Ideation: Imagination at Play
Ideation is a word that gets bounced around quite a bit by creatives in discussing their workflow - how they come up with a great design, great artwork, great music - anything that requires an element of conceptualizing.
Before now I hadn't given much thought to ideation but I have always been introspective and as a little girl, I lived in my imagination almost as much as in the real world. For me, the world of pretend and fairy tales was always a fun place to hang out. Now as an author, I’m always hatching plots, creating characters, devising their goals, motivations, their little quirks, and the worlds in which they live. And I realize it's just as much fun now as when I used to dream up fairy tales as a little girl. Even in my contemporary fiction, I’m building a unique world within a recognizable one because my characters must figure out how to navigate the particular circumstances that I create, moving through them to get to the lessons they must learn and ultimately to their happily-ever-after.
“For me, the world of pretend and fairy tales was always a fun place to hang out.”
And it all comes back to my imagination – ideation, my thoughts tumbling over each other in unrestrained glee:
Why does my heroine react like that?
What is there in his past that gives him this worldview?
How can I untangle this particular plot snag to get from where I am to where I want to be?
I have found it to be one of the more relaxing parts of the process. I’m working on my story but it doesn't feel like work because I'm just allowing my mind to wander over where I want to go next in the story. If you can imagine a cat playing with a ball of yarn…... the cat isn't stressed out about getting the yarn untangled. He's just tapping that ball and yeah, he may enjoy pulling that string free but the game is still pretty darn good just the way it is. I have learned to patiently and effortlessly ‘bat’ around ideas because there comes a point when creative flow takes over and amazing things start to happen.
I met the term ‘creative flow’ in Meghan March’s Writing Amazing Fiction and it felt like an ‘aha’ moment because it perfectly describes my experience. The more I write, the more confident I become that this ephemeral muse is always going to come alongside and untangle difficult plot points. It is going to introduce me to previously unknown facets of my main character’s personality so I can write well-rounded, believable characters. That can only improve my writing because what do contemporary romance readers want if not to have a completely immersive experience in a world where the plot and character motivations are plausible but their shenanigans still manage to surprise and amaze? That’s what I want as a reader, anyway.
The more I embrace the concept of dedicated time for what is truly imagination at play, the more I realize its true value. It’s not time spent goofing off or procrastinating (although there’s lots of that too 😊), it is time spent ruminating on my work in progress and that is a valid part of the creative process.
I’m not an intuitive writer at all, I’m somewhere in the middle – I like to plot my novels before drafting begins but I also want to go on a journey of discovery as I write. This is my favorite part of drafting – the unexpected turns that a rogue character can make fill me with absolute delight.
So whether I’m lying in bed at the end of the day or out for a walk, I'm just letting these thoughts roll around in my mind. I try not to push them in a particular direction, or try to fit them into a predetermined plot mold even though I know in broad strokes what I want of my characters and where I want the novel to end up.
“This is my favorite part of drafting – the unexpected turns that a rogue character can make fill me with absolute delight.”
I truly believe that by leaving that room for my imagination to play, my writing can only get better. Because if it surprises me then it will likely surprise my reader. And that's where good writing can cross over into memorable writing, maybe even great writing.
This is where the magic happens. When you let go of, or at least loosen the tether to, your plan (or plot, in my case), it leaves creative flow room to do its thing and produce those unexpected gems. This is what ideation is for me – it is quite literally magical thinking and I do love me some magic.