People often ask me how I come up with ideas. The fast answer is I’m just wired that way. But there’s also a large element of technique that I can teach you.
In some long-ago post, I described how I filter ideas with my body more than my mind. Internally, it feels like a slot machine with the little symbols changing in the three windows until some combination of three makes me literally “feel” something – a laugh, a wince, an ah-ha, whatever. It’s the ideas you can feel in your body that will engage others.
Once I have a topic that makes me feel something, I imagine myself as the reader and ask what my thought pattern would be on this topic. I start my writing process by acknowledging the most common view on the topic. And then I violate it. It’s the violating that makes it fun. The pattern looks like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, taupe.
I’ll give you an example from today. I saw an article in Time magazine about General Petraeus, the top military guy in Iraq. I skimmed the article, but a basic assumption was that he knows more about what’s happening in Iraq than you do. That seems obvious enough. And it made me think of all the comments on this blog from people who said our soldiers in Iraq know than anyone else more about how the war is going.
That’s the 1,2,3,4 part: Soldiers in Iraq know the most about the war effort in Iraq. It seems obvious. Okay, so that’s my topic. Here comes the creative part. I ask myself this question:
What if it’s the opposite?
That’s the universal creative question. It works on any topic. What if your doctor tried to kill you instead of heal you? What if your obedient dog considered you his slave? What if your H.R. director stopped pretending the company policies were designed with the greater good in mind?
Once I figure out the opposite position from the normal, I concoct an argument to defend it. You can make a case for just about any point of view. When that opposite argument turns out to be about 50% sensible, it’s often funny. When it is 90% sensible, it’s thought-provoking.
Let’s try the “opposite method” on this Iraq topic. What if the troops fighting in Iraq are the ones who know the LEAST about whether or not we’re winning the war? Could I make that case?
First, I’d point to the extensive, peer reviewed, science about cognitive dissonance. The main idea is that people who volunteer for situations that turn out bad will concoct elaborate mental justifications for why they did what they did. According to that theory, anyone who volunteered to defend the country, and found themselves in Iraq, would have low credibility on the question of “Is it working?” These folks would have the greatest access to the facts, while simultaneously having the least objectivity for evaluating those facts. In other words, even if the “surge” is not working, scientists would predict that a huge number of soldiers involved in the conflict would interpret the situation as a success in the making, or at least superior to all alternatives.
I love and respect the troops, but they are human.
Second, I’d point out that most of our information about the war comes from the generals. All leaders are unreliable. A general would be fired immediately if he said the surge was a bad idea. And if a general believed the surge might succeed, even as a long shot, he’d be a crappy leader if he told anyone his true assessment of the odds. So you can’t believe the leaders.
How about the individual troops? Cognitive dissonance aside, at the very least, they can report the facts, right? But soldiers only see the battles they’re in. If you hear from a soldier in a hopeless part of Iraq, he’s more likely to think a surge won’t work. If he’s assigned to a place where things are going well, he’s more likely to think that success could be duplicated. It’s the classic analogy of the three blind men trying to describe an elephant. One blind man feels the elephant’s trunk and says an elephant is just like a snake, etc. No soldier is in a position to see all of Iraq.
Many of you will read this opposite-argument and say, “Yeah, I see your points, but still, the soldiers are the best source we have.” Okay, let’s say 60% of the soldiers think the surge isn’t working and 40% think it is. Unless you know how many soldiers are having cognitive dissonance, or how many are suppressing a negative opinion in case someone finds out, you have no useful information whatsoever.
Go.