Some more on ideas

As I said in the introductory chapter; “Some books for writers merely say: “Ideas are all around you.” Whilst that is true, it is foolish just to leave it hanging there. There are ways that you can find ideas and even generate ideas with a little hard work and application of effort.”

So, then, how do we find ideas or generate ideas? If there is this goldmine of ideas out there, how do we start digging for nuggets?

In every case, the basic idea that is the kernel at the heart of each and every article ever written was inspired by something. There are a number of tricks, schemes or methods that can be employed to help us find an idea for an article. The following exercises are only some of them. Explore them, see what you ca do with them.

Listen to a talk radio station for 60 minutes. Record  it, if you want, but certainly make notes on every aspect of the hour-long segment of programming that you listened to.

Was it entertaining? Informative? Did any of the calls or the presenter say anything to you? Give you any ideas for future articles? Don’t forget the adverts. If the programming was broadcast on a commercial radio station, did any of the adverts give you ideas for future articles?

Look through the news pages of a daily or a weekly newspaper.

Study the stories.  Do any of them strike up the spark of an idea in your mind for future articles?

Here are three headlines taken from a British daily newspaper:

“Too Much TV can damage Bone.”

“Fresh Alert Over Irradiated Food”

“300 Million Year-old Forest.”

Let’s take a closer look at the first of those headlines, shall we?

Can watching too much TV damage bones? If so, how? And how would a person guard against this? Watch less TV? Take food supplements? If you did watch less TV, could you create your own entertainment? Would you need to ensure that whatever you replaced TV watching with did not have a potentially equally damaging effect upon the bones?

Sometimes we might see an article in a magazine or a newspaper that sparks off an idea.  It might be at total odds with the point of view expressed in the article. If so, that’s all to the good.

Ask other, perhaps older, members of your family if they have an interesting story, or if there is an interesting story to the family history.

In all likelihood they will say: “no” but that might not be quite true. For example I was told: “Nothing ever happens in our family!” I was told.. But a little gentle questioning revealed a tale of International espionage, the witnessing of a cold-blooded assassination on the crowded streets of Barcelona and a “skin-of-the-teeth” escape from the thugs of Franco’s Gestapo-trained secret police.

Not bad, for a family in which “nothing ever happens!”

The Edward De Bono method for generating ideas.

Edward De Bono is one of the world’s foremost experts on thinking and especially the field of lateral thinking.  He has devised a system for generating new ideas. The original concept featured a simple mechanical device which had two lists of words that could be combined randomly.

Professor De Bono explained that this could help to generate new ideas. In the interview which mentioned the concept the random selection of words presented “nude” and “chocolate.” Immediately Professor De Bono said: “Perhaps there could be a market for chocolates that are sold “nude” i.e., with less wrappings to make them more environmentally friendly. This was some 20 or 30 years ago before the concept of “environmentally friendly” products and wrappings became such a large issue and important issue.

Could such a concept help a journalist to create ideas for new stories?

Here are a list of randomly selected pairs of words, culled from a dictionary. Take a look at them. Could any of them be used to create a news story or a feature article?

OATH – LAVATORY

WET – FOOL

VISTA – PIECE

TREAD – ORANGE

LUGE – BRUNT

ONCE – KIDNEY

IT – GRADIENT

DOBRO® - EYELET

HOODWINK – DEMISE

DELIVER – BUSINESS

AGE - VISUAL

ACCEDE – UNBUTTON

Nonsense? Undoubtedly! However, allow them to get your creative juices flowing. Did the fact that someone was hoodwinked lead to their demise?  Can you get a  fool to come in form the rain?

Why not try experimenting with you own ideas? Your own random parings?

Claim and a challenge

In an Internet writing discussion group I once made the claim (perhaps rather foolishly!) that I could write an article on any given topic.

One person rose to the challenge. She asked me to write an article on her Brother-in-Law who, although an otherwise very sober, sensible and respectable businessman, always wears one red tennis shoe and one yellow tennis shoe. The last time that she could recall was to a wedding.

This is the article that I wrote and which she seemed reasonably pleased with.

Why would someone wear one red and one yellow tennis shoe to a wedding? Or even wear one red and one yellow tennis shoe at all?

It could be so that, should he be challenged, he could respond with the rather old an hoary joke: “Yes, and I have another pair just like it at home!”

Perhaps he feels the need to be noticed or to be different, but does not feel inclined or motivated  to make a real statement of being “different?” Wearing a red  and a yellow tennis shoe as an unmatched pair could be a safe way of proving his individuality. His own statement of uniqueness in a world bedeviled by uniformity and sameness.

Unless, of course, there is another reason that he chooses to wear such footwear? Perhaps he made a bet that he would wear one red and one yellow tennis shoe for a specific time? An unlikely idea? True. But more likely, it can be said, than the true story of the man who took a bet –and won it!- to walk around the world by himself wearing a heavy iron mask whilst he was pushing a pram with his belongings in it. So, taking a bet on wearing an unmatched pair of shoes would be a modest bet, when compared to a wager of such magnitude.

What makes the story of the man in the iron mask even more interesting is that, although he was a very wealthy young man, the terms of the bet forbade him from carrying more than one US Dollar on his person and he supported himself by selling postcards, one of which was bought by the then Prince of Wales. His weary trudge around the world was only interspersed with a “break” to volunteer to serve in the US Army during World War 1.

And tennisshoes –or the older tennis sneakers- featured in the fascinating life story of Dr Timothy Leary. Apparently two well-respected and well-known English philosophers wanted a psychologist in America to work with them to study the psychoactive drugs Mescaline and LSD with a view to having them used to help people.

They had been recommended to talk with Dr. Leary. Yet they were initially disappointed, put off by the fact that they needed someone who would  be a freethinker and capable of being radical, but Dr. Leary –at that time- wore a typically conservative business suit and sported a crew-cut hairstyle, much beloved of every conventional American male at that time, in the 1950s.

They were about to reject Dr. Leary as unsuitable, when they noticed that he was wearing a pair  of white tennis sneakers. They concluded that, although Dr. Leary seemed on the face of it to be conventional, that his footwear showed him to be capable of being different. Or what today would be called: “thinking outside the box.”

Incidentally their plans to have a properly controlled research programme into the possible use of mescaline and LSD to help humanity were thwarted, because one of Dr. Leary’s colleagues at the University Psychology Department was conducting secret tests on the possible use of LSD as a weapon under the control of the CIA.

These secret trials of LSD eventually lead to the deaths of a top American scientist and several US servicemen, all who had been given LSD without their knowledge or approval. 

But of course, you must understand that these illegal trials –arguably amounting to homicide, one might suggest- were perpetrated by people who wore sensible brogues or smart leather shoes. I doubt if they would have even dreamt  of wearing tennis sneakers with a business suit or wearing one red and one yellow tennis shoe to a wedding.

Perhaps we need more people to wear tennis sneakers with business suits? Or willing to wear un-matching tennis shoes?

Although the premise of that story was rather slight, a person who always wears un-matched tennis shoes, I was able to touch on such subjects as a rich man who took an improbable bet and won, the guru of the counter-culture Dr. Timothy Leary and dangerous CIA experiments that lead to the deaths of innocent, unwitting test subjects.