This gatekeeped method for creative writing will completely change your world

If originality is no more, or if it simply doesn’t want to show its bishi face, what makes a person truly creative?

Your coffee is steaming on the countertop, and as you decisively reach for it, it hits you.

Like a thunder.

It crams through your skull and shouts out loud, “This can be huge”.

Then you take the coffee, have a sip, and lean back.

You think about it, you turn it on all sides, and look at it from different angles.

Or at least you try.

Random thoughts come by, and you whisk them away.

You turn on your focus, and you think again and again.

Then you remember where you saw this idea, and you think there’s no point.

I’ve listened to some people in advertising saying — If it’s been done, there’s no point.

Is that so?

I wonder how many more truly new ideas we can get out there.

If an idea has already been made, but you frame it under your own perspective and give it a new life, I believe it counts as a repurposed idea.

And let’s be real.

Any brainstorming and research phase of a campaign starts with pouring information into your head.

Watching other campaigns on the same topic, or on completely different ones, reading, watching videos, and finding your inspiration.

All that inspiration is stored inside your mind. And when you put your pen down on the paper, it comes out.

And then you cut and cut, thinking this is exactly the same as what I saw yesterday.

What if you left that idea there? Just like that.

And then you added more, and more.

When the list is in its final stages, you will notice that there can be some concepts that could be mixed.

I once read in Hey Whipple Squeeze This about something called the Intergalactic Thinking method. I hope I remember this correctly, as I’m sure I have a post it in my book with it, but then I have 100 other post-its and…yeah.

I remember what’s it about because I started all my spec campaigns using this one, among others.

This method is so good, I felt the need to gatekeep for a while.

This theory says that when you brainstorm, you should take a few “worlds” (like earth, oceans, circus, jungle, home, family, movies, music, and so on). You can make up worlds, just try to write down the ones that are huge.

Like the Star Trek universe. Or Willy Wonka. Or even more inclusive — the magic universe. Whatever it is that comes to mind.

You don’t need to think right away if it fits your idea or not.

At this point, just write down a bunch of nonsense.

At the end, you’ll have a super interesting list with all sorts of elephants with four heads that eat cereal for breakfast.

These are the type of crazy ideas that you can easily get at all times. You can do endless combinations daily.

I am getting excited about this while writing. It’s so silly.

So back to my point, what if after finishing this list, you could come to your copied idea and combine it with some delulu stuff you’ve just written?

I think that would be a repurposed idea, if not a completely new one.

Would anyone be able to tell?

Who cares?

Everything new starts from an inspiration from somwehere. It’s how it works.

And it depends on how many elements you give to it, and how much you take from the original one.

Some ideas may just be inspired by something you never even noticed could be there.

So originality is really overrated, and looked at in the wrong way.

This is originality. Trying to find new ways, out of what’s already been done.

And if I’m not mistaken, historically, almost every invention started from something that was known and already done.