing Techniques

Sensory Lists – Part 2 — Sound

Sound also bombards us. We seldom experience a moment of absolute silence. There are always conversations, coughing, rustling, music, background noise going on all of the time. Again, our brain filters the excess noise out to keep us sane. But each environment has its own sound signature. Conversation has volume and intensity, and voices might have accents or unique verbal “tics.” We choose the music blasted into our ears through earbuds, or forced upon us via a TV soundtrack, or over the PA at a Target.

Creating sound sensory lists to enhance creative thinking and writing

Using Sound to Enhance Your Creativity

Background noise also helps define the soundscape: movement of people or vehicles within the room or far away; the sound of machinery or air being circulated via heat or air conditioning; doors opening and closing, computers beeping, mice clicking (or squeaking or skittering depending where you’re at), birds singing, wind blowing, rain falling.

Sound is ever-present and a key element of description that can change the tone and atmosphere in a scene. Have you ever seen a clip of a movie without background music? It is a very strange experience.

Here is a great example of how sound can change your entire perception of a situation. This is the intro to Full House, that campy 90’s sitcom, but with changes to the theme song from upbeat to dark and ominous. Add some clips of dialog without a laugh track, and the effect is disturbing.

https://youtu.be/gU0ktxPJ9a8

How Authors Use Sound

When writing fiction about a specific time in the past, it is sometimes helpful to listen to the music played during that era. Who doesn’t associate the swing music of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman with the early 1940’s and World War II? And what better represents the turmoil in the U.S. during the 1960s than the rock music popular at the time? Plugging into the music can help you plug into the past.

Many writers listen to music while writing. Some listen to movie scores to evoke certain feelings or types of scenes. The music helps the writer play out the scenes in their heads.

Sometimes the writing process is all about getting into the zone and Tucker Max has come up with 32 Best Music Playlists & Songs to Listen to While You Write.

Crazy band gif representing using songs and playlists to get into the zone during creative writing

Many authors have not only have favorite albums and artists, but construct entire playlists and publish them on Spotify and Amazon Music.

  • Sarah Maas author of numerous YA fantasy novels including the best-selling Throne of Glass and Court of Thorns and Roses series uses scores from famous movie soundtracks including Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Indiana Jones movies, and from Disney movies such as Moana and Tangled.
  • Jenny Han, the author of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, has her own Amazon playlist that inspired the book (scroll about halfway down the listing for it).
  • Marissa Mayer, the author of numerous books including Instant Karma, Renegades, and the Lunar Chronicles has a page on her website dedicated to playlists for her books.
  • Ernest Cline has a Spotify playlist for his mega-best-selling book Ready Player One.
  • Or another Spotify playlist inspired by John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down.
  • One author, Rainbow Rowell, takes creating dedicated playlists to the next level by creating “mix tapes” for each of the characters in her book Eleanor & Park.

You can find hundreds of other playlists with a simple Google Search inspired by authors during writing processes, that inspired the books that they wrote, or created by readers inspired by the books.

The Hulkster loves to hear about the advantages of creative thinking

Others find that playing a specific artist or album over and over again to be a soothing distraction during the writing process. For example, Douglas Adams wrote The Restaurant at the End of the Universe while listening to the 1980 Paul Simon soundtrack album, One-Trick Pony, incessantly while writing the book, according to the dedication.

Still others, such as Vladimir Nabokov, preferred absolute silence, as evidenced by his ideal writing environment as a soundproofed flat on the top floor of a New York building.

Creating Sound Lists

  • Most Memorable Sounds— Tap into your memory and explore what are the strongest and most memorable sounds from your childhood? Adult life? School days? As a parent? It is always best to capture these as they happen, but if they are memorable enough to remember, they are memorable enough to capture on paper.
  • Sounds That Please You — What are the sights that bring a smile to your face or just make you happy thinking about them?
  • Sounds That Disturb You — What are the sights that disturb you or make you afraid?
  • Sounds That Disgust You — What sights bring a sour expression to your face with little effort? What are the sights that make you dry heave just thinking about them? Or vomit outright?
  • Sounds That Make You Angry — What sights bring your inner rage bubbling to the surface of your psyche? What makes you see red and raises your blood pressure until you feel like your head might burst?
Sounds that make you angry

