“How am I supposed to come up with ideas that feel original?” -Everyone everywhere and me
Let me describe to you a thing. Let’s say you’ve been given some kind of prompt, or something to respond to creatively. You get pumped. You’re going to rock the shit out of this prompt. You finish what you’re doing, feeling great, feeling proud, feeling a little shaky because you had a little too much coffee to complete the project. Then- you and some peers share what you’ve done. You’re floored. You drew a faun looking left into a mountain range. Eight people drew a faun facing left framed by mountains. Somebody drew a deer looking right. One person drew a mountain shaped like a deer. What the fuck happened?
The first thing you think of is a cliche.
That’s not a bad thing! People are able to communicate with each other and make sense of things happening in groups because on some level we think in the same direction. Super-cliches are called symbols. Elements and conventions of storytelling are called tropes.
However, you’re getting paid to have ideas about things that other people don’t have. So what do you do?
A) Stop going with your first idea. Seriously.
Your first reaction is usually a trained or instinctual response. It is useful for surviving daily life with other humans in your culture, but you need second, third, or even fourth thoughts to do something out of the norm.
Unique ideas don’t just happen. You need to chase them and hunt them with sticks. Everyone works well with different methods, but here’s a framework that might help get you started:
1) Research your subject. Don’t even try to have ideas or opinions yet, just check it out and have fun.
2) Vomit up every idea you can think of. This is not the time for criticality- it doesn’t matter if your ideas are good or bad. But do write them down, or sketch them, or carve them into clay tablets- whatever gets it out of your head and saved.
3) More ideas.
4) No keep going. It will start to get hard to think of things- that’s good! That means that you’re using your brain machine.
5) Okay, NOW is the time to be critical. Sift through your ideas. X-out the boring ones and the obvious cliches. Keep zipping through til you’re down to about two or three that you like.
6) Pick the finest idea, and run with it.B) Think about your angle.
What do YOU think about your topics? What is YOUR opinion? You are a beautiful and unique individual and your ideas and opinions are different from other people’s. Use that! When you are coming up with ideas or reactions, ask yourself, ‘what do I think about this? what does this mean to me?‘
People want to know what you think. Finding your own voice will make your work stand out from other people’s, just because you are you and not anybody else. Trust yourself, and ask your own opinion.