Creativity - techniques

froggy

#26: Contrasts
This is good for creating diversity. It works for planets and entire civilizations. First, start by using technique #1 (or whichever one you want) to get a core idea for your creation. Next, elaborate on it.
Example: I chose "beacon" as my word. From that, I got a civilization that is a pinnacle of technology, culture, etc. A real "city on a hill."

Once you've done that, take the reverse of your idea.
Example: The opposite of my city on a hill is a low-tech, grungy, poor nation that has definitely gotten the short end of the stick.

Now you can apply #14 to figure out how these nations would interact.
Example: The city on a hill (I like that term, don't I?) is trying to, as they see it, bring the other nation "to the light." Problem is, their target, which has gotten pretty resentful of their more successful counterparts, is very unwilling to accept them (hold on--sounds like the Middle East).

Just wondering, since my method incorporates a number of other methods posted here, should it count as a method or as an example of how you can intertwine the various methods? I'm inclined to say the latter.

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Cap'n_Hector

Historical Fusion

Imagine if two cultures/civilizations that never interacted, colonized said planet.

What if the Mongols and the Aztecs settled on the same planet? What would the culture be like? Would one parent culture dominate? Would the mix equally? What would they focus their economy on?

Then apply the resulting culture to the universe you are working with.

(Side note: I love using technique #1. Especially mixing in hebrew and other foreign languages in naming planets. Its like my own little secret as to where the planet came from)

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Sephil is coming...

Martin Turner

#27 Write about what you hate

One way to make your worlds emotionally convincing is to write about what you hate. People often tell you to write about what you love, but for many people this leads to wishy-washy stuff which fails to appeal to a broad audience. Somehow writing about stuff you really hate works for most people much better.

There's a fantastic example in Ursula K LeGuin's latest book 'Changing Planes', which kicks off with how much she hates airports. This forms the premise for the entire novel. William Gibson's most recent, 'Pattern Recognition' is about someone who has a violent, almost allergic, reaction to logos. A lot of the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, relies on the same principle.

So, an example of a world based on this principle would (for me) be a world which is like one huge bus station. No one lives there, everyone is passing through. The surroundings are grey with a strong emphasis on concrete. All the officials you meet are deeply unhelpful - whatever the question, the answer is 'it's not my fault'. People are disembarking from tedious starships to board other tedious starships.

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M A R T I N T U R N E R
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AceBlack

#28
Experience

Take some experience you have, say your relationship with your family, then turn that small system into a government, economy, etc. So, say your dad is very lenient, always quick to help but your mom is uptight and mean. Turn that into something like, a planet where the king loves his subjects and wants to make their lives better, but the parliament only wants self-betterment so they raise taxes lower benefits etc. Then say you have a sister who your parents treat the same way but who hates you. Now you have two uneasy factions under this government who want to kill each other but don't have the resources due to the governments intervention. Then turn that into a situation where either the factions decide "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and overthrow the government, or the factions end up killing each other and the parliament, stripped of its income, become conquered by another world and end up in the same situaltion as their previous subjects.
You can do this with other relationships too, friends, teachers, etc.,

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"I paid for that woman and I want all the parts!" ~Horace Vandergelder, Hello, Dolly

Martin Turner

#29 Go to the future and work back

Instead of trying to construct the entire history of the planet up until now (which I tend to find leads to uncreative planets, very similar to each other) go to the end of the planet's history and work back. This is very much the principle an archaeologist uses when excavating a mound - you start with the most recent layer, which is almost always the destruction layer. The layer below that is the final habitation layer, and down you go.

So try this. Exxilon's civilisation comes to an end with the collapse of its economy and mass starvation following the Exxilon mining disaster in 2996. Now work back to today (eg, 2776, or whenever you like). How does it get to that point? From 2776, the galactic price of Xilo, which could only by mined on Exxilon rose progressively, making it increasingly economically unproductive to do anything on Exxilon which wasn't mining related. From time to time forward-looking governments tried to diversify the planet's economy, but these efforts always failed after a few years because opponents were able to present them as attempts to destroy Exxilon's mining industry. The fantastic wealth of the mining conglomerates and the comparative wealth of everyone else meant that food, medicine, luxury goods could easily be imported. Science and art stifled - the Exxilons were happy to buy these in as commodities, but believed them to be a waste of time for their own people because they didn't directly contribute to mining and mine administration. By 2994, Exxilon had managed to outsource almost every area of life except Xilo extraction. They were completely unprepared for the collapse of the Main Shaft - an enormous open cast excavation going 100s of miles deep into the planet's surface. The Main Shaft collapse instantly cut production by 30%. Given the enormous outsourcing overheads the planet was carrying, its banking system collapsed almost as quickly. Engineers and materials to repair the shaft could not be imported, nor could the maintenance crews for the other shafts. Production rapidly sank to 0%, panic and starvation set in. Within two years, Exxilon life had descended to a medieval village and barter economy. In the meantime, the galaxy had learned to live without Xilo.

