Teaching Creativity

There was a time when I considered teaching English in Japan. One of the warnings I read was to prepare yourself with a completely different kind of student. The student who cares the most will speak the least. They will be silent and observe. And at thought point, I asked myself, is it possible to teach people who are greatly rational and logical how to be creative? And I believe I can.

1. Write down any sentence you want.
If the person is very rational, living in the real world, and doesn't want to be creative, then you will expect a pretty boring sentence.
I ate tuna at lunch.

2. Choose one word and replace it with a word that has nothing to do with the original.
The word should be the same category, like you can't replace a noun with a verb, but other tan that, it is good. In fact, just trying to find two words that have nothing to do with each other is a fun enough game.
I ate televisions at lunch.

3. Make sense of the situation.
In the example, a person eating a TV is pretty crazy. What is actually going on here? Unless there is a way to swallow whole televisions, or if it is a very small set, then maybe I dismantled it and am eating each part separately.
I ate televisions at lunch, piece by piece.

4. Create a past.
What could possibly have happened to create the current situation? There are many strange, absurd, bizarre scenes that happen in the real world, but they all make sense when you know everything that happened before it. Create the history that makes your scene make sense.
I bet the class at recess that I could eat anything. Stacey said, "what about the TV". I ate televisions at lunch, piece by piece.

5. Create a future.
Every action has a consequence. The crazier a scene you have, the more interesting the consequences have to be (unless you are spectacularly good and being spectacularly bad).
I bet the class at recess that I could eat anything. Stacey said, "what about the TV". I ate televisions at lunch, piece by piece. I didn't win the bet, but I did miss the test.


I will not guarantee that everything you write will be gold, but I will guarantee it will be creative. You will have created something that previously did not exist. If that's not creative, I don't know what is.