Do It! — Creative Writing Exercises

  • Write a sound profile of the current moment by listing everything you can hear, including background noise and distant background noise.
  • Go to a different location–the more unique, the better–such as a park, a busy coffee shop, restaurant, etc., and create another sound profile.
  • Generate several “sound” lists using the examples from the Creating Sound Lists section above.
  • Make a list of all the “accents” you can think of (French, Boston, Pirate, etc.)
  • Write about a song or album that is tightly linked to a meaningful memory.
  • Create a list of interesting words or phrases you hear during the day.
  • Generate a soundtrack for your current writing project. This can consist of vocal music, instrumental scores, ambient noise, or just everyday sound.
  • Movies in the ’80s were never complete unless they had an “original motion picture soundtrack.” What music is in your original biographical soundtrack?

Give these a try and share your lists in the comments below.

Creative Writing Technique – Part 1 -Sight Sensory Lists

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Sensory Lists – Part 1 — Sight

We are visual beings. We rely on, and are often fooled by, our eyes. We are also bombarded by visual input on an hourly basis. A writer must see what is there and seek out comparisons and show the reader what’s going on in a memorable way. To do this well, practice making lists of notable sights during the day and jotting them down.

Painted woman representing how to be more creative

Using Sight to Enhance Your Creativity

The most important part of using sight to enhance your creativity is to paying attention and being specific as mentioned in the introduction to this series.

Because of the tremendous amount of visual stimuli we encounter each day, try narrowing your focus by looking at a specific aspect or theme of objects. Here are a few ways you can break these down:

  • Color – Choose a color and make a list of all the objects you encounter that color.
  • Shape – Select a shape, maybe circles or triangles or cubes, and create a list of them.Shapes - Where good ideas come from
  • Elements of Nature – Generate a list of all of the objects you find in the natural world. List flowers, trees, grass, birds, insects, rocks, or whatever else you encounter. If you don’t know the name of a particular flower, tree or bird just describe it, or see if you can identify it using a resource such as a nature guide or a nature identification app. If this seems too big, you can narrow the focus to just one element of nature – trees, birds, mammals, etc.
  • Quality of Light – Pay attention to the light and shadow everywhere that you go. Note how bright or dim it seems. Focus on what you can see and can’t see and the contrast between them. For example, how the sky looks just before a bad storm starts. The sky takes on a green or sometimes yellowish cast. Include specific detail about your thought about light. How does the light make you feel? What does it remind you of?Quality of Light - Where good ideas come from
  • People – As you go through the day, take notes about every person you encounter, whether you know them or they’re strangers. This is good practice for character sketches if you are a fiction writer. Keep it short.
    • Name – If you know it, or make one up
    • Most Memorable Detail – Maybe it is a body part, unusual clothing, tattoo, or even a facial expression. Start with the most memorable and add a couple of additional details if you have time and room in your notebook.
    • Story – Guess where they are going or what problem they are currently struggling with.
  • Everyday Objects – There are items in our lives that have become so commonplace that we don’t even see them anymore. They are just background scenery in the movie of our lives. Select a common object or classification of objects and jot them down as you see them. Some examples include:
    • Openings – Doors, windows, boxes, jars, drawers (any of these examples could be a category of its own)
    • Paper – We are surrounded by it everywhere every single day.
    • Food – Do I really need to provide details here?
    • Chairs – Office chairs, dining room chairs, easy chairs
    • Flooring – Carpet, tile, lush lawn, dirt, laminate flooring, etc.
  • Words & Language – How many words do you encounter a day? Hundreds? Thousands? And they are everywhere on everything – packaging, billboards, labels, chyrons on TV, text messages, newspapers, books, etc.
  • Places – This is great for road trips or commutes. Select a type of place such as churches, homes for sale, schools, restaurants, graveyards, etc. And note some quick details about it to help make it memorable.

These are just a few examples of how you can use sight to generate lists to spark your creativity.

