Quantum Storytelling

“I don’t like that.”

“I hate that.”

Ok, so what do you actually like?

It’s an odd phenomenon of our society; People will list dozens of things they don’t like, or don’t believe in, and yet never mention the things they do like. This is not just limited to writers, although playing the constant critic seems a stereotypical favorite among creative types. It goes beyond that. Talk to just about anyone and it’s easy to get a list of dislikes or disbeliefs out of them.

Which leaves the obvious question; What do you actually believe in? What do you like? What thrills you? What makes you tick?

Where in the cesspool of dislikes are the things that define a personality? Is a personality just a collection of pet peeves? Doesn’t ‘taste’ have to be comprised of something? As in, some kind of positive statement or effect?

I recently put out the call for game developers to join the NaNo front. A few people joined up, which was great. Some hemmed & hawed, stayed on the fence.

Then there was a 3rd type. The type that says “What’s the point? Bleh! Blah! I don’t get this 30 day discipline thing.” Worse, is the: “What’s the point in working up a sweat and doing a bunch of stuff in 30 days? You can’t force creativity.”

As if laziness were some rare and precious quality among writers! It’s not enough that you already have the other 11 months of the year to slack off, but you just have to claim all 12, too? Is it really necessary to cry chicken little and act as if one month of rigorous discipline out of twelve is some kind of unbalanced Nazi plan to destroy The Loafer’s Method of Creativity? Clearly a cheerleading session ramping up to NaNo doesn’t even pertain to that kind of person.

Are people these days defined entirely by the products they don’t use, the clothes they don’t wear, the food they don’t eat, the beliefs they don’t agree with, and the political parties they don’t like?

Is it upsetting and offensive that something like NaNo, or some tool, model for creativity, or paradigm, ends up helping some people out, but just not you? It’s fine to be a doubter. But why tear down others? Afraid that other people might be successful? Another facet of the Anti-Learning Brigade?

My theory about why this happens is pretty simple; People are both picky and lazy. Especially creative people. We want the best, fastest, instant solution that is also the most novel, creative, unique, original. And we want it yesterday. So when we see someone else working their butt off, we feel threatened.

“Hey, you can’t do that! That, er, um, thing you’re doing there where you’re using something that works and being successful with it. You should loaf around and waste time, and never really finish your work… like me! It’s not fair!”

Or…

“I tried that tool and it didn’t work for me. But you’re using it and it works? Impossible! So, you’re saying I just didn’t know how to use the tool correctly? Hogwash! The tool is broken! Down with that method!”

Just because something doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it’s broken, or that nobody else can succeed via that method. Shout something positive from the mountain tops and out come the Bristly Bears to tear things apart! A fuzzy culture of negatives, indeed.

Find something that works for you, and ignore all the people who say it doesn’t work for them. If it’s working for you, it’s working for you. You’re you, and they’re them.

Enough said?

The wife and I carved our pumpkins yesterday. Mine is the goofy one on the right. It was fun, and I haven’t done it for over fifteen years. What a cheap form of entertainment! I think we bought our pumpkins for $3.00 each, and spent over an hour carving, scraping, and carving some more. Halloween has become a spooky holiday for me, but it has nothing to do with ghouls and ghosts.

Halloween now signifies the night before National Novel Writing Month. My anticipation is peaking. Being my 2nd year, this makes a healthy tradition. Just like last year, my outline isn’t as solid as I’d like, but unlike last year I have a lot clearer idea of what I’m doing this time. Let’s hope this first draft only sucks half as bad as the one I did last year! While the kiddies are getting treats, I’ll be doing some last minute efforts to prepare my trick of 50K words in 30 days.

Are you getting scared yet?

I think I lost people on my Geneplore explanation. So here’s the easy version:

Coming up with an idea is the not the same thing as exploring it. The Geneplore model suggests that idea generation and idea exploration are two separate processes. The creative constraints you use are up to you, but they affect your generation and exploration processes.

Let’s say you’re writing an action novel that takes place on a snow-peaked mountain top. You are naturally constrained by the mountain in what your characters will be able to do. It wouldn’t make sense to come up with a car chase that takes place in a downtown setting with skyscapers, because you’ve already established the setting as a mountain top. Therefore, the setting becomes a creative constraint that you need to generate and explore ideas around. Through the constraint, maybe the characters would have a snowmobile chase, or a fight scene on a gondola, ski-lift, skii-chase, sled ride, avalanche, or some other thing. Your constraints define what kind of ideas you can generate. Exploring them is another issue altogether.

A creative constraint could be anything… maybe your story takes place in the winter, maybe your main character is in a wheelchair much like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. The character’s constraint is your constraint as the writer, because you have to write around your goals or other ideas you’ve already established.

So on one hand you generate ideas. On the other hand you explore them. One way some creative people do this is to make a big list of ideas on paper, and then after they’ve finished listing them they go back and expand or explore those ideas, and maybe ‘limit’ what those ideas can or can’t do based on constraints or goals of the project, the material that already exists, etc.

The main point is to consciously recognize that generating ideas is not the same as exploring them, and it can be helpful to view them as separate processes.

I hope that makes the Geneplore model easier to understand!