The Creative Process

[Sijih]

Hello. Some of you may not know this, but I extensively write fan fiction about what would happen if different Harry Potter characters were in a high stakes single elimination ping pong tournament with a £40 million prize pool. Vincent Crabbe is about to win, mostly due to the fact that his name is Crabbe and I find that quite funny.

But I digress. I've been having a problem recently; I just can't seem to come up with good ideas. My writing has been falling into cliches, and the quality of my prose has also declined.

Despite the dubious skill levels, I know Smogoff is full of creative people like artists, musicians, and B2W2 teambuilders. So I've come to ask Smogoff: what do you collectively do when your creative juices are running low? Give me advice on how I can light that spark and really get some new ideas bouncing around my mostly hollow head.

First I'll tell you about a few things I've tried to be creative.

Technique 1

Leveraging my lactose intolerancy

I'm highly lactose intolerant, which is normally an inconvenience. But, I've found a way to leverage it if I want to be at my most creative - like when I wrote the 50 page (8pt font, times new roman) manuscript for my Mad-Eye Moody vs Neville Longbottom piece.
I believe that discomfort is a great way to spark ideas, so if I want to have great ideas I put myself in uncomfortable situations. For someone who's lactose intolerant like me, this involves consuming a lot of dairy products. When I wake up I have 2 yoghurts, a glass of milk, and eat twice the raw butter I do normally. A few hours later I have to go the the bathroom and that's when my ideas run wild.
Additionally, I get a second creativity inspiring bout of discomfort when I have to explain to the plumber why I'm calling him for the 6th time this month.

Technique 2

Nature. Birds and plants and stuff, you know what I mean?

I heard that a lot of successful poets like to go outside and look at nature to draw inspiration. I tried this, but it simply didn't work for me.
The trees never did anything inspiration worthy no matter how much I provoked them (they really have a lot of self control for an animal), and all the fleeing I had to do meant that I couldn't get a good enough look at the bears to actually draw any inspiration from them.
When I got back to my home I saw a bulls-eye marking on my arm, which I thought was a sign that my creative muse had 'targeted' me for inspiration, but it turned out that going to the forest just gave me lyme disease.

Technique 3

Meditayshin... Meduhtation... Meddytashin... Meditashen... Meditatoin... How do you spell it?

My final option was meditation. I decided to travel to the mountains of Peru, because I've always felt like meditation is a lot cooler when done at high altitudes.
Unfortunately, the marmosets who live over there are apparently quite creative themselves, and had quickly come up with the new idea of throwing rocks at me while I tried to meditate. This made it quite difficult to clear my head of all wordly pains.
Additionally, the meditation help app that I used wasn't the best choice for me. After an hour or two of using it, the idea that a 20 year old kid who gets paid to do voice-over work was my ultimate spiritual guide to the universe got to me, and I had a breakdown and left the mountain.
On the way down a llama spit on me, which isn't relevant to the story, but is something that's been irking me ever since. How would the llama like it if I spit on him? Not much, probably.

Everyone in Smogoff, please share your full creative process with me in this thread. I'm dying to know. As well as this, please share any creative techniques you've tried that haven't worked - so I know what to avoid.

 

[かたわれ時]

I heard the shower is a good place to spark creativity

 

[theotherguytm]

I pace up and down my room while listening to music. Works every time for me, especially if it's music I haven't heard before so I don't start reimagining old stuff. My D&D campaign has had excellent feedback from my players.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Couple bottles of energy drinks and I'm right as rain.

 

[LordThemberchaud]

Crying in your room actually doesn't help.

 

[BP]

When I made that thread about the Kirby air ride VR based on fuckability, it was a stroke of genius that I got while thinking about how sexy Kirby looked on the Wing Star during city trial while playing with a buddy.

I tend to take inspiration from real life occurances and make them into bits or funny threads. The tinnitus thread I made is no different. When I was younger my ears used to ring all the time and I was thinking back to that.

In your fanfic maybe try to incorporate cool things or occurances that happened in your life to make the story more personal or just better written.

Couple bottles of energy drinks and I'm right as rain.

