Are your ideas boring?
Lately I’ve been thinking about how the way imagination—and the ways we use it—changes as we grow up. At least it’s changed enormously for me. As I’ve become old and boring I have also watched my kids inhabiting similar deep imaginative lives as I used to. Now I think a lot about upgrading my sump pump and when the car will need an oil change. And I think about stories, though not usually the same tales of hobbits and goblins and dragons that used to captivate me. Because the thing is, I keep coming around to the thought that the fundamentals are the same for us as adults—we’re not old and boring—it’s just that different things capture our focus.
Kids ask questions
A million of them. And they’re never satisfied with “I don’t know” because while they might be after information, a huge part of what they want is a hint about how they can make sense of the world.
Kids love stories
Narrative helps them string together a sense of cause and effect, of time passing, and helps them practice compassion and empathy. There’s evidence that backs this up. Some of it shows that children who are told stories, rather than being shown the stories in a picture book, will remember them better, engage their imaginations more, and empathize more.
So for you, an expert writing a book that has a purpose…
The question is this:
When does that effect wear off? The answer is that it doesn’t.
If you worry that your ideas, especially the big ones that you feel like you need to write about, are boring, remember this: the type of story that captures your mind as an adult is different from the one you loved as a kid, but it’s still a story. You may think that your imagination has diminished, but I’d wager that you employ the same powerful imagination to make sense of the complexities of your field. That’s how you find at insights and innovations. It’s how you string together information from disparate sources to ask new questions. All of that is possible because of the little stories you construct for yourself.
If you look closely at the books that have impacted you, you’ll see that it’s not just facts, information, or skills that keep your mind lit up for hours or days afterward—it’s the way they’re strung together into some form of narrative that makes them more than the sum of their parts.
What is a story, really?
A story is more than a list of things that happened. It has to be alive with rich sensory detail, a character who wants or needs something, a challenge and attempts to overcome it, and some sort of resolution. (check out a very cool way to think about your stories as described by the great Kurt Vonnegut in The shape of your story).
You’re driven to write your book for a reason. What stories will take root in your reader’s imagination and grow into the new understanding of the world—the beliefs and feelings—that will help them move forward with you?
Are you ready to write a book? Take this fun, 2-minute scorecard that I made to see if there’s anything you’re overlooking.