How To Think Through Ideas

One major challenge every writer (or person who has attempted to write, or any creative for that matter) has faced is thinking through an idea. You have the beginning and oftentimes you have the ending; you know where you need to get to, but you just don’t know how. The golden path linking those two points doesn’t present itself. Then you start to doubt yourself, you think that maybe the idea wasn’t that good after all. Maybe it’s not worth pursuing. Ultimately, wouldn’t your time be better spent doing something else? Those are self-defeating thoughts. They serve only to kill the creative spirit. Shift them to the back of your mind.

There are techniques that have been proven over decades, centuries even, that can help you get out of your rut. In my time at Nsibidi Fables, I have employed some of these techniques myself actually. The first technique is something I got from the Don Draper character, portrayed by Jon Hamm, on the AMC television show, Mad Men. It goes, “thinking about it deeply, and then let it go”. I use this constantly. I think about the two ends of the idea deeply, I hold on to it tight in my mind, examine it from many angles and then I just let it go. I go about my day and eventually something comes to me.

Another idea is to build a mind map where ideas build on each other. This can be written down as well. And it involves following the logical build of the ideas incrementally until you come to a logical conclusion.

These techniques are out there for any writer or creator or artist to use. Don’t let a loss of linking bridges between ideas hold you back. The world is waiting for your work: don’t let us down.