Lateral thinking strategies for authors

Disruptive strategies to break through writers’ block and drive original content

Lateral thinking disruptive creativity strategies to enhance every story.

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Authors – Writers – Bloggers – Content providers

This page is for you

 

This page is all about finding “hidden pots of gold” that exist below the surface within every story … that hide among the jumble of words in every manuscript.

New twists – hidden relationships – secret motives – explosive subplots

And so much more

Lateral thinking is a strategy of disruption. I’ll be taking you through some simple lateral thinking techniques that I personally have used to achieve enormous success in the direct electronic marketing industry, and that I have now further developed for use in writing fiction.

 

Let’s dive in …

Lateral thinking writing tool in play:

Creative Combinations

“Why would Julie feed a story like that to a newspaper?”

Combine things in ways you wouldn’t normally consider.

Try this …

Take the key characters in your book, write them onto small squares of paper, and throw them into a hat. Next, do the same with the major themes and throw them into the same hat. Add any other important elements of your story.

Randomly pick 2/3/4 or more of pieces of the hat and see how they might combine, interact, or relate to each other.

Repeat the process until you have a diverse mix of creative thinking to consider further.

To better understand this concept, take a short detour to the CREATIVE COMBINATIONS LESSON and come back.

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An additional support tool here that helps to understand the simplicity of the various disruptive techniques on display here is LATERAL THINKING EXAMPLES.

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The first “later thinking fiction” novel is almost complete. Take a quick look at the project here: The BLURB

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Let’s keep going …

Lateral thinking writing tool in play:

Alternative Perspectives

 

“I would be curious to understand how this death affects the people he works with.”

I really LUV this disruptive strategy.

Writers typically (should) write from the viewpoint of a single person within any scene. But, before you put a scene “to bed”, take a moment to put yourself inside the head of every other character (in AND out of the scene) to imagine what they might be thinking, and how they might have secret involvement and motivations not perceivable from written POV.

Take a quick detour to the ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES LESSON and come back.

And don’t forget to make use of my examples page.

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What exactly is “lateral thinking fiction?

 Turning the GROUPTHINK tide.

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Let’s investigate a source of creative writing inspiration related to YOUR story …

Lateral thinking writing tool in play:

Random Starting Points

“How does this later scene relate to the earlier scene I’m working on?”

I really do this …

Sometimes I feel a little stale within a scene, and I search for inspiration, so I take a printed out copy of my manuscript, scramble the pages, and choose a random page.

What’s happening on that page? How does it relate to what I’m writing at the moment? How could that page be improved given what has developed later?

Sometimes being “totally random” can lead to amazing breakthroughs.

You can also select a random issue, character … anything, and try to link it to the scene you’re working on and see if it inspires some new creative intrigue.

Once again, take a quick detour to my RANDOM STARTING POINTS lesson and make sure to come back. We’re about to ramp things up!!

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Disruptions can be a lot of fun. Put your characters into tricky situations and imagine how they would act.

Lateral thinking writing tool in play:

Provocative Operation … or “po”

“I never expected that”

Put your characters into sudden and unexpected situations and imagine how they would react.

What I like to do at the completion of a scene (or chapter) is to go back and think about throwing in something provocative. Provocations can be uncharacteristic, non-sensical, funny, shocking, sad, etc. I imagine how my characters might interact … how it changes the development of the plot.

The provocation “disrupts” the flow of your thinking to open new and interesting twists and conflicts.

This is an important lesson. Take a couple of minutes to read the “PROVOCATIVE OPERATION …or PO” lesson and come back.

If you haven’t jumped over to look at my “REAL EXAMPLES OF LATERAL THINKING” page yet … you should take a quick look now.  It puts everything into perspective.

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Does your story make sense to the reader?

Lateral thinking writing tool in play:

Challenge existing concepts

“Why am I doing this?”

We writers tend to live inside the head of our main protagonist. Try letting go and imagining the other characters questioning what’s going on. Could they have secret motivations? Why … are they behaving as the protagonist views them? How do they view your protagonist, and is it as you intended?

Constantly questioning “why” is the easiest tool of disruption I know … making it one of the most effective.

Take a quick look at the CHALLENGE EXISTING CONCEPTS lesson to get a better understanding.

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My own writing project is close to completion. Check out the blurb that’s on “HOME PAGE”.