Creating Sight Lists

The best way to create them is to keep a notebook with you at all times and a fast writing pen so you can take quick notes. But this is not always practical. Most smartphones these days have voice-to-text capabilities so if you can’t take notes (or it isn’t safe to do so i.e. driving) you can still capture the randomness and spontaneity of your vision. Here are a couple of other guidelines to follow:

  1. Set a Time Limit – Don’t stop taking notes too early, but don’t make it last for a week. Depending on where you are, anywhere from 1 to 4 hours is a good amount of time. But you can set other kinds of limits such as – Completing your walk around the block, your commute to work, or while waiting for your flight in an airport.
  2. Don’t Pick and Choose – Note everything—even the boring stuff.
  3. Be Specific – I know this is getting repetitive, but it is important to use specific language in your description. It is easy to get lazy and write the first word that pops into your head when describing a sight in particular, but don’t use the word “red” when the girl’s coat was “maroon.” Don’t write the word “dog” when the dog is actually a “huge husky with different colored eyes.” If you get into trouble here, just write down the best word for now and revise it later.

Create Visual Representations of Abstract Concepts

Creating lists of objects are not the only way to use sight to improve your creative thinking and writing. There are also interpretations of the things you see and remember. Creating visual representations of specific feelings such as pleasure, confusion, fear, and rage can help you improve your description skills.

Here are a couple of other ways to use these lists:

  • Most Memorable Sights — Tap into your memory and explore what are the strongest and most memorable sights from your childhood? Adult life? School days? As a parent? It is always best to capture these as they happen, but if they are memorable enough to remember, they are memorable enough to capture on paper.
  • Sights That Please You — What are the sights that bring a smile to your face or just make you happy thinking about them?
  • Sights That Disturb You — What are the sights that disturb you or make you afraid?
  • Sights That Disgust You — What sights bring a sour expression to your face with little effort? What are the sights that make you dry heave just thinking about them? Or vomit outright?
  • Sights That Make You Angry — What sights bring your inner rage bubbling to the surface of your psyche? What makes you see red and raises your blood pressure until you feel like your head might burst?

Do It! — Creative Writing Exercises

This page is packed with possible writing exercises for you to try. Every bullet on this page is a writing exercise for you to try. Here are a few more “sight-related” exercises to explore.

  • Create a list of things you can see from where you are sitting right now.
  • Generate several of your own sight lists using objects, aspects of life, or preference lists based on the examples in the Using Sight to Enhance Creativity or Create Visual Representations of Abstract Concepts sections.
  • Write about love “at first sight.”
  • Write about a time when your sight tricked you.
  • Write about double vision.
  • If you lost your vision permanently tomorrow, what would you miss most?

Technique Tuesday – Random Lists

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Random Lists – Using Synchronicity as a Creative Thinking Tool

Random thoughts and stimuli can supercharge your creativity on a project or problem you are struggling with. This is common knowledge. There is a word for this:

syn·chro·nic·i·ty (noun) 1. The simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.

As well as the title of one of the greatest rock albums of all time:

Some of the biggest breakthroughs in science and engineering have occurred by the result of synchronicity that inspired a new way of thinking. 

  • The discovery of Penicillin by Alexander Fleming occurred while studying the bacteria that cause food poisoning. One of his cultures got contaminated by mold. He decided to study the contaminated petri dish anyway only to discover that the mold held the bacteria at bay.
  • Velcro was discovered by a Swiss inventor, George de Mestral, after he got curious about the cockle burrs that got attached to his pants and his dog’s fur. He studied them under a microscope and created Velcro based on the design.
  • Charles Goodyear struggled to find a way to make rubber useful. In its natural state, it rotted quickly, smelled bad, got sticky in the heat, got too hard in the cold. He boiled it with other chemicals in order to find a combination that made rubber more useful. One day he accidentally dropped the mixture of rubber and sulfur on a hot stove, the result: vulcanized rubber, one of the most widely used substances on the planet.

These are just a few of the more famous instances where random events resulted in brilliant breakthroughs. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of instances of creative insights sparked by a random event, item, or process.

Random Input Technique

Edward de Bono, developed a creative thinking process–the Random Input Technique–that involves taking a random word or image, and using it to free associate with whatever challenge or problem you are struggling to overcome. This technique works best if the problem is well-defined in the first place, but how do you come up with random words and phrases to use as input?

Use one of the other very powerful tools for supercharging your creativity–the List–to curate random words to use in your projects. Creating random lists is a good way to generate creative stimuli for when you are challenged by a difficult writing or creative thinking problem. 

When you combine the power of lists with random elements, you can generate numerous writing topics, random words, and thoughts to bounce other ideas off of.

