How to Develop Your Imagination

Every great writer expresses a powerful imagination. In plays think Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Rostand, Rattigan. In novels think Dumas, Hugo, Verne, Sabatini, Fleming, Rand. In comics think Falk, Foster, Barks, Lee.

What is imagination? 

As the old expression regarding pornography goes: You know it when you see it. But that expression though reasonable is not very helpful, so let’s work towards defining this vital word in storytelling and all human arts and productive endeavours.

Do you have a definition of Imagination? Remember, if you can define something you are in more control of it.

Imaginative fiction writing is original, fresh, and exciting. But why?

Because it contains ideas,characters, goals, and story complications (and so forth) that are new and inventive. Imaginative writing has twists, scenes, and solutions to story obstacles, for example, that stun the audience with their ingenuity. When one encounters the truly imaginative in writing one leans back and goes, “Wow! That is so clever. What will happen now?!” Imaginative writing engages and excites us.  

What is the opposite of imaginative writing? Stale, cliched, old, dull, boring. That is, writing that is stale,cliched, old, dull, boring.

Definition of imagination

Let’s now define imagination.

It’s not original for me to state that imagination flourishes when a creative has developed his or her mind tointegrate things. Imagination is a type of integration. Imagination is the mental ability to join known things into new and inventive ideas, observations, technology, and art works, and so forth. Consider the following literary examples of (in their day) great imagination. That is, the fusing of things into newexciting combinations:

—James Bond is a ruthless killer and a great lover.

—Hercule Poirot is a French speaking Belgian with a brilliant mind and rampant egoism who focuses his detecting work on psychological clues while being a dapper dresser.

—Indiana Jones is an archaeologist/scholar and an adventurer/fighter with a distinctive whip and hat, and very attractive to the ladies.

—Star Wars created a new exciting world of distant inhabited planets, wookies, princesses, Darth Vader, a likeable roguish hero, and an innocent young man learning to be his best self.

—Scrooge McDuck is Scottish-American zillionaire skinflint with a crabby personality, high sense of adventure, paranoia about thieves, and a dominating lust for money.

—Ayn Rand created hero stories founded on the themes of reason and egoism.

—Ibsen created great dramas of individualism about key issues of the day.

—Shakespeare created larger than life determined giants who speak the most beautiful poetry.

And so on.

Actionable Creative Takeaway

Now, I don’t expect me, you or anyone today to be as creative as Barks, Fleming, Rand, and Shakespeare, for example, but don’t be ordinary! Don’t settle for the easy and the quick. When you are creating your characters, conflicts, events, and worlds you must press your selfto be new and different. Shock and electrify us with your clever integrations of known things into new amalgams. Create gold, not lead.

Creativity can be developed.

The key to increasing your creativity/imagination is to practise training your mind to integrate things. For example:

--Look for similarities in things.--Look for relationships between things.--Analyse the nature/ingredients of things.--Think about things to join together in fun or new ways.--Think about ironic or opposite things to unite.

You do want to be original, fresh, and exciting in your storytelling don’t you? The best and most successful creatives won’t settle for anything else! All great stories express imagination. If you want to be a top-level writer, producer, executive, director, or novelist you must be imaginative. A reward of being imaginative is to create new worlds and art. 

Do you want to learn more about boosting your creativity especially re your new story? Write to me.

Also read:

About this greatly inventive scene fromclassic literature.

About how Star Trek was original.

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                             “Stories are ideas in action!”

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