Story Sparks by Denise Jaden

Author:Denise Jaden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New World Library

Cut, Chop, and Combine

If you’ve ever seen the cooking show Chopped, you can probably guess why the show is so popular. Contestants are forced to take four odd, mismatched ingredients and make them work together in a delicious dish. Why not try this with your writing? The process of forcing ideas to work together automatically bolsters creativity.

Once you have a nice collection of ideas using some of the other games, pick two at random and write a story premise that includes both. Try it several times, and try combining three, four, or even five ideas at random. Force yourself to do it, even if what you come up with is ridiculous. If you find this difficult, imagine that the consequences are high. Imagine that you’d win a million dollars if you created the best story out of an odd, mismatched combination of ideas. Or, imagine you would lose your car or your house if you didn’t combine the ideas. I’ll bet you could do it, and I’ll bet you’ll find more creativity buried within you than you ever imagined.

Once you have several combined ideas, take the best one and expand on it. Add more details, and flesh out the characters and plot in a way that might really work. How would you organize the story?

This is a game you can play anytime. Whenever you have five spare minutes, flip through your pages of ideas, pick several at random, and see what connections arise between them. Often our aha moments arise not from getting one Great New Idea, but rather when we combine common ideas in new ways that work seamlessly together and provide a fresher take on the original. In our lives today, working long hours and living by our to-do lists, we often think very linearly and with a single-minded focus. This game breaks us free of our ruts.

Another way to create new ideas is to combine two or more existing stories, whether from books or movies. In her online course on coming up with high-concept story ideas, author Jessica Brody cites that Hollywood and the publishing industry love the idea of mishmashing two existing works, such as two current blockbuster movies, because they are instantly familiar. These professionals can easily envision how to pitch and sell the new story to the public.

Take two ideas and change the details as much as you like, or take one idea and twist it so it becomes fresh and new. Don’t plagiarize, of course, but use an already great idea for inspiration. Ask a lot of “what if” questions. What if the main character in Harry Potter was a girl? What if you mashed up Tombstone with Rambo? Or The Fast and the Furious with Grumpy Old Men? What if you reset When Harry Met Sally a hundred years in the past, when the theme of “Men and women can never be friends” would create a whole new set of obstacles? What if the lead character in Dirty Harry was a teenage girl? Bam! You have a fresh story that I promise will be nothing like the original.

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