Creativity faucet: Increase your creativity
创意水龙头：提升你的创造力

One of the most valuable writing skills is the ability to generate novel ideas.
生成新颖想法的能力是最宝贵的写作技能之一。

Last year, I stumbled into a technique to achieve this at will.
去年，我偶然发现了一种可以随心所欲地实现这一点的技巧。

I was watching a documentary on songwriter Ed Sheeran. In it, he described his songwriting process. It struck me as identical to the process that author Neil Gaiman detailed in his Masterclass.
我正在观看关于歌曲创作人艾德·希兰的纪录片。在其中，他描述了他的创作过程。这让我觉得与作者尼尔·盖曼在他的大师课中详细描述的过程完全相同。

Here's the thing. 这就是问题所在。

Ed Sheeran and Neil Gaiman are in the top 0.000001% of their fields. They're among, say, 25 people in the world who repeatedly generate blockbusters.
艾德·希兰和尼尔·盖曼在各自领域中位于前 0.000001%。他们是世界上大约 25 个不断创造热门作品的人之一。

If two world-class creators share the exact same creative process, I get curious. Also, while writing this, I found a video of John Mayer doing the same thing.
如果两个世界级的创作者分享完全相同的创作过程，我会感到好奇。此外，在写这段文字时，我发现了一段约翰·梅尔做同样事情的视频。

I call their approach the Creativity Faucet:
我称他们的方法为创造力水龙头：

Visualize your creativity as a backed-up pipe of water. The first mile is packed with wastewater. This wastewater must be emptied before the clear water arrives.
将您的创造力想象成一条备份的水管。第一英里充满了废水。在清水到达之前，必须先排空这些废水。

Because your pipe only has one faucet, there's no shortcut to achieving clarity other than first emptying the wastewater.
因为你的管道只有一个水龙头，除了先排空废水之外，没有其他捷径可以实现清晰。

Let's apply this to creativity: At the beginning of a creative session, see through every bad idea that comes to mind. Instead of being self-critical and resisting bad ideas, recognize that you must see them to completion.
让我们将其应用于创造力：在创造性会议的开始，看透每一个浮现的坏主意。与其自我批评和抵制坏主意，不如承认你必须将它们看到尽头。

Bad ideas, by the way, are often the clichés your brain has been overexposed to.
糟糕的想法，顺便说一下，往往是你的大脑过度接触的陈词滥调。

Once bad ideas are emptied, a surprising thing happens: better ideas begin to arrive. Here's my guess as to why: Once you've generated enough bad output, your mind reflexively identifies which elements caused the badness. Then it becomes better at avoiding them. You start pattern-matching interesting ideas with greater intuition.
一旦糟糕的想法被清空，令人惊讶的事情就会发生：更好的想法开始出现。我的猜测是为什么：一旦你产生了足够糟糕的输出，你的思维会本能地识别出导致糟糕的元素。然后它会变得更擅长避免这些元素。你开始以更大的直觉匹配有趣的想法。

This works because it is easier to look at something bad and intuit how to make it better than to make something good from scratch. The human brain isn't wired for spontaneous ingenuity, but it is wired to detect what's wrong with the world. Is the song too high-pitched? Lower the pitch. Does the story have too many lead characters? Remove a few.
这有效，因为看着一些糟糕的东西并直觉上想出如何改进它，比从头开始创造一些好的东西要容易得多。 人类的大脑并不是为了自发的创造力而设计的，而是为了发现这个世界的 问题。这首歌的音调太高了吗？降低音调。故事中的主角太多了吗？删减一些。

Neil Gaiman and Ed Sheeran know they're not superhuman. In every creative session, they simply have the discipline to allot time for emptying wastewater so that their brain can contrast the good with the bad. Neil and Ed don't worry about whether clear water will arrive. It always does:
尼尔·盖曼和艾德·希兰知道他们并不是超人。在每一次创作会议中，他们只是有纪律地分配时间来排空废水，以便他们的大脑能够对比好与坏。尼尔和艾德不担心清水是否会到来。它总是会到来的。

• Your work starts as a weak imitation.
  你的工作开始时是一个微弱的模仿。
• You identify what makes the imitation weak.
  你识别出模仿的弱点。
• You iterate the imitation until it's original.
  你不断模仿，直到它变得独特。

Most creators resist their bad ideas then never reach clear water. If you've opened a blank document, scribbled a few thoughts, then walked away because you weren't struck with gold, then you too never got past it. Ed and Neil have trained themselves to overcome this fear and laziness.
大多数创作者会抵制自己的糟糕想法，因此永远无法达到清晰的境界。如果你打开了一个空白文档，写下了一些想法，然后因为没有灵感而离开，那么你也没有克服这个障碍。艾德和尼尔已经训练自己克服这种恐惧和懒惰。

Mozart had 600 musical compositions and Edison had 1093 patents. Only a few are remembered today, and that's the point. Embrace the bad to reach the good.
莫扎特有 600 个音乐作品，爱迪生有 1093 项专利。今天只有少数被人们记住，这就是重点。接受坏的以达到好的。

See the Creativity Faucet for yourself: Here's an interview where Ed talks about this mental model. And here's a video of John Mayer showing off the Creativity Faucet in real-time. Finally, here's Neil Gaiman's reaction to this post.
亲自看看创造力水龙头：这是一个采访，艾德谈论这个心理模型。还有一个视频，约翰·梅尔实时展示创造力水龙头。最后，这是尼尔·盖曼对这篇文章的反应。

