---

How does So What? work?

Beginning from a Specific Idea (i.e. the action or state that is under examination) the question So What? is posed repeatedly.

Each time this question is answered General Creative Ideas are generated each of which provides a potential direction of travel for the narrative - building from the Specific Idea and moving forward towards the creative objectives.

---

Illustration: So What?

The following is an example of a passage from The Tailor developed through using the described Specific Idea as a starting point and repeatedly asking he question So What? as a means of development of the narrative.

The Specific Idea:

The establishment of the tailoring business, Threads of Arrow Street.

*****

So What?

The family is available to offer the advice and support to ensure the success of the business.

So What?

There is a tension between the confidence that Anjali’s upbringing has instilled, and the desire of her uncle to offer advice.

So What?

There exists a tension between taking advice and learning for yourself. Success often comes from the lessons of the past, but creativity comes from the precariousness of the new.

So What?

The analogy that describes how the tough lessons of the past blend with the attractive opportunity of the new.

*****

Passage from The Tailor develop using the General Ideas derived from responses to the question So What?:

Anjali was torn by her uncle’s regular visits to Threads of Arrow Street.  Design is about an independence of thought.  She greatly valued her uncle’s support, but his doctrine was always that of firm conformity to the structured business of repair and alteration of valued garments. ‘You will wear yourself out if you continue just to work hard,’ said her uncle on one of these visits.

‘You need to work clever, not just hard.  The difficulty, for a tailor, is in finding and serving a customer. That is always hard.  The opportunity is to get each returning customer to spend more and more, that is clever.’

Anjali was sewing on a button with a bobbin of black cotton for the twentieth time that week, when suddenly her thoughts broke loose and began to run around in front of her.

‘I am in my soul a designer,’ said her thoughts, ‘who sees this grey town and its grey people and longs to bring form, colour and texture to every square and side street.’

She wound the thread tightly around the black button and tied the end firmly beneath the shirt collar.

‘My uncle has the strength and resistance of Herdwick wool.  But this wool of the sheep from the fells with its sturdy fibres becomes softer when it is spun with the wool of the alpaca.  I must find that soft alpaca wool and spin it with my uncle’s firm and resilient business sense.’

Top