I’m really glad I read your rule because it immediately struck me as contradicting another rule I’ve carried around for years—one I picked up from a college class basically designed to schmooze people into buying whatever you’re selling them:
“Use ‘yes, and’ instead of ‘but.’”
The idea there was something about never letting someone feel contradicted if they’re not obligated to pay you attention. Imagine you’re trying to impress a seasoned fur trader, relying entirely upon their generosity while they quietly assess whether some random scrub truly has a new way of skinning a cat. You’re tiptoeing through their goodwill, so you nod along: “Yes, and here’s my slightly modified approach…”
Or maybe it wasn’t about selling at all, and I’m remembering wrong. Maybe it was about voicing criticism constructively in situations where you’re graded for criticizing ideas you don’t care about, forced to feign diplomacy by a professor who barely knows you. You’d say, “Yes, and have you considered [your idea is terrible], what do you think?”
But reading your piece made me realize something deeper—I’ve been carrying around this rule without even fully understanding the context or reasoning behind it. Kind of like how, when I was a kid, my parents couldn’t afford daycare, so during summers my siblings and I stayed with my mom’s friend Anna, a teacher with summers off. Anytime we’d challenge one of her rules (“Anna, why do we have to do this?”), she’d reply with a curt, “Because I said so.” Or we’d scrape our knee, complain, and she’d swiftly assess: “Are you bleeding? No? You’re fine.” She was wonderfully terse that way.
Reading your rule was like that moment when you realize you’ve internalized something purely “because someone said so,” without fully understanding why. It pushed me to reconsider what’s behind the drywall of everyday communication—those hidden wires of language we seldom notice until someone shines a flashlight on them. It’s good to be reminded now and then to check the wiring and really think about why we speak or write the way we do.
Thanks for making me reflect—really enjoyed this one.
Good point! Thank you for that. I agree that if you’re trying to connect with people then you shouldn’t use “but” when explaining their point of view or trying to explain yours. People will get minorly defensive. In articles or books, it’s different because they’re not attached to the ideas since they’re being explained for the first time (to some degree).
Haha, totally—I see your point. Honestly, people getting defensive is probably natural and even a good thing in a weird, evolutionary kind of way. It’s like a reminder that, deep down, we’re still animals interacting. A little tension or defensiveness might just mean we both had some distant ancestor who got aggressive enough during a confrontation 450,000 years ago to survive—otherwise, we probably wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.
Ironically though, in the moment, I never actually think that way. Usually, I just retreat into full puppy-dog mode and hide in a corner for four days.
Anyway, it’s really cool engaging with your reply—I honestly never expected I’d be able to communicate directly with you since you’re kind of famous to me. So, thanks for noticing me, Senpai!
How do you know you are alive? This is where the nuance begins. Are you one of the fools that thinks the answer is obvious, self evident, a question that doesn't need answering?
The problem with the paragraph above is the discussion about each sentence, each word in each sentence and the unity of the paragraph as a whole could be expanded to fill a mighty volume, a true Magnum opus without providing answers to the questions implied by the use of this punctuation symbol (?).
So many books, articles and videos offer “click bait” as an opening gambit but fail lamentably when it comes to conclusions despite fine prose. The quality of the presentation may be excellent but ultimately a well constructed sentence is often beauty without substance.
So to conclude with an answer to the opening question the words to Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence provide a worthy explanation.
And... to respond to your post, your words are wise but may not lead to valuable lessons, just ones that are much easier to read, therfore providing you/us with a successful post.
I took your rules to heart AND I've reread this several times BUT I notice you dropped a dreaded carrot at the end: "Perhaps one day I’ll share." You're killin' me, Smalls!
#2 is the tip of a very profound and deep iceberg that stretches into nearly all of the terrain covered by politics and sociology. If you extend the implicit notions of human nature behind it to how you interact with everyone in your life, you would probably end up arguing a lot less and being much more convincing toward people who disagree with you.
Advice from a dude who has been presented directly with the final concluding Truth, and hasn't recognized it.
You are in a state of delusion due to the programming/learning you have willingly engaged in through academia. The whole fucking system is based upon incorrect "facts." You are unable to see that the empire has no clothes.
Some day the suffering will be so great that it will break you. Maybe then you'll take me seriously.
