Lateral Thinking for Writers

This article was originally published in the SFWA Bulletin

Edward de Bono coined the term lateral thinking and proposed a set of methods for generating ideas. Lateral thinking is based on the principle that critical thinking is not always the best way to create new ideas and instead it can be more productive to introduce random elements, forcing you to look at the problem in new ways. De Bono said that “lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces. It is concerned with the perception part of thinking. This is where we organize the external world into the pieces we can then process.”

Douglas Adams is an example of a writer using a technique similar to those described by de Bono. Jem Roberts’ biography of Douglas Adams, The Frood, mentions that Adams couldn’t think of a way to ensure his characters in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy survived after they were thrown in space. “‘There’s no point making a big song and dance about what a terrible predicament your characters are in if you just cheat your way out of it. I began to think that maybe we should just finish the series there and perhaps play light music for the remaining four and a half episodes which would save a lot of time and headaches all round, but not – and here was the crunch – pay my rent. They had to be rescued. The problem was the sheer improbability of every solution I came up with.’ Defeated, he gave up for the day and turned on the TV to find a judo demonstration in full swing: ‘If you have a problem,’ said the instructor on the program, ‘the trick is to use this problem to solve itself…’ Using an opponent’s weight against them is a well-known martial arts technique, but in Douglas’ Case, ‘I thought – if my problem is one of improbability, let’s use improbability to solve the problem, so just for the heck of it I invented the Infinite Improbability Drive, and gave myself a new thing to write about.'”

Michael Michalko’s book Thinkertoys provides a set of practical tools for using de Bono’s ideas. Although most of the examples in the book are based around business scenarios (How can I sell more widgets? / How can I come up with an idea for a new kind of restaurant?), they can be adapted to generate story ideas or ways to deal with plot problems. De Bono originally used the terms Alternatives, Focus, Challenge, Random Entry, Provocation and Movement and Harvesting to describe his methods. Thinkertoys instead uses a mnemonic to group the most common set of lateral thinking tools – SCAMPER: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify / Magnify, Put, Eliminate, Reverse / Rearrange. There are overlaps between the categories (if you are combining something, you are also modifying it), but SCAMPER serves as a reminder of the different methods you can try.

Substitute

This involves substituting “things, places, procedures, people, ideas, and even emotions. Substitution is a trial-and-error method of replacing one thing with another until you find the right idea.” Maybe you’re working on a vampire story and want to make your vampires different. Given the amount of vampire stories out there, this might be difficult. You could start by identifying elements (characters, setting, tropes, etc.) in your story that could be replaced.  Vampires drink blood, don’t like sunlight and are immortal. What do vampires drink instead of blood? Maybe you want an environmental theme and they drink oil. Maybe they stay alive by drinking blood, but only become immortal by feeding on another vampire. What if they don’t like fluorescent lighting? None of these ideas are startlingly original, but they show how you can start the process of  substituting tropes with your own ideas. Browsing through TVTropes.org might convince you that every variation of every trope has already been done, but you can make things original by your specific execution.

Combine
Combine ideas, purposes, materials and story elements. “Much creative thinking involves synthesis, the process of combining previously unrelated ideas, goods, or services to create something new. The printing press was created when Gutenberg combined the coin punch with the wine press. Gregor Mendel combined mathematics and biology to create the new science of genetics.” Try combining genres or ideas. What if we combined vampires with werewolves to give us a love story? No? What if we combined them with a first contact story. Blindsight. This method is a favorite of movie producers – It’s Die Hard in space! Harry Potter meets Citizen Kane! The Lord of the Rings in a 60s advertising office!

Adapt
Thinkertoys quotes Thomas Edison, “Make it a habit to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on.” Thinkertoys suggests asking: What else is like this? What other idea does this suggest? Does the past offer a parallel? What different contexts can I put my concept in? What ideas outside my field can I incorporate?

Adapting stories to fit another genre or setting can often work well. A haunted house in space. Alien. Vampire stories are often associated with horror, romance or comedies. What about vampires in a prison break thriller? Vampires in a witness protection story?

