How to be creative when you're stuck
Creativity can be an extension of your soul, but it does draw upon influences and experiences. In my time interacting with other authors within the writer’s community, I’ve noticed that writers tend to borrow stories from their own lives and sometimes tweak them at some points to serve the interest of their stories. Unfortunately, this makes their works mundane and commonplace since these kinds of interactions aren’t unique to them. In fact, their ideas might be collected from what they have seen before and attempting to recycle in a new way. It is rare, in my opinion, that an author creates work ex nihilo completely. I try to separate myself from my work as much as possible and build a world entirely based upon imaginative imagery. For one, this allows me to conceive of worlds, characters, settings, and other elements I have never seen. I will describe the four steps I use to construct characters, plots, and settings, ex nihilo, so that you can incorporate this methodology and allow your work to be completely original.
Start with a Box
Think of a cubic shape. I want you to imagine that this shape is empty, and it is closed. This will be our platform for how we can develop a new idea. It might seem simple at first, but now I want you to imagine fluid in this box. This type of imaginative exercise I call The Ocean Test. This test doesn’t have to be the box…