This definitely also helps

 

[earl]

The only Smogoff thread I've made was triggered due to external factors- namely a very flavorful dorito

Try eating chips to get the mind going I guess. The lactose death one vibes with me tho I like that one

 

[Martin]

Meditation and a good sleep schedule

 

[Martin]

^This post is funny because I neither meditate nor have a good sleep schedule

 

[toaster04]

I heard the shower is a good place to spark creativity

yes. it's where i think about rap lyrics

 

[Martin]

Serious response: I suck at writing, but I've picked up a few bits and pieces about the creative process+can speak a little from experience with more generalised creativity/other anecdotes.

Read lots of other fiction written in lots of different styles, even if reading it takes you out of your comfort zone. Listen to music, watch lots of films, consume media in a wide range of forms from a wide range of languages/cultures, and take an interest in the lives of the people behind the work. I also think going outside and taking inspiration from whatever happens around you is extremely important for any creative endeavour, even if you don't quite know how to use it yet. It doesn't just have to be birds and trees and flowers and whatever—it can be a beggar, street musician, a crowd of people, a crossroad, some old lady who sits next to you on a bench and tells you that you look like her grandson, etc. And take an interest in people you meet. If you're sat on the same bench as someone in the park or at the bus stop, don't just stare at your phone or shut the world out with your headphones, but rather try to learn a little bit about them, even if it's only a five-minute conversation about their kid or dog or whatever.

I remember my Dad told me a story from his childhood about an old man that he became friends with. This man used to go down to the local graveyard every day to sit on a specific bench and listen to the horse racing on the radio, and he and dad would often chat about this or that. He didn't show up one day, and a few days later the grave across from the bench had been dug up and filled in with fresh earth. The first thing I thought when Dad told me about this was that it'd probably make for a sweet little short story or short film, and since hearing it I've tried to take a little more interest in others (though I still often retreat into the safe space my headphones provide—intro-ambiversion is a tricky line to straddle without a specific context, especially when coupled with level 1 ASD).

Also, write down every idea you have, regardless of whether it is good or not, and use what you have written as a starting point to develop better, more fleshed-out ideas that could viably be used in writing. The more you write down the better, as something will eventually stick if you throw enough at the wall, or perhaps you will see two or three mediocre ideas that combine to make a brilliant one. If you can't think of anything, good or bad, take a break. You can't force ideas, so grab a herbal tea (I recommend any of Yogi Tea's blends), kick back, and relax; maybe do some birdwatching or watch the local cats/squirrels/whatever through the window or go out for a stroll. If it's getting late, try to get some high-quality REM sleep—after all, a rested brain is a creative brain. Hell, if your circumstances allow it+you feel like giving it a go, you could try biphasic sleeping (getting your first cycle of sleep when the sun sets, waking for an hour or two in the middle of the night, and then sleeping for your second cycle afterwards—following the natural rhythm our bodies gravitate towards in the absence of artificial light) and see if it makes any difference.

A sentiment that I see a lot in serious discussions about writing is that in order to be a good writer you need to be willing to "kill your babies"—in other words, after whatever initial planning you do, write down your story in full as it flows from your head then rewrite it over and over/remove entire sentences of fluff, tightening up the prose and improving concepts more and more until you are left with something that is concise and resembles the original manuscript in no more than the title, characters, and basic outline.

 

[monkfish]

look if i could give you one piece of advice it's this: spend a lot of time online looking at memes and watching other people play video games

 

[faint]

i suffered from writers block for a long time before i finally decided i should do something about it. i definitely didn't see myself as the type to join an organization like mf studios, but after failing to establish dominant posting crews, i found the ability to prepost (the act of posting in a discord to garner engagement) priceless. the small fee i pay per month is far outweighed by my increased posting prowess, reaction ratio, and overall community engagement. i would highly recommend those struggling to rekindle their creativity to join mf studios, or at the very least an alternative (although between you and me, mf studios is a market leader for a reason) and see where things go.

 

[az]

my solution is: dont have this problem!!

 

[xzern]

find a list of things in media and then order them from best to worst, according to your opinion. everyone will find this post engaging and they will want to read it.

 

[Sijih]

I heard the shower is a good place to spark creativity

haven't showered in 8 months. I try to let the grime inspire creativity, but maybe your method is better

Couple bottles of energy drinks and I'm right as rain.

i know a chemist who can give me pure caffeine. do you think spreading that on my morning toast instead of butter would be a good alternative to energy drinks?

Try eating chips to get the mind going I guess

last time i tried to use chips to be creative was before a writing deadline. unfortunately it didn't work - I ate 5 cans of BBQ pringles and passed out for 15 hours, missing the deadline in the process