Since (it would seem) reality (or our experience of reality) is complex, multi-connected, holistic, indeterminate or sometimes even indeterminable, multi-layered, emergent, sometimes apparently contradictory, mysterious, relative to our perspective... why should we "prescribe" that the ordinary language should be precise, rigorous, the terms unambiguously determined?
There already exists a language that is highly formal and precise, unequivocal and unambiguous, and I would say unbeatable in this respect: mathematics.
Ordinary language, precisely in its being indeterminate, blurred, fluid, evocative, is well suited to reflect what in reality is not precise, unambiguous, determined.
Sometimes poetry and irrational (or pre-rational) leaps of intution can be the right way to try to "knock down" some barriers or grasp some deep truth.
Niels Bohr: We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can only be used as in poetry."
Albert Einstein: The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you do not know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way.
Admittely I don't write on substack, but perhaps my thought about writing in general might be of interest.
Out of habit I am writing this before I finished reading what Curt wrote in his article above, sry about that, I often just feel the joy of wanting to write, and I know I have to put some words down, else I risk forgetting them, if the ideas are complicated.
I thought it was funny when the creators of South Park was mentioned in this substack article because I remember watching this interview with them (maybe same interview you referenced, unsure) some time ago about this, and point is I often kept remembering that part of the interview even years after. This brief point they made about sort of how uninteresting it was to try tell a creative story by just try keep adding a plot segment as I understand it. I only have some vague memory of this interview today.
Eleven things comes to mind with regard to my own thoughts about creativity in writing and such (heh, yes, I had to keep editing this particular sentence to change the count up to eleven).
1) A lesson from a military commander in a audiobook about strategy, what a strategy is (and implicitly what having a strategy isn't). A comic artist or a movie director might build up to a satisfactory punch line if the genre is something humorous, but a military commander would want something specific from having a strategy, so that it involves having a deeply meaningful goal in a specific sense. So a strategy and a punchline are similar I think, because the military commander in this audiobook made the point that a strategy would be about achieving a goal but not just by wanting to complete a goal, but precisely for knowing WHEN that goal has been a success, or when it became a failure, presumably to avoid trivially moving the proverbial goal posts around. Most people use the word 'strategy' in a rather pointless way I think, especially politicians; for them it seems, making a point about having 'a strategy' is having an activity plan, as if you were a kid at school or something, or bullshitting people about the rational as for why they are really doing something right now.
2) A philosophical lesson I think I learned by my own: That making a point goes well with making an explanation about something that the point was about. However, to make a point about making a point, or, to offer an explanation about making an explanation, would be a red flag for me. So I'd argue that clarity is key with ideas and with how they are meaningful, to avoid ending up with rhetoric and a multiplicity of meaning, intended or not (usually not intended I would think).
3) I participated in a writing course a long time ago, and I remember that the two teachers had each their advice about writing paragraphs. One advice was to keep paragraphs consistent, to avoid carrying over the meaning from one, over to the other. The other advice was about being precise and being poingant in ones writing, to avoid the text being open to differernt interpretations (which would be undesirable).
4) Being direct. References should ideally be made explicit. Ideally never using words like "this" and "that" to make a point or to explain something, but instead flesh out the meaning with a direct reference, like a name, meaning, a context, or a place. Also, any use of any acronyms ought to be explained at least once, before repeating the acrynym in a text.
5) Being honest. If everyone started their sentences, written or spoken, beginning with "I think that.." this would easily become boring and monotome if repeated, if for the sake of only being honest about onest thinking, as opposed to making sweeping generalizations about some topic or whatnot. Perhaps a more sensible rule, would be to at least make use of such an honesty when involved in some controversial statement. I think the world would be a better place if people simply started their sentences with "I think that..", instead of jumping to conclusion and making sweeping generalizations. Admittedly, sometimes it can be fun to make generalizations, but one has to be careful I think. Accusing other people of hate, easily risks being hate as such.
6) Taylor Mali (teacher/comedian) on youtube has a fun video from way back, about being poignant. In a funny video he says: "So I implore you, I entreat you, and I challenge you, to speak with conviction, to say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it, because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply question authority, you gotta to speak with it too."