Now write a description of the planet which sows all the seeds for this to happen, but places it right at the beginning of this chain of events. So today (2776) people are celebrating with the construction of the first Deep Shaft, and a new contract to supply Xilo to GalakTech. Making a sobre estimate of future earnings, Exxilons have gingerly begun to enlarge their space port, put up a posh hotel, and layout plans for a pleasure city. On the fringes, farmers are rotating their crops, confident that, as long as there are workers, they will have someone to sell their produce to.

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M A R T I N T U R N E R
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Dr. Trowel

#30 MadLibs
This makes use of the simple goofy old game where one person removes selected words from a sentence and then asks someone else, who does not know what the sentence says, to supply a word of the same part-of-speech to fill in each blank. Like some of the other methods discussed here, this is essentially a randomization technique; in this case, it accesses someone else's creativity a bit. The starting sentence can be written from scratch or can be plagarised -- history and unread books are good sources, as noted above, but you could take from almost any other source as well (I'd think planet descs written by others would be an efficient place to start). Once the blanks have been filled in, the challenge for the writer is to devise a world in which the MadLib sentence would be true (or at least would come close to making sense). Chances are, the MadLib sentence itself won't even appear in the completed desc.

And thus does desc writing become an excellent opportunity for students to get in trouble for passing notes in class. :rolleyes:

Martin Turner

#31 Category breakdown

One of the biggest barriers to creativity is our tendency to categorise things. This is a great way to simplify the world so that we can handle it, but exactly the wrong thing for the freewheeling, associative style thinking that we need for creative thinking. A good technique, then, is to browse through the 'Everything Else' section of highly categorised systems - in other words, look at the stuff that even the arch-categorisers couldn't find categories for. Pick up a handful of these ideas to combine into a planet.

Example: look through Ebay's Everything Else section, or even 'Collectibles/Everything Else'. Pick five items at random. From UK, everything else/weird stuff, I pick - 'World's largest glass prism'; 'Uncleaned Roman coins'; 'Amazing ugly hand carved face Bali'; 'Find and ruin anyone with this Cyber-Spy'; 'the Cult that is hijacking America!'. (I could also have had 'Factory Reconditioned Boss - Like New').
Now for a planet desc:

"The Macron, a 1000 foot high glass prism, dominates the skyline of Wuaft. Pristine, catching the light from every angle, it has lured travellers here for hundreds of years. But the Macron, and the web of translucent, crystal buildings which fan out beneath it, belie the nature of this world's economy. Wuaft is the galactic capital for identity theft. Government and private enterprise work hand in hand to lever personal information out of tourists, datawarehousing it for years until a bidder comes forward with the right price. As they say on Wuaft, "One coin is as dirty as another". Wise travellers entrust themselves only to the Balir, a strange, secretive cult which gives no answers about itself, and, crucially, asks no questions of others.

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M A R T I N T U R N E R
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mrxak

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**#22 Write the tune first

Actually, this is a piece of advice they give to song-writers, on the grounds that it's a lot easier to craft compelling lyrics around a great tune, than to try to create a create tune to fit your lyrics.

The planet-writing version of this is to get a mood for a planet thoroughly in your mind first, and then create a planet to go with it. You think this sounds crazy? I use this one a lot.

**

A more literal version of this would be...

#32 Compile the Soundtrack

If your planet was a movie, what would the soundtrack be for it? Would there be a lot of classical music or hip hop? If you can, actually create a playlist (or maybe put iTunes on party shuffle?) and write the history while listening to it.

PsykSama

#33 Random Generators

There are plenty of random generators on the internet. Use them then pick and choose the random pickings that you think work, or taking the elements from several that amuse you.

Here's a couple examples.

This one is a general list but you can probably get ideas from it.

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

For coming up with planets, this is a useful tool. It's setting specific but since Star Wars and EV are very much akin, it's easy as Pi to tweak into something useful.

http://www.gmsarliga...etgenerator.php

This post has been edited by PsykSama : 20 February 2011 - 09:19 PM