Another way to never run out of ideas
I have a lot of ideas about ideas, folks. That's kind of my whole deal.
“How the hell do you come up with all these prompts?” — Thing I get asked about this Substack
The truth is I love coming up with ideas. I believe, on a deep philosophical level, that ideas are in infinite supply and all we have to really do is capture them. The hard parts are a matter of getting out of your way so you can listen and hear them as they bubble up and of learning tools to generate a lot of ideas quickly.
Here is one of my favorite tools: the “starburst” technique. Here’s what you do:
In the center of a piece of paper, write the problem you’re trying to solve, the topic you’re writing about, a topic you write about often, or generally a topic where you have a lot of knowledge and credibility.
From that word, draw six lines shooting off in each direction. Along each line, write the question prompt: who, what, when, where, why and how.
Next to each question prompt, let it rip, writing everything that comes to mind.
Here’s an example:
Say the thing you write in the center of your paper is “technology and behavior” because that’s a thing you know a lot about or wrote your thesis about or whatever.
Next to the “who,” you’d write a list of people related to technology and behavior. So that might be hackers, tech founders, social media companies, people who get doxxed, teens who get bullied, boomers on Facebook, tweens on TikTok and so on. Next to the “where” line, you’d write a list of where technology and behavior is an issue such as online spaces, Silicon Valley, 4chan, the workplace, etc. The “what” goes something like: bad behavior, criminal activity, abuse, productivity, innovation, growth, and so forth. Keep going with each of the question prompts until you have six little lists jutting out from the center.
From here you have two incredibly cool things you can do:
Thing one: use this to generate, easily, 100 ideas of things to write about that you already know a ton about. Keep digging into the items on your six mini-lists. Google them. Go to Google news, dig in and get to super granular topics on each. (“Silicon Valley,” for example, can yield things like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, California corporate law, tech start-ups, venture capital, unicorn companies and billionaires in space. And suddenly, you have a really, really big list of expertise-adjacent stuff you can write about. Boom. Add every item on these lists to your master ideal file. Done.)
Thing two: use this to expand the reach of topics about which you know you can credibly speak/write. Extrapolate each thing on the lists to its biggest version. So, the “who” list could be “people” at its largest and most general version, and the “where” list becomes “public spaces” and the “what” becomes “behavior” or “growth.” Connect those dots and the knowledge that makes you feel at ease writing about technology and behavior suddenly can expand to include many topics concerning behavior in public spaces, or society and growth, or workplace behaviors… and that’s a much larger pool of topics you can speak to and write about with credibility and authority, especially if you are able to draw parallels between your new, expanded topic and your original one.
(If you’re interested in really digging deeply into this technique, email me and tell me so and I will gladly email you a few real-life examples of how people I have worked with on various projects have used this technique for super awesome results.)
Every other week I create a new math essay. I have a spreadsheet with (checking count right now) 88 possible topics. I spend a looong amount of time reading thru my notes on each topic to shake up memories of why I put that topic there in the first place and then contemplating if that topic is applicable and **not** tone-deaf to what's goin' on around all of us, currently.
This Starburst approach is Exactly What I Needed. Oh hey, thanks AGAIN for this support you give to writers.