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Sparks

Karen Grunberg

Inventing the Extraordinary

Sometimes we are so used to conceiving things the way they always have been that we don't let creativity take its toll. Leaving the cynical but well-known world of New York and coming to the completely extraordinary world of Japan has taught me that things aren't always what they seem. This month's exercise is about pushing the limits. It's about inventing.

People become great not by accepting things the way they are, but by seeing their potential. Elevators have been around since my birth and they function pretty much the same way everywhere I've ever been. I press a button marking the direction in which I want to go and a while later the elevator comes and opens its doors. I never thought more about this process, so it came as quite a surprise when I came to Japan and realized the elevators don't function the same way. Well, to be more correct, they have some additional functionality. In Japan, when you stand around a bank of elevators and press the 'up' button, a light goes off on top of one of the elevators indicating that the lit elevator will be the next one to arrive. Basically, when you press a button, you find out which elevator door is going to open before it actually gets there. It's nothing amazing, but something practical to make life a bit easier.

Japan is full of these intricate inventions. Why not make up some of our own?

It's time to get cozy. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and make yourself comfortable somewhere. It can be in your house, out in the hallway, in the garden, or by a coffeehouse. Anywhere, as long as you are cozy. You settled? Okay, now we begin the game of inventions.

Look at the ordinary objects surrounding you. Look carefully. Stare. Spend several minutes just looking at one specific object. Then, start taking notes on your pad about that object.

Let's take a chair. Here's everything I could think about a chair:

• It's made for people to sit on.
• It comes in many shapes and sizes.
• Some people step on them to reach high places.
• Kids use them to play musical chairs.
• Some are made to be aesthetically pleasing while others are made for comfort.
• We have them almost everywhere; at homes, in the kitchen, conference halls, hospitals.
• Benches can be considered a primitive form of chairs.
• Sofas may be seen as an elongated form of chairs.
• Most are static but some have rollers underneath to make them easy to move.
• Some can be folded and put away.

I must say I can't think of much more to say about chairs, but I hope you get the idea.

Now it's time to let your imagination flow.

• Chairs could have parts to extend them, like tables where you can open them and add more pieces of wood so more people can sit and have dinner.
  • You would extend the chair sideways for a person who is on the plump side.
  • You might elongate it for someone who wants to sit with her legs on the chair.
  • You could make the seat higher for a little girl whose height needs to reach the table.
• Chairs would also fit together so that if I have to spend the night waiting for someone at the hospital, I can connect them to make a bed, or to use when unexpected overnight guests come.
• Chairs could become tables. (Do we already have that?)
• We might have chairs covered with lots of papers for kids to feel free decorating them with crayons.

This is all I can come up with in 10 minutes. Considering I picked a well-evolved piece of furniture, I still came up with some ideas.

Besides potentially helping you patent an extraordinary new invention and making you filthy rich, this exercise can be directly applied to your writing. I'm sure Science Fiction writers do this often when they have to create a future world that none of us have been to. For writers of all genres, having an inventive mind allows you to put things outside their ordinary usage. What if a funeral house made money on the side by operating as a cheap hotel, using coffins as beds? Think Bond. Think Mission Impossible.

Add a little spice to your stories. Invent extraordinary plots, extraordinary settings, and extraordinary characters. But, most importantly, make sure to have fun!

P.S.: This article celebrates my first anniversary with t-zero!

Readers' ideas:

This is a new section where I will share ideas sent to me by people who have read my columns and have been kind enough to email me their sparkling ideas.

This month's ideas are from Kimera Brown. (the following are excerpted from her email)

• The idea is to make the character possess the opposite of the expected trait
  • For example, make a baker unhappy/angry/disturbed rather than the jolly chum we expect him to be, or slim instead of the more plump image we have in our minds.
  • Consider a delicate man the foreman of a construction crew; try to imagine what situations where he might be challenged, by whom and what his response to that might be and let your mind wander from there.

• Think about news items about human behavior that caught your eye recently or ones that you have always remembered.
  • What was remarkable about that article?
  • Did you think to yourself, how or why could any person DO that? And write paragraph or two about the kind of person that would do that, where they came from, what their parents were like, where they grew up, etc. Exhaust the character. He/she may star in your next plot or subplot.
  • Finally, do some writing exercises which are simple character sketches. Choose a single adjective and begin by writing "The most (fill in the blank with adjective or phrase) person I ever knew was..." and continue to write about that person, using their physical description, traits or qualities that they demonstrated, times when you witnessed this behavior, reasons why they were this way (or your best guess), etc. You may find dialogue that flows or a real story that grows from these. Even if you don't you will know more about characters and what motivates them or be able to incorporate qualities of this person into a future character.

• Go somewhere like a restaurant or other populated area and just sit and eavesdrop (don't turn around) and write everything that is said, exactly the way it is and after a while you will have a page of realistic sounding dialogue (you'll be amazed at what you hear).
  • Now try to imagine what they were wearing, how they knew each other, why they are there, and describe the environment (use the five senses).
  • Who dominated the conversation?
  • Who was passive/submissive?
  • What could their motivations be?
  • Their background?
  • Did they sigh, smoke, tap their feet, sing, mutter, etc? What does this say about them?
  • Now weave this information into the dialogue using no more than two sentences following or preceding the dialogue between the characters and you will get a better idea of how to incorporate backstory or details into dialogue.

While Kim told me that she doesn't want to take ownership of these ideas, I still want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for sharing these great sparkles with our readers.

If any of you have more sparkling ideas, please mail them to me at karenika@wvu.org. I will make sure to pass them along to our readers.