Sidewise Thinking

Can creativity be taught? I’m not sure, but it certainly can be cultivated. My friend Steve recommended Edward de Bono’s book Lateral Thinking. I see it was published several decades ago, but it has me thinking about thinking.

We are encouraged, indeed, compelled by logic to follow a linear, or in de Bono’s words, vertical approach to thinking. One of the characteristics of this structure is that each step along the way must be unerringly right for the next step to work.

Creativity, de Bono insists, uses both vertical thinking and lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is the process of withholding judgment so that numerous alternatives might be considered. No matter how irrational.

De Bono isn’t writing particularly for writers. His book was for teachers, primarily of younger students, giving them suggestions and exercises to increase lateral thinking ability. While not everything might apply, some key aspects of his approach really resonated with me.

One such idea, which is obvious in retrospect, is reversal. Try turning a situation around and looking at it backwards. For example: am I propelling myself forward when I walk or, from the perspective of the earth, am I causing the earth to spin beneath me? Logic has to be suspended here, but looking at things in reverse is a great creative exercise.

Another aspect he describes, especially appropriate for writers, is point of entry. Any narrative has a starting point. The full story, at least in this universe, begins at the Big Bang (or for the truly creative, even earlier), and runs right up to Ragnarok. Try playing around with where you enter the story.

Writers are notorious for withholding information. De Bono discusses the value of order of revelation, or sequence of arrival. Instead of stories going A, B, C, D, it is sometimes good to go A, D, C, B, or any other combination of orders.

There’s no wrong way to right. Experimentation can be frustrating when it doesn’t produce results. Just like an athlete, however, writing requires continual practice and missteps may be taken. There are no guarantees, and that is a very creative way to think about it.

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K. Marvin Bruce

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