Teachables: How to … think

It’s an interesting premise to start off with, but many of my academic classes revolve around this. How to generate ideas for essays, for stories, for research, when there is none in the brain.

Many factors contribute to this - lack of interest, lack of knowledge, lack of motivation, lack of interest lol

Common ones are feeling-based questions of what you think of a certain book or say, political premise. Others would be more targeted, like do you agree or how much do you agree with a certain stance. Common creative ones would be building a story from a prompt. I have even seen visuals presented to the student, with the task of discussing or building a story from it.

So, why are schools trying to get you to think about things that have no connection or purpose in your life?

Know why they are asking you to “think”

It’s a number of things, but first and foremost, they are trying to help you develop your sense of reasoning - which is a big part of life. Your opinion is going to be asked of you many times thereafter, so having the skill-set of developing ideas around issues or culture is very helpful.

Instead of relying on I don’t knows or who cares, dimensional thinking always keeps conversations flowing. Even if you don’t want it to lol

Regarding crafting out long essays and story about life events or fictional premises, the subject is trying to make sure that you are able to spin a simple story. That’s it.

Stories have a rudimentary structure that I’m sure teachers have relayed to you, with the introduction and the climax and all that stuff. So, remember that every bit of media you consume - on TV, on your phone, from the bookstore, even that juicy story your friend shared with you, but was not supposed to (I’m bringing this motif back) has this structure in some way.

The only difference is that the structure is tweaked, broken, adjusted, thrown away.

To bend rules, you would need to know them, hence.

Brainstorm if inspired, Bucket if not

So, when you are tasked with such a … task, you would fall into one of two categories.

You would either be brimming with ideas, or have little to none to give.

The thing is, it really doesn’t matter.

I hear many students say that they are not creative. Cool. That’s not the premise of the test. It is not wanting to see your creativity, as mentioned up top, but rather how to expand your thoughts and provide good structure for them.

So, if you have many ideas:

• List them all down

• Find categories for them

• Organise them into said categories

• Let those categories be your paragraphs

• Fill in or delete these categories accordingly (some may have too much, some - too little)

• And then proceed to flesh out details

• Write away!

Have a class with me to see how this can be applied to both essays and stories :)

If you have no ideas:

• Look at the prompt or statement

• Find categories that are associated with it

• List those categories

• Start to fill in these “buckets” you have just drawn up

• Flesh out the details

• And write away, again!

in.class, I could show you how to do this, but here is a small example:

Prompt: The Ball (narrative story)

State: no clue

Associations: basic

• Ball - game - sports

• Sports - team - teamwork

• Teamwork - friends - enemies?

• Enemies - in school - secondary school

Buckets: basic

• Context - school

• Story - two friends who become enemies

• Reason - playing ball (football)

Structure:

Start crafting the story now based on the Intro - Resolution structure

Ta-da…

Adding a twist after the template

So, once you have a good skeleton, you can add the flesh (details)

But, how the body ultimately looks, along with the face (okay, my analogy is running its course here) is up to you.

So, this is where you can get different, if you have the time and energy for it.

Once you have all your paragraphs organised and points laid out, this is where you can tweak them.

Example:

Introduction: giving readers context of the setting, the scene, and the characters

Tweak: starting with the climax instead, moving introduction down to second paragraph.

Etc. Etc.

That changes the design of your writing. You can play around with tenses and perspectives once you get used to it too. That’s the birth of creativity, isn’t it.

Once you get better at this, your initial associations will also start to strengthen and dimensionalise, allowing you to dip into genre changes and such.

And what about thoughts and feelings?

So, with this area, the concept of “buckets” or categories applies as well.

Example:

How are you feeling?

Base answer: good

Dimensional answer: good in a few ways

So, it wouldn’t be - I’m good, period.

It would be:

• Great physically (examples - health / exercise)

• Good mentally (examples - stressed, but stable)

• Alright emotionally (examples - hurt because of a relationship problem, looking for ways to improve)

Oh look, you have three paragraphs, oh wow. Yeah. The introduction or thesis encompasses these ideas into a single statement.

I am good overall physically, but emotionally and mentally, I am still looking for ways to feel better, and trying to grow.

Be kind to yourself

And just like the words up top, you’re growing with every thought, so rest easy. Creativity is not a single entity that you either have or don’t. Some are more inclined towards it, some have to work, some don’t ever need or want it. It’s fine. Academically, they are just asking for the baseline - know how and you’ll be good, saving your own creativity for your own life thereafter.