Technique: CAMERA

The acronym CAMERA stands for Combine, Arrange, Modify, Eliminate, Reverse, Adapt.

CAMERA is an approach to product or service development, but it also is a surprisingly effective way of shaking things up when a purely creative work needs to find a new direction.

You can refashion and/or refine the initial Specific Idea (See Essential Glanside) or any associated General Creative Ideas by combining, (re) arranging, modifying, eliminating, reversing or adapting any component of a Specific or General Idea.

The CAMERA technique can be used to apply these different Lenses - and to take your work in a different creative direction.

Technique: Aliens

The Aliens Technique helps and encourages you to break your current mindset by imagining an event from the perspective (or 'through the lens') of a viewer who has no idea of the situation or event being described.

What would an opera look like to someone who has never heard of the concept of opera, or music, or even entertainment?

What would horse racing look like to someone who has never seen a horse?

Technique: Reversals

The Reversals Creative Technique finds a new direction for a creative work.

Any creative work will be founded on some key assumptions. These assumptions might centre on how people relate to each other, the flow of time, the order of events, and so on.

What would happen, what would change, if you were methodicaly to reverse some of the assumptions you have made?

How might these Reversals change the development and/or outcome of this creative work?

Technique: Lenses

The Lenses Creative Technique systematically focuses on enhancing creative work by viewing the work-being-produced through different lenses.

The Lenses Technique encourages the consideration of changes that could be made to add creative depth to a section of work by adopting a different creative approach or creative emphasis.

These changes are best expressed through posing creative questions.

Creative Lenses that could be considered include:

1. What background elements should the description emphasise?
2. What sense of atmosphere is being conveyed?
3. What is the overall mood of this piece?
4. From what physical or mental viewpoint should this scene be presented?

Technique: Solutions Before Problems

The development of a creative work involves taking a Specific Idea and using creative techniques to draw-out General Creative Ideas that support the expansion of the creative work outwards from its specific idea starting points.

Another approach is to work from the end point and then extrapolate back to the Specific Ideas from which your creative work could have originated.

This difficult, but highly creative technique, involves first deciding the point, situation or outcome at which you want your creative work (or section of work) to finish - before asking questions that facilitate the process of working backwards from this outcome.

The objective is to provoke highly creative ideas through imaginging where (i.e from what specific starting point) your creative work might have started and what steps might have been taken on the way.

Technique: Addition & Subtraction

The Technique Addition & Subtraction involves adding or subtracting a qualifying word or statement to/from the opening Specific Idea and then building a creative concept (i.e. a point-of-departure) using the resulting General Ideas as the starting point.

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Illustration: Addition & Subtraction

The Specific Idea:

Finally, he was forced to admit that he had never been jailed for speaking out against the state. This was a matter of great embarrassment for him.

Methodology:

Add: Context

When he arrived in the town he was brim full of energy. He was vain, combative and insolent. Around him was material he needed for his revolution. 'Here,' he thought, 'were the privileged, protecting their interest, their hands glued to the levers of power.'

Add: Identity

He modelled himself on the famed revolutionaries of the past. This was a country with a history like a rusty hinge. It resisted movement, and then jumped open a short distance when someone pushed hard enough against the closed door. He claimed kinship with every revolutionary who had ever put the shoulder to that corroded door.

Subtract: Energy

In truth he was growing tired. He had thrown himself into the role of the revolutionary. On damp, winter market days he was there on any available raised platform, highlighting inequality to the townsfolk who had gathered in the town centre in search of vegetables, wool to repair ripped clothing, and perhaps a few eggs. He was exhausted. He had drained himself in search of his own particular revolution and nobody, and particularly not the city authorities, was interested.

Subract: Spin

On the coldest day of the winter he was, at long last, detained by an officer of the law. The crime was not that of causing a revolution, but that of causing an obstruction. It was an uncomfortable silence that accompanied him into the relative warmth of an over-night prison cell.

Technique: Mind Maps

The Mind Map is the classic means of connecting two (or more) ideas in order to create further creative ideas (See Link-Ups).

The resulting interconnecting chains of ideas (See Chains) produce a visual map of a creative work providing an overview of its flow of ideas and interconnected themes.