Juxtaposition is the engine
并列是引擎

The Creativity Faucet encourages us to be relentlessly generative. But it doesn’t tell us what actually makes a great idea.
创造力水龙头鼓励我们不断地产生创意。但它并没有告诉我们什么才是真正伟大的想法。

That’s where a second technique comes in: Relentless Juxtaposition. This is my term for repeatedly combining unrelated elements from different approaches to see if they fit together into something spectacular.
这就是第二种技术的用武之地：无情的并置。这是我用来形容反复结合来自不同方法的无关元素，以查看它们是否能组合成一些壮观的东西。

For example, if you’re writing a song, mix solos from different genres or mix samples from eras you’d never think would fit together. If you’re writing a book, mix fantasy tropes with sci-fi tropes.
例如，如果你在写一首歌，可以将不同风格的独奏混合在一起，或者混合你从未想过会搭配在一起的时代样本。如果你在写一本书，可以将奇幻元素与科幻元素混合。

Why? When an unexpected combo satisfyingly fits together, the result is something people haven’t seen before. This makes audiences lean in because there's an unexpected contrast, and that throws off their pattern-matching and delights them.
为什么？当一个意想不到的组合令人满意地契合在一起时，结果是人们从未见过的。这使得观众更加专注，因为有一种意想不到的对比，这打破了他们的模式匹配，令他们感到愉悦。

Here's an example of juxtaposition in action, in which musician Paul Simon writes one of the most popular songs of all time:
这是一个对比的实际例子，音乐家保罗·西蒙创作了有史以来最受欢迎的歌曲之一：

Relentless Juxtaposition teaches us a lesson about creativity: Don't recreate what you love. Instead, pursue what you wish others would have made by now. That's where there's originality.
无情的并置教会我们一个关于创造力的教训： 不要重现你所爱的东西。相反，追求你希望别人现在已经创造的东西。这就是原创性所在。

It's a subtle but critical distinction. Why? Recreating what you love is often a recipe for bland content. Consider how most TV shows are boring because writers copy-paste characters and scenes they loved from childhood. They create a patchwork of what came before. This leaves viewers feeling unchallenged and jaded.
这是一个微妙但关键的区别。为什么？重现你所爱的东西往往会导致内容平淡无味。想想大多数电视节目为什么无聊，因为编剧复制粘贴他们童年时喜欢的角色和场景。他们创造了一个过去的拼凑。这让观众感到没有挑战和厌倦。

Instead, pursue what you wish your genre would finally attempt. Where could it go that you've never seen?
相反，追求你希望你的类型最终尝试的东西。它可以去哪里是你从未见过的？

Here's a technique for thinking through this: Watch a film you love then stop halfway to ask, “What’s the most mind-blowing second half that this film could have?” The answer you most enjoy will be what you haven't seen others do.
这里有一个思考的技巧：观看一部你喜欢的电影，然后在中途停下来问：“这部电影可能会有什么最令人震惊的下半部分？”你最喜欢的答案将是你没有看到别人做过的。

Originality isn't necessary
原创性并不是必要的

Whereas many creators wait around for inspiration to strike, the Creativity Faucet and Relentless Juxtaposition hold you accountable to continually progressing through a creative process.
许多创作者往往等待灵感的降临，而创造力水龙头和无情的并置则让你对持续推进创作过程负责。

A word of caution, however: Don't let the pursuit of originality freeze this process. Because there’s another goal that's more important than originality anyway: resonance.
然而，值得注意的是：不要让追求原创性冻结这个过程。因为还有一个比原创性更重要的目标：共鸣。

Resonance is relatable storytelling that takes over the viewer's mind. They're forced to grapple with the idea. It's expressing an idea so raw and honestly in today’s sensibilities that people fixate on it.
共鸣是一种引人入胜的叙事方式，它占据了观众的思维。观众被迫与这个想法进行斗争。它以如此真实和诚实的方式表达一个思想，以至于人们对此产生了执着。

Consider how films like Gladiator and The Shawshank Redemption tell clichéd stories as old as time. But they've resonated more than most other films for decades.
考虑一下像《角斗士》和《肖申克的救赎》这样的电影是如何讲述陈词滥调的故事，这些故事古老如时光。但它们在几十年来比大多数其他电影更能引起共鸣。

Why?  为什么？

Because high-resonance storytelling takes precedence over originality. After all, you’ll rarely change someone’s life by telling them something new, but you can deeply affect them by saying something they know to be true so well that it compels them to finally confront it.
因为高共鸣的叙事优先于原创性。毕竟，你很少能通过告诉他们一些新东西来改变他们的生活，但你可以通过说出他们知道是真实的事情如此深刻地影响他们，以至于促使他们最终面对它。

And here's where it all ties together: novelty and resonance together are phenomenally powerful. They're what lead to breakthrough stories that capture everyone's attention.
而这就是一切结合的地方：新颖性和共鸣 结合 是极其强大的。它们是导致突破性故事的原因，这些故事吸引了每个人的注意。

So I look at it like this:
所以我这样看待它：

Storytelling engagement = Novelty x Resonance
讲故事的参与度 = 新颖性 x 共鸣

The more novelty and resonance, the more people can't shake the experience. And that's what we're all here for.
新奇和共鸣越多，人们就越无法摆脱这种体验。这就是我们在这里的原因。