In our series on developing our creativity, we’ve covered the following techniques:
Today, we cover the fourth and final technique: ask questions.
So. Why did the chicken cross the road?
Believe it or not, people have been trying to answer this since 1847. We’ve come up with some doozies—most of them just dumb:
- To get to the other side.
- It wanted to stretch its legs.
- To get to the idiot’s house. (Followed by a painfully predictable knock-knock joke)
And my personal favorite as a kid:
- It was stuck to the elephant’s foot. (Don’t ask me why, but it made me laugh every time.)
We can do better than these…right?
But why bother, you ask? Well, asking even a silly question like this and coming up with answers that are unexpected, outside the box, and yet still believable is extremely beneficial to our creativity.
Perhaps the chicken—such an ordinary, unassuming, unsuspecting fellow, so we thought—was part of a top-secret government exercise and received a radio transmission from his commander that he was needed on the east side of the road for retrieval of the football. I mean, you never know.
Here are three reasons asking questions develops creativity (you can see what it’s done to mine^^^):
1. It Forces Our Brains to Work
Remember how we talked about exercising and how that strengthens us not only physically but also mentally? When we ask questions and force ourselves to come up with the answers, we’re saying hello to mental pushups.
It’s hard to be lazy when we’re solving a problem. Asking questions and fabricating our own answers can be quite the workout for our brains, depending on the questions (that’s why we need to ask good ones, as we’ll go over in a sec). Doing this will enrich our creative muscles and have us bursting with more ideas than we can write down.
2. It Produces New Results
Think back to our chicken question. What if we challenged ourselves to come up with a reason the chicken crossed the road that no one had thought of before? Think about it: Why did the chicken cross the road?
At the end of the exercise, we’ll have something no one else has thought of before.
3. The Asking Itself Is a Creative Exercise
Not only should we come up with unique answers, but we should also come up with unique questions too, questions no one else has thought to ask.
- Do spiders feel sad when we accidentally (or intentionally) destroy their webs?
- Are spiders hoping to catch us when they spin webs in our doorways?
- Are spiders introverts?
(I may have had an experience this morning.)
Anyway, conjuring creative questions can be just as challenging and mind-stretching as puzzling out their answers, especially when we get into deeper topics like human motivation and emotion, both of which are key to puzzle through if we want to write fiction, but also for navigating life and relationships in general.
Coming up with questions that require thought and thorough answers is a creative exercise in itself. Here are a few question-composing tips that will provide you with deeper queries for your creative exercises:
1. Ask why
Why questions can never be answered by a simple “yes” or “no.” Therefore, whatever the question is, it is more involved than most. Did this make you feel sad?vs. Why do you feel sad?
2. Ask about feelings
When we ask about feelings—either others’, our own, or our characters’—we’re almost guaranteed a lengthier, meatier discussion/puzzling session than if we leave feelings out of it. How was your day? vs. What made you feel loved today? or What made you feel sad today? or even What do you feel right now? For a killer combination of 1 & 2, try, Why do you think you feel this way?
3. Ask philosophically
As writers, we should always push to understand things on a deeper level. This makes us more philosophic and enhances how we communicate through our writing. This isn’t so much about the questions themselves as it is about the manner of asking. A silly example is our chicken one: Why did the chicken cross the road? vs. Why did the chicken cross the road? It’s the same question, but in the second example we’re taking it more “seriously,” truly trying to puzzle out a logical answer. We’re looking for the chicken’s inner motivation, not just giving an external reason she crossed (such as feeling hungry or a simple desire to get to the other side).
Hopefully you now have plenty of ideas for your next creative session and for your conversations in general.
What questions will you ask? What questions have you asked before that have produced good results for you? Share in the comments!
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