7) Somehow there's something about Hegel and Heidegger I wanted to point out (both afaik known briefly as German idealism). I remember someone in a chat made the point about how he/she thought Heidegger tended to circle around a point in his writing, to make it memorable I guess, and I think that makes good sense, as if elaborating about wanting to make a particular point. I like the idea this kind of writing, because I have to convince myself first something, and might as well pass that onto others reading it later. As for Hegel (not the early, but late Hegel), I think there's something interesting about the intuitive inconclusiveness about the meaning of "everything" so to speak. 'Meaning' as such, becoming really an anachronism in ones search for meaning about something written in particular, where the reader has to rely on his/her initiative to fill in missing information, or question/doubt what is written. As if this initiative itself was like an "absolute spirit". None of that ultranationalist rubbish.
8) Stephen King (the famous novelist) has a book on writing. Iirc, he makes the point of just keep reading and keep writing, presumably to learn new things, with no hard ruleset for the writing experience, as I vaguely remember it. Comic book artists like Scott McCloud and Will Eisner has books about writing and storytelling as well. Will Eisner iirc used to work with creating/drawing instructional material for the military I think it was, before becoming a comic book artist.
9) Styles of writing. So, there is the novella, the essay, non-fiction literature, uh, not sure what the rest is called. Point is, whatever one has to say, is imo best received by a select audience ideally of your own choosing, and so choosing the ideal format/style would be a good idea.
10) As for writing and literature, I can recommend Yale professor Paul Fry's youtube lecture series about "Introduction to Theory of Literature" (hours longs, always more fun if you already know some of this stuff, so it isn't sounding totally alien at first).
11) Proofreading your own text. This advice was also mentioned in the writing course I mentioned above somewhere. It would be rude to a reader, if the author didn't even check for own spelling mistakes, or, half thought out sentences. And proofreading shouldn't take long anyway, yet, heh, I sometimes make the mistake of not proofreading 100% of the text I've been writing. Sometimes and in my experience, the repeated editing of a text introduces bizarre syntax errors and typos. My keyboard also is wonky to type with sometimes. Also bad habits with a keyboard coming into play. Some keys worn out, because of applying rubbing alcohold during the covic-19 pandemic.
I'll go back up the webpage and finish reading the rest of the article now.
Btw, I think there is a meaningful difference between 'tension' and 'suspense'. It isn't clear to me what this might mean in writing, but it sort of makes sense to me, with regard to storytelling/music/movies. Might be applicable to writing as well perhaps. Maybe related to having an interesting "punchline" in writing perhaps.
I sometimes find myself awkwardly sending yet another email to the other side of the planet, to unsuspecting physics/math professors, about math/physics stuff with my ideas. I find it more important to just try clarify a set of ideas within a short span of time of writing, as opposed to maintain some kind of style or rigor, over a longer time as if wanting to write a big comprehensive text document. Clarity of an idea is more important to me, than going out of my way to try convince someone about something. This might ofc backfire, if the explanations aren't good enough, or if they aren't elaborate enough. Hope is that the ideas end up being so obvious that, they become easy to remember and understand in depth. Repeating details all the time would take too much time/work.
Oh, one more thing, I've learned, or come to understand that: Anyone that tells me stuff without trying to convince me of something, obviously isn't making an argument and so, can sort of be easily ignored. The vagueness of "boiler plate language" would be an example of such.
----------
Oh, oh, oh, I want to lastly mention my matrix of creativity. Never used it myself lol, but I've always been fond of the general idea of it.
Think of a matrix with nice squares. Left column are "tools". Right column are "goals". Center column are "most concrete ideas".
Plot --> most concrete idea <-- Story
Event --> most conrecte idea <-- Meaning
Mood --> most concrete idea <-- Feel
The idea here is to bounce ideas around and end up with a concrete idea in the center spots, to create an artistic whole, like say a movie script, or potentially anything, for a harmonious whole where things make good sense (as per narrative).
I guess the appeal, would be that, you could focus on any of the tools, or any of the goals, or even something most concrete, and make the best out of these ideas as they become layered with other ideas.
The motivation for this matrix of creativity, was to avoid making a mess out of ones own initial ideas, when mixed with other ideas again. No fun having to alter and change ones initial idea that one was so fond of, and ultimately becoming estranged to it, simply because you (I) changed the initial idea into something unrecognizable. So I guess if having to make a compromise with various ideas, one better know the reasons for doing so, or risk being alienated over time, or maybe loose one's motivation for doing something.
Hi Curt. 👏👏👏 Amaizing, i Love it.
I’m really glad I read your rule because it immediately struck me as contradicting another rule I’ve carried around for years—one I picked up from a college class basically designed to schmooze people into buying whatever you’re selling them:
“Use ‘yes, and’ instead of ‘but.’”