Technique: Working Through Time

Working Through Time is a methodical means of tructuring the opening, progression, and overall creative design of a section of text or visual creative work.

Working from the starting point of any Specific Idea described by the text – imagine the answers to the following questions:

1. What will have changed in 5 minutes?
2. What will be the situation in one hour?
3. What developments will have occurred in one day?
4. What will have happened within one week?
5. What will have changed within one year?

Technique: Extreme Analogies

In the Metaphor, Simile, Analogy creative technique a comparison is made that adds a further dimension to a Specific or General Idea.

In Extreme Analogies you begin with an analogy that appears to be completely unrelated to the situation, event, theme (etc) you wish to describe, and then force connections between the analogy and your starting (specific) idea.

An Extreme Analogy from Lewis Carroll’s 'Alice In Wonderland' is defined by the question 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?':

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this: but all he said was, 'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'

The act of finding creative connections between two such apparently unrelated objects (ideas, situations etc.) provides an extreme glance-sideways leading to a creative work setting off in an unanticipated direction.

Technique: Obstacles

At the core of much of creativity is the overcoming of obstacles.

One of the reason that the brain’s Default Mode Network exists, and very possibly the reason that dreams exist, is to envisage obstacles that might occur and how those obstacles might be overcome.

One effective technique for developing a creative work is to work through the possible obstacles that might be encountered - the possible consequences of encoutering these obstacles - and the actions attendant on surmounting these obstacles.

The envisaging of obstacles - the pursuit of creative solutions within the bounds of obstacles - and the envasaging of creative responses to obstacles - are classic and effective tools of creative thinking.

Technique: Bar Stool

The Bar Stool Technique explores the 'View From the Bar Stool'.

The Bar Stool Technique takes a Glance Sideways by looking for everything that is negative, contradictory, heretical, rebellious, recusant or conflicting about a concept, an idea, a situation (etc).

The barstool viewpoint, in itself, can produce highly creative ideas.

Once, however, the barstool viewpoint is established, further creative possibilities can be imagined by reversing (taking the opposite viewpoint from) ideas generated by considering the dissident, contradictory and creative view from the bar stool.

Technique: Just Write

The Just Write Technique exploits the creative possibilities of the art of 'just writing'.

Find an opening into the passage you are looking to write - perhaps a setting - the action of a protagonist - the first line of a speech.

Begin writing and allow your mind to flow to the rhythm of the writing.

Keep writing from the starting point until you reach a point where the ideas, linked to this subject, are exhausted.

Then choose another starting point and start again.

Come back to the sentences at a later time and see how they could fit together and be further developed.

Technique: Avenues

The Avenues Creative Technique is the exploration of a place, an idea, a situation etc.

Working from an initial specific idea the Avenues Technique involves a deliberate search to find and explore interesting scenarios - leading to the development of short text passages.

The passages created should be precise, complimentary, and they must work together to build the wider text and further information the writer is wishing to convey.

In Avenues you are looking for themes, thoughts, connections (etc) that can develop into alternative or additional plot or narrative. The action of exploring such avenues - through writing a rough descriptive draft - enables the efficient exploration of creative possibilities.

The objective is to find connections that lead off from the central specific idea - and foster the investigation of destinations that these connections could take you to.

The technique also ensures that different views of a situation are explored and exploited, and avoids the temptation to resort to heavy monologues as a means of plot progression.

Technique: Focal Point

The Focal Point Technique describes the focal point of a scene - the centre of the action - the point from which the plot and narrative will be propelled forward.

The concept of the Focal Point ensures that a scene is centred around the most critical idea or theme.

The Focal Point clarifies what the scene is trying to achieve - and ensures clarity of creative objective and direction.

A Focal Point is also a useful starting point for the application of the Avenues Creative Technique.

Technique: What If?

What If? explores what would have/could have happened if hypothetical contrasting or altered circumstances were introduced.

The What If? Creative Technique generates general ideas by taking current attributes, components or situations - as described in the existent text - and using the question What If? in order to investigate alternative eventualities and outcomes.

The General Ideas generated are then used as starting points for the further advancement of the creative work.