Items Around You Lists

One place to start when creating random lists is with the area around you. Make a list of items around you right where you are now. Here is my list of items near my standing desk:

  • Smooth rock from Maine, used as the occasional paperweight
  • Pads of yellow, pink, purple, blue and orange Post-It notes
  • 25-year-old Lucent PC microphone (I still use it for Skype and Zoom sessions)
  • An extremely worn plastic cup purchased at Gatorland, during a family vacation in Florida several years ago
  • Gold, metallic pencil cup, filled with Staedler triplus flatliner pens, Paper Mate Inkjoy, and Bic Gelocity rollerball pens.
  • Several Flash Writing Freelance Solutions business cards in a protective plastic sheath
  • An Amazon Echo Show (a new Christmas present—not sure how I feel about it yet…)
  • My “Death Star Space Station” writing supply caddie jammed full of pens of various brands and other office supplies such as staples, paperclips, binder clips, rubber bands, and more.
  • Twinkie, the stay cat we discovered walking along a bike path near our home who followed us back to our car
  • Small, orange, aluminum LED flashlight
  • An index card covered with random numbers (word count totals for recent projects) and doodles

You don’t have to get as detailed in the description as I do of the objects above, but specificity is the key here. Be very specific when adding an item to any of your random element lists. See how instead of writing “Post-It note” that I mentioned that they were “Pads of yellow, pink, purple, blue and orange Post-It Notes.”

Other Locations for Items Around You Lists

You’ll get even more interesting results if you do this in different rooms or locations. Consider some of these locations for Items Around You Lists:

  • Utility or Mud Room
  • Attic
  • Hall Closet
  • Local Diner
  • Employee Break Room
  • Shopping Mall
  • Library
  • Park or Playground
  • Waiting Room in a Doctor’s Office
  • Grocery Store

Other Sources of Random Item Lists

Here are a few other sources for random item list inspiration:

  • Items in Your Wallet/Pockets or Purse
  • Pick-Up Lines I’ve Used (or Have Been Used on Me)
  • Items I’ve spent money on in the last month
  • Channel Surfing List – Rapidly change channels on your television noting the first object or action you see or sound you hear as you surf by.
  • Newspaper/Magazine List – Write down interesting words, subjects, or impressions you get as you flip through the pages. (Be sure to use all of the publication including the advertisements, classifieds, comics, and editorial pages)
  • Songs on your iPod/Phone or Spotify list right now
  • Programs stored on your DVR
  • The last several books that you’ve read
  • Items you have found
  • Items you have lost
  • Items that are missing right now
  • Objects you see on the way to work
  • Thoughts that pop into your head
  • Ads you’ve been exposed to (on radio, TV or in print)

Do It! — Creative Thinking Exercises

Here are a few creative writing exercises to try out based on the content in this post:

  • Generate an “items around me” list for where you are right now.
  • Go to a different room or location and generate an “items around me” list.
  • Generate a random item list based on one of the ideas listed in the Other Sources of Random Item Lists section.
  • Select an intriguing entry in one of the random item lists you generated and write about it for 15 minutes.
  • Create a list of other sources for random item lists and add them in the comments below.
  • List other ways you might generate random ideas, images, or topics.

Give them a try and let me know what you come up with in the comments.

Technique Tuesday: The List

Creative Thinking Resources, Creative Writing Resources, Story Idea Generator, Where Good Ideas Come From

The Greatest Creative Thinking & Writing Tool Ever: The List

I’d like to go out on a limb here and declare the List to be the greatest creative thinking tool at any writers’ command.

It is simple, elegant and efficient. All you need is a few minutes and a blank sheet of paper and you are good to go. But the biggest reason why the List is great for creativity is that we seem to be hard-wired to create and read them. Which explains their popularity in both the print and online mediums.

Why Lists Are Great for Thinking Creatively

I love lists and so does most of the rest of the world. We are obsessed with them. We want to know where things rank in the overall scheme of things. What book is number one on the New York Times Bestseller List? What songs are up and coming in America’s Top 40? Where does your favorite NFL team place in the weekly Power Ranking on ESPN? Which TV show is at the top of this week’s Nielsen ratings?