The idea there was something about never letting someone feel contradicted if they’re not obligated to pay you attention. Imagine you’re trying to impress a seasoned fur trader, relying entirely upon their generosity while they quietly assess whether some random scrub truly has a new way of skinning a cat. You’re tiptoeing through their goodwill, so you nod along: “Yes, and here’s my slightly modified approach…”
Or maybe it wasn’t about selling at all, and I’m remembering wrong. Maybe it was about voicing criticism constructively in situations where you’re graded for criticizing ideas you don’t care about, forced to feign diplomacy by a professor who barely knows you. You’d say, “Yes, and have you considered [your idea is terrible], what do you think?”
But reading your piece made me realize something deeper—I’ve been carrying around this rule without even fully understanding the context or reasoning behind it. Kind of like how, when I was a kid, my parents couldn’t afford daycare, so during summers my siblings and I stayed with my mom’s friend Anna, a teacher with summers off. Anytime we’d challenge one of her rules (“Anna, why do we have to do this?”), she’d reply with a curt, “Because I said so.” Or we’d scrape our knee, complain, and she’d swiftly assess: “Are you bleeding? No? You’re fine.” She was wonderfully terse that way.
Reading your rule was like that moment when you realize you’ve internalized something purely “because someone said so,” without fully understanding why. It pushed me to reconsider what’s behind the drywall of everyday communication—those hidden wires of language we seldom notice until someone shines a flashlight on them. It’s good to be reminded now and then to check the wiring and really think about why we speak or write the way we do.
Thanks for making me reflect—really enjoyed this one.
Good point! Thank you for that. I agree that if you’re trying to connect with people then you shouldn’t use “but” when explaining their point of view or trying to explain yours. People will get minorly defensive. In articles or books, it’s different because they’re not attached to the ideas since they’re being explained for the first time (to some degree).
Haha, totally—I see your point. Honestly, people getting defensive is probably natural and even a good thing in a weird, evolutionary kind of way. It’s like a reminder that, deep down, we’re still animals interacting. A little tension or defensiveness might just mean we both had some distant ancestor who got aggressive enough during a confrontation 450,000 years ago to survive—otherwise, we probably wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now.
Ironically though, in the moment, I never actually think that way. Usually, I just retreat into full puppy-dog mode and hide in a corner for four days.
Anyway, it’s really cool engaging with your reply—I honestly never expected I’d be able to communicate directly with you since you’re kind of famous to me. So, thanks for noticing me, Senpai!
Appreciate the thoughtful exchange!
Thank you!
> But you probably know most of these rules
I see what you did there ;) thanks for the write up I definitely got something out of it and didn't intuit these rules before reading this.
;)
How do you know you are alive? This is where the nuance begins. Are you one of the fools that thinks the answer is obvious, self evident, a question that doesn't need answering?
The problem with the paragraph above is the discussion about each sentence, each word in each sentence and the unity of the paragraph as a whole could be expanded to fill a mighty volume, a true Magnum opus without providing answers to the questions implied by the use of this punctuation symbol (?).
So many books, articles and videos offer “click bait” as an opening gambit but fail lamentably when it comes to conclusions despite fine prose. The quality of the presentation may be excellent but ultimately a well constructed sentence is often beauty without substance.
So to conclude with an answer to the opening question the words to Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence provide a worthy explanation.
And... to respond to your post, your words are wise but may not lead to valuable lessons, just ones that are much easier to read, therfore providing you/us with a successful post.
I took your rules to heart AND I've reread this several times BUT I notice you dropped a dreaded carrot at the end: "Perhaps one day I’ll share." You're killin' me, Smalls!
#2 is the tip of a very profound and deep iceberg that stretches into nearly all of the terrain covered by politics and sociology. If you extend the implicit notions of human nature behind it to how you interact with everyone in your life, you would probably end up arguing a lot less and being much more convincing toward people who disagree with you.
Advice from a dude who has been presented directly with the final concluding Truth, and hasn't recognized it.
You are in a state of delusion due to the programming/learning you have willingly engaged in through academia. The whole fucking system is based upon incorrect "facts." You are unable to see that the empire has no clothes.
Some day the suffering will be so great that it will break you. Maybe then you'll take me seriously.
If I wrote how I think, it would be close to unintelligible, so that advice can only take me so far...
