Creative thinking: there is no box

My final lesson of the week was about how to think creatively when coming up with feature ideas.

Along with the three-minute video project, I have to write a human-interest feature due at the beginning of March. It is one of the seven projects that will partly induce my foreseeable nervous breakdown. It’s inevitable given the amount of pressure and lack of time I feel I have to do the best job I can.

To help the class think outside the box our incredibly sweet and endearingly geeky lecturer talked us through several different creative thought processes.

It all started with how many different uses we could think up for a paperclip. From our lists, there are more than a couple of things this small piece of stationery is useful for (apart from holding sheets of paper together). A paperclip cluster bomb was one and a sparrow’s ice skate was another.

I liked my idea that a paperclip could be a friend. If you don’t have Facebook and you’re as imaginative as a tube of toothpaste, then why not have paper clip for a friend? It could work. It’s cheap, easy-to-use not to mention environmentally-friendly.

Anyway, it’s interesting how just the idea of uses for a paper clip can spark creativity. I guess it’s all about thinking outside the box and looking at things in a different way. Also, it is about not restricting yourself and just seeing where that train of thought takes you, although preferably not off a cliff and into the abyss of despair.

But I digress. Semantics and word play is another method to get those creative juices flowing. Think of words that are similar to the topic you are looking at: synonyms, connotations, metaphors, clichés, puns, association, etc. Don't forget antonyms.

Then there’s mind-mapping.
The who, what, where, why, when, how of a topic.
The political, economical, social, technological aspects of an issue.

It’s just different ways of thinking around a topic. It’s all useful.

Although my inspiration seems to come from random thoughts I might think or things I see. Then there is feasibility. For example, for this human interest piece I am planning on interviewing someone who went on the Obama campaign trail. I know it’s hardly breaking those journalistic boundaries but it’s good for now.

Who knows, in six months I might be putting together a feature about the socio-cultural effects paperclips have had on social networking.