Creativity
How To Generate Ideas
Strategies for kick-starting your own creativity.
In any creative project, from writing a novel to planning your next world tour, there is always some kind of starting point. You have an idea, or perhaps a set of several ideas from which you need to select the best ones.
So, where do these ideas come from, and what can you do in order to have more of the high quality ideas you need?
Making new connections
The first thing to note is that ideas don’t come from nowhere. And contrary to the beliefs of the Ancient Greeks — who thought that creative inspiration came from demi-gods known as Muses — we now know that ideas come from the brain, and in particular from your memory (although interestingly, Greek creation myths also state that the Muses were the children of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory).
Using your memory doesn’t mean that you are simply recalling old ideas. Instead, it is a recognition that ideas often involve making new connections among things you already know. In order to do this, you need to develop effective thinking strategies for recalling and recombining the material which you have stored in your long-term memory throughout your life so far.
There are a number of techniques which can help with making these new connections, but one of the oldest and most successful is brainstorming. This means coming up with a list of as many thoughts as possible in a non-critical context, not judging or rejecting but purely adding whatever comes to mind. Most of these will not be useful ideas in themselves, but will provide the raw material that can then be analysed and combined, changed, used, or simply rejected.
Scientific links
Although the concept of brainstorming is sometimes criticised as management speak, it actually fits well with what psychologists know about how the mind works. It links to one of the most-used psychometric tests of creativity, devised in the mid-20th Century by psychologist Joy Paul Guilford — the task where a person is asked to think of as many uses as possible for a simple object such as a paperclip or a brick.
Guilford was dissatisfied by attempts to characterise human thinking in terms of a single number — the IQ score. He felt that human mental abilities were more complex, composed of several processes. Divergent thinking, the ability to come up with multiple solutions, was one such ability. Guilford’s model of intelligence is largely forgotten today, but the creativity test is still used in many research studies as part of what is known as the alternative uses test, which can be used either to test how many ideas someone has (how many uses for each item) or how original they are (by comparing them to a bank of previous answers).
An interesting finding among such studies is that although measured intelligence levels have gradually risen among the school population, scores on creativity have been falling.
While it’s not entirely clear why that’s the case, it’s possible that standardised tests with their emphasis on intensive practice to get the ‘right answer’ fail to develop the skills involved in thinking broadly and coming up with new and unexpected ideas.
Set up a system where you file your brainstormed ideas. Return to these periodically, and use the best ones as stimuli for further brainstorming.
How to structure a brainstorming session
So what, according to science, is the best way to brainstorm? A key element of brainstorming is to focus on quantity over quality, keeping all ideas in play at first, however stupid or irrelevant they might seem. A later review stage is then used to discard the less promising ones, but — hopefully — find one or two rough diamonds that can then be worked upon.
This can mean keeping all notes, and reviewing them at a later point. Despite the difficulty of researching this technique, it has been shown to be an effective way of generating ideas, especially if people have been trained in how to use it. Research by Paul Paulus and colleagues at the University of Texas has found that it helps to initially generate categories (“what types of thing am I going to think of?”) and then use these categories one at a time as prompts for several follow-up brainstorming sessions.
For example, a novelist could begin by thinking about the kinds of things they want to know about a new character (for example, things that they own, their appearance, their habits…) and then work through these one at a time as brainstorm prompts, spending a few minutes on each one.
The key to successful brainstorming is to be non-critical, throwing many ideas into the mix and letting one thought lead to the next, as well as getting into a relaxed but focused frame of mind. In this sense, it is rather similar to the technique Sigmund Freud developed for therapy in the early 20th Century. During his sessions, patients would let one idea lead to the next in a process of ‘free association’. Freud believed that this allowed subconscious thoughts and desires to be revealed; creativity, too, is often associated with the subconscious.
It is important not to get distracted from the process (or stop altogether) after generating one or two exciting ideas, but instead to note each one down, and continue trying to think of more.
First think of a list of categories, then brainstorm on these one by one. Try to come up uncritically with ideas, that is, write down anything at all, no matter how stupid or useless it seems at first.
How long should we brainstorm for?
The type of memory involved in forming associations can be slow; it can therefore take a while for things to be remembered or for useful links to be made. From this point of view, it would be well worth taking at least 20 minutes on a single brainstorming session. Interestingly, this is also around about the daily length of time which some writers say we should spend on free-writing.
More importantly, don’t stop or move on immediately, even if you feel that you are running out of good ideas. This is important, because the research of Paul Paulus’s team has shown that the best ideas tend to be produced later in the session. It isn’t inherently a bad thing if you feel stuck, or that many your ideas are poor and will be discarded. Additionally, taking breaks needn’t always be a problem — forming mental associations can depend on input from the outside world, so it may be more productive to do several short sessions rather than one long one. The later sessions will need to be reasonably long, too.
Although brainstorming tends to be viewed as the starting point of a project, a similar principle can be applied throughout the creative process — new ideas are first generated, and then later evaluated and (where appropriate) integrated into the creative work. Author Fay Weldon says that a writer needs two personalities: the creator of first drafts who is sloppy, emotional and impetuous, and the later editor who is argumentative, cautious and rational.
Connecting the previous points a series of 20-minute brainstorming sessions could be worked in at several stages throughout a project, allowing previous thoughts and newly learned information or feedback to be productively synthesised.
Set aside 15–20 minute blocks of time at the start of a creative process, and again periodically during each project.
Working with others
Brainstorming in groups can sometimes help, and may be highly appropriate for some contexts such as a shared research project, product launch, or working on an album as part of a band. In some cases, though — and for some personalities — it can harm performance and decrease the quality of ideas due to the pressures and anxiety linked with a group setting. In short, the feeling of being judged is not conducive to the flow of ideas!
One way around this could be to brainstorm individually first, then discuss the better ideas with one or more trusted individuals, followed by further individual brainstorming. Many creative artists have a small group of friends or colleagues who look over early versions of their work before these are ready to be shared more publicly, and this can be a reciprocal arrangement.
If you find writing the ideas down distracting, try typing or voice recording yourself — voice recorder apps can automatically transcribe what you say.
Found this useful? Please 👏 this article to support it! You can read more on the same topic in my 2019 book, Creative Thinking. Also, why not sign up to get an email every time I publish a new article? Do that here! And check out more of my writing below…