Maybe. But not necessarily. It depends.
Since (it would seem) reality (or our experience of reality) is complex, multi-connected, holistic, indeterminate or sometimes even indeterminable, multi-layered, emergent, sometimes apparently contradictory, mysterious, relative to our perspective... why should we "prescribe" that the ordinary language should be precise, rigorous, the terms unambiguously determined?
There already exists a language that is highly formal and precise, unequivocal and unambiguous, and I would say unbeatable in this respect: mathematics.
Ordinary language, precisely in its being indeterminate, blurred, fluid, evocative, is well suited to reflect what in reality is not precise, unambiguous, determined.
Sometimes poetry and irrational (or pre-rational) leaps of intution can be the right way to try to "knock down" some barriers or grasp some deep truth.
Niels Bohr: We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can only be used as in poetry."
Albert Einstein: The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you do not know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way.
Admittely I don't write on substack, but perhaps my thought about writing in general might be of interest.
Out of habit I am writing this before I finished reading what Curt wrote in his article above, sry about that, I often just feel the joy of wanting to write, and I know I have to put some words down, else I risk forgetting them, if the ideas are complicated.
I thought it was funny when the creators of South Park was mentioned in this substack article because I remember watching this interview with them (maybe same interview you referenced, unsure) some time ago about this, and point is I often kept remembering that part of the interview even years after. This brief point they made about sort of how uninteresting it was to try tell a creative story by just try keep adding a plot segment as I understand it. I only have some vague memory of this interview today.
Eleven things comes to mind with regard to my own thoughts about creativity in writing and such (heh, yes, I had to keep editing this particular sentence to change the count up to eleven).
1) A lesson from a military commander in a audiobook about strategy, what a strategy is (and implicitly what having a strategy isn't). A comic artist or a movie director might build up to a satisfactory punch line if the genre is something humorous, but a military commander would want something specific from having a strategy, so that it involves having a deeply meaningful goal in a specific sense. So a strategy and a punchline are similar I think, because the military commander in this audiobook made the point that a strategy would be about achieving a goal but not just by wanting to complete a goal, but precisely for knowing WHEN that goal has been a success, or when it became a failure, presumably to avoid trivially moving the proverbial goal posts around. Most people use the word 'strategy' in a rather pointless way I think, especially politicians; for them it seems, making a point about having 'a strategy' is having an activity plan, as if you were a kid at school or something, or bullshitting people about the rational as for why they are really doing something right now.
2) A philosophical lesson I think I learned by my own: That making a point goes well with making an explanation about something that the point was about. However, to make a point about making a point, or, to offer an explanation about making an explanation, would be a red flag for me. So I'd argue that clarity is key with ideas and with how they are meaningful, to avoid ending up with rhetoric and a multiplicity of meaning, intended or not (usually not intended I would think).
3) I participated in a writing course a long time ago, and I remember that the two teachers had each their advice about writing paragraphs. One advice was to keep paragraphs consistent, to avoid carrying over the meaning from one, over to the other. The other advice was about being precise and being poingant in ones writing, to avoid the text being open to differernt interpretations (which would be undesirable).
4) Being direct. References should ideally be made explicit. Ideally never using words like "this" and "that" to make a point or to explain something, but instead flesh out the meaning with a direct reference, like a name, meaning, a context, or a place. Also, any use of any acronyms ought to be explained at least once, before repeating the acrynym in a text.
5) Being honest. If everyone started their sentences, written or spoken, beginning with "I think that.." this would easily become boring and monotome if repeated, if for the sake of only being honest about onest thinking, as opposed to making sweeping generalizations about some topic or whatnot. Perhaps a more sensible rule, would be to at least make use of such an honesty when involved in some controversial statement. I think the world would be a better place if people simply started their sentences with "I think that..", instead of jumping to conclusion and making sweeping generalizations. Admittedly, sometimes it can be fun to make generalizations, but one has to be careful I think. Accusing other people of hate, easily risks being hate as such.
6) Taylor Mali (teacher/comedian) on youtube has a fun video from way back, about being poignant. In a funny video he says: "So I implore you, I entreat you, and I challenge you, to speak with conviction, to say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks the determination with which you believe it, because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker, it is not enough these days to simply question authority, you gotta to speak with it too."
