Week 4 Lab: Favorite Ted Talk (Creative Writing)

 Ted talks on creative writing and style

The first video, "The power of creative constraints" really appealed me because it explored examples of creativity in difficult science and engineering tasks such as landing a rover on the surface of Mars. Furthermore, the video discusses cases where an invention seems like it fails to complete the task it was made to do, but with a fresh look, it can turn out to be a perfect solution for an unrelated problem. One example given was: Alexander Fleming accidentally contaminated a Petri dish, but rather than tossing it out, this mistake led to the revolutionary discovery of the antibiotic penicillin.

Image Source, Several great inventions came from what seemed like a mistake at first. Many great things in writing can come from mistakes as well!

I know this may not seem like it has much to do with creative writing, but I saw a very interesting connection. Similar to making a "mistake" in science, when we write stories we may end up disliking something we wrote, or get stuck, Rather than throwing this material out or getting frustrated, we may just need a new creative outlook on the situation. Perhaps a segment of the story doesn't fit well with what you are writing - rather than deleting it, maybe save it for the moment and you will write a future story which it fits perfectly into. Or, perhaps we are stuck and do not know how to continue with the story. Try to come up with a fresh perspective, even get a friend's opinion. Be open to taking the story in a direction you never would have thought originally. With creativity, there are more possibilities for a better story!