Magnify

Magnifying an element draws attention to it. What can you exaggerate in your story? What can be made larger or extended? If you’ve found a theme for your story, which scenes should you include to highlight it? Repetition can be a useful tool to create a mood or increase tension, especially in horror. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Modify
Thinkertoys lists examples of products being modified to serve different purposes. This also fits with the revision process: how can you change your story for the better? Taking Shakespeare’s plays and modifying them to give them a contemporary or futuristic setting is a common process (this could also fit under the adapt category). Dracula is told through a series of letters and journals. What if it was updated for emails and blog posts?

Put to Other Uses
“History is full of inventions, innovations, and products that developed from something else.” What else can story ideas be used for? If you have an idea you like but haven’t been able to make work you could try using it as part of another story.

Eliminate
Eliminating is obviously relevant to the revision process, but can also be used to create new stories. “Ideas sometimes come from minifying a subject. Through repeated trimming of ideas, objects, and processes, you can gradually narrow your challenge down to that part of function that is really necessary – or perhaps, is appropriate for another use. For instance, if you omit the war-making functions from a tank and keep only the weight and caterpillar track, you create a tractor.”

What if your vampires have eliminated their need to feed on blood? What are their new goals?

Rearrange
Changing the order or presentation of things can help you look at them in a new way. What happens if you told your story in a non-chronological order? Will changing viewpoint help? What if you change the order of the events in the hero’s journey? What if your vampires are time travelers?

Reverse
This is the tool I’ve found most useful. What if the opposite thing happened? What if a negative became a positive? What happens when you reverse roles? What if the dragon needs rescuing? What if werewolves only assume human form on the full moon? What if vampires have to donate their blood to others? If your hero is trapped in a locked room, and you’re trying to think of ways to get him out, you could reverse it by thinking about how someone else could get into the room.

Thinkertoys has more examples and details, but those are the SCAMPER basics. The rest of the book features exercises designed to get you generating ideas, many of them involving introducing a random element. Most writers would be familiar with the idea of taking a random dictionary word and trying to relate it to your story. There are plenty of online tools that serve a similar function, such as The Random Noun Generator

Why did my hero’s brother decide to betray him? Using the noun generator I get: button, honey, trash. Maybe the brother has always been jealous of the hero’s sense of style. Maybe the brother discovered an item of the hero’s clothing in his house and thinks his wife is having an affair with the hero.

Images can be used as prompts instead of words. There are random image generators such as Writing Exercises’ Random Image Generator. Dixit is a fun party game that involves guessing which card refers to a person’s statement. The cards have beautiful and intriguing artwork and can be used as story prompts. Turn over three random cards and try to tie them together in a story.

Rory’s Story Cubes is a dice game designed to encourage creativity. Roll nine dice covered with different symbols and try to tell a story based on the symbols. There’s an iPad version as well.

The Analogy method involves taking a random word and seeing how it compares to your problem. How does the hero break the curse on her husband? The noun generator gives me: line. A line connects two points. A line can exist in two or more dimensions. People wait in line. The hero could find the endpoint of the curse. The hero could travel to another dimension (or in time) to break the curse. Maybe the hero just has to wait for the curse to expire. Can the hero release her husband by freeing the person who was cursed before him?

The Idea Box is a method where you build a grid based on possible parameters for your problem and list five alternatives for each parameter. Thinkertoys gives the example of designing a new laundry hamper and lists material, shape, finish, and position as parameters. If we take writing a fantasy story as the problem and the parameters as sub-genre, setting, character and conflict we could construct a grid:

Then you mix and match elements to see how they blend. A fairy tale set in London where a poet has to save the Queen. A steampunk story where a wizard has been trapped inside a painting by an escaped demon.

Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold used a similar method in their article Tapping the Idea Vein. They start with two random objects in their room: a toner cartridge and a photo of a cow and list the properties associated with each item.

Then juxtapose the properties. “Story titles leap out from this list. Black Milk. Fertile Leather. Disposable Fertility. Likewise ideas, or at least their building blocks. For example, a story set on a book farm. Characters who follow a dualistic religion founded on food groups.”

Lateral thinking methods won’t solve all of your problems. They are simply another set of tools. As anyone who has been subjected to a bad corporate teambuilding exercise can attest, lateral thinking can be used for evil instead of good. However, they can be a useful set of tools for dealing with writer’s block or trying to make your story a bit more interesting. The more you use the methods, the more powerful you’ll find them.