7) Somehow there's something about Hegel and Heidegger I wanted to point out (both afaik known briefly as German idealism). I remember someone in a chat made the point about how he/she thought Heidegger tended to circle around a point in his writing, to make it memorable I guess, and I think that makes good sense, as if elaborating about wanting to make a particular point. I like the idea this kind of writing, because I have to convince myself first something, and might as well pass that onto others reading it later. As for Hegel (not the early, but late Hegel), I think there's something interesting about the intuitive inconclusiveness about the meaning of "everything" so to speak. 'Meaning' as such, becoming really an anachronism in ones search for meaning about something written in particular, where the reader has to rely on his/her initiative to fill in missing information, or question/doubt what is written. As if this initiative itself was like an "absolute spirit". None of that ultranationalist rubbish.
(to be continued)
8) Stephen King (the famous novelist) has a book on writing. Iirc, he makes the point of just keep reading and keep writing, presumably to learn new things, with no hard ruleset for the writing experience, as I vaguely remember it. Comic book artists like Scott McCloud and Will Eisner has books about writing and storytelling as well. Will Eisner iirc used to work with creating/drawing instructional material for the military I think it was, before becoming a comic book artist.
9) Styles of writing. So, there is the novella, the essay, non-fiction literature, uh, not sure what the rest is called. Point is, whatever one has to say, is imo best received by a select audience ideally of your own choosing, and so choosing the ideal format/style would be a good idea.
10) As for writing and literature, I can recommend Yale professor Paul Fry's youtube lecture series about "Introduction to Theory of Literature" (hours longs, always more fun if you already know some of this stuff, so it isn't sounding totally alien at first).
11) Proofreading your own text. This advice was also mentioned in the writing course I mentioned above somewhere. It would be rude to a reader, if the author didn't even check for own spelling mistakes, or, half thought out sentences. And proofreading shouldn't take long anyway, yet, heh, I sometimes make the mistake of not proofreading 100% of the text I've been writing. Sometimes and in my experience, the repeated editing of a text introduces bizarre syntax errors and typos. My keyboard also is wonky to type with sometimes. Also bad habits with a keyboard coming into play. Some keys worn out, because of applying rubbing alcohold during the covic-19 pandemic.
I'll go back up the webpage and finish reading the rest of the article now.
Btw, I think there is a meaningful difference between 'tension' and 'suspense'. It isn't clear to me what this might mean in writing, but it sort of makes sense to me, with regard to storytelling/music/movies. Might be applicable to writing as well perhaps. Maybe related to having an interesting "punchline" in writing perhaps.
I sometimes find myself awkwardly sending yet another email to the other side of the planet, to unsuspecting physics/math professors, about math/physics stuff with my ideas. I find it more important to just try clarify a set of ideas within a short span of time of writing, as opposed to maintain some kind of style or rigor, over a longer time as if wanting to write a big comprehensive text document. Clarity of an idea is more important to me, than going out of my way to try convince someone about something. This might ofc backfire, if the explanations aren't good enough, or if they aren't elaborate enough. Hope is that the ideas end up being so obvious that, they become easy to remember and understand in depth. Repeating details all the time would take too much time/work.
Oh, one more thing, I've learned, or come to understand that: Anyone that tells me stuff without trying to convince me of something, obviously isn't making an argument and so, can sort of be easily ignored. The vagueness of "boiler plate language" would be an example of such.
----------
Oh, oh, oh, I want to lastly mention my matrix of creativity. Never used it myself lol, but I've always been fond of the general idea of it.
Think of a matrix with nice squares. Left column are "tools". Right column are "goals". Center column are "most concrete ideas".
Plot --> most concrete idea <-- Story
Event --> most conrecte idea <-- Meaning
Mood --> most concrete idea <-- Feel
The idea here is to bounce ideas around and end up with a concrete idea in the center spots, to create an artistic whole, like say a movie script, or potentially anything, for a harmonious whole where things make good sense (as per narrative).
I guess the appeal, would be that, you could focus on any of the tools, or any of the goals, or even something most concrete, and make the best out of these ideas as they become layered with other ideas.
The motivation for this matrix of creativity, was to avoid making a mess out of ones own initial ideas, when mixed with other ideas again. No fun having to alter and change ones initial idea that one was so fond of, and ultimately becoming estranged to it, simply because you (I) changed the initial idea into something unrecognizable. So I guess if having to make a compromise with various ideas, one better know the reasons for doing so, or risk being alienated over time, or maybe loose one's motivation for doing something.