The List: The Greatest Creative Writing Tool

Even when we aren’t using lists to rank things, we use them to organize information:

  • Grocery list
  • To-Do list
  • Bucket list
  • Books You’ve Read/Want to Read list
  • Food log

The list is a popular format for not only blogs and online publications but for most print publications as well. Here is a list of articles appearing in mainstream magazines:

So generating lists is a great skill that all writers must take advantage of to enhance creativity.

Using Lists as Story Idea Generators

Lists are natural story idea generators. They can be used for brainstorming new ideas for stories or articles, just thinking and organizing info on the page, or mapping out specific details for a project. 

These are a few of my go-to-never-fail idea lists that you can generate anywhere at any time. Each of the items you generate on these lists can be a story or article unto itself or be used as inspiration for another creative project:

  • Things that you are afraid of — Fear is a powerful influence on our thoughts and actions and is a great way to dig down into things that you might not otherwise want to admit to. Fears also can be used as a motivation or obstacle for a character in fiction. Be sure to include irrational fears on your list. The more irrational the fear, the more interesting the story might be.
  • Things that make you angry — Anger inspires passion and passion can serve as an anchor point for non-fiction and fiction alike. Anger is a natural reaction to being treated poorly or unfairly and makes you seek resolution (or revenge).
  • Things that irritate you — These are often the genesis of the helpful hint or how-to article or perhaps a savagely witty essay about something that just annoys you to no end. 
  • Chapters of your life — If you were to write an autobiography of your life right now, what would be the major events within your life that could serve as a title of a chapter for the book? This is especially helpful for anyone writing a memoir, but an interesting exercise in self-discovery as well.
  • Jeopardy Dream Categories – Inspired by Douglas Coupland’s book Microserfs, what are the Jeopardy categories that if they appeared on the board when you are on the show as a contestant would guarantee a victory?

Here are a few other lists you can pull from your memory alone:

  • Things that embarrass me
  • Memorable people in your life
  • Joyous moments
  • Lies that I’ve told
  • Places I’ve lived
  • Lovers or roommates I’ve had
  • Dumb things I’ve done
  • Important lessons I’ve learned
  • People who guided or mentored me (Family members, teachers, bosses, etc.)
  • Things I believe (What I believe:)
  • Proudest moments
  • Places I have visited
  • Most memorable news events of my lifetime
  • Songs that get stuck in your head
  • Names and nicknames that I’ve had
  • Roles that I play
  • Appointments on my calendar

Preference Lists

Sometimes you simply need to take time to think about the things in your life that make you unique. Any of the details from any of these lists can potentially be part of a story, article, or project idea:  

  • Favorite books
  • Favorite films
  • Favorite foods
  • Famous people (Living or Dead) who you’d like to have dinner with
  • Favorite people
  • People I hate
  • Things I cannot live without
  • Favorite words
  • Words that are fun to say
  • Words I hate
  • Favorite quotes
  • What I love to do
  • Things that disgust me

Want Lists

Want lists are especially good for project ideas, as well as personal growth so here are a few more lists along with the types of writing projects they might be useful for:

  • Things you want to do before you die (Bucket List) – How-to articles, personal experience essays, travel articles, specific details to include in fiction
  • Places you want to visit – Travel articles, personal experience essays, details for settings in fiction
  • Questions I want to know the answers to – General articles, how-to articles, personal experience essays, specific details to include in fiction
  • Subjects I want to know more about – General articles, how-to articles, personal experience essays, specific details to include in fiction
  • What I want (to own) – Personal experience essays, self-help articles, gift guides, specific details to include in fiction
Bucket List - The Greatest Creative Writing Tool

These are just a few examples of my secret superweapon for coming up with great creative content in a hurry for either fiction or non-fiction. This isn’t all I have to say about the subject. There are many other types of lists to explore–which we will do in upcoming blog posts…

DO IT! – Creative Thinking Exercises

Do you really need some additional creative thinking exercises? I mean I just gave you over 40 in the article body alone. So, select a couple of the list ideas about and create content… or try one of these:

  • Create your own list of lists. What are some of your list ideas that you can share with us?
  • What are some of the lists you use regularly in your life?
  • Next time you are in a store’s magazine section, at the library or just browsing online, jot down examples of the list articles you see on the magazine covers or front pages of the web site.
  • Generate a list of your Jeopardy dream categories (6 Jeopardy; 6 Double Jeopardy categories and 1 Final Jeopardy category).