by Chris McGinty
Last week, I talked about recently discovering one of the “tools” (huh huh, yeah heh heh) I used for writing prompts was no longer in existence. It was a really dumb app that had user submitted what if dilemmas. Many of them were juvenile and that was where the fun of answering the questions came in. Trying to seriously answer absurd questions while also leaning into the absurdity made me laugh.
A while back, I came up with another form of prompt. Take two random words, search various media, and write my thoughts about the media. I wondered to myself, “Is this a satisfactory replacement for the absurdity that was What If…?” My simple answer is that it works in a similar developmental space, but I don’t think it’s the same thing. Let’s dig a little further.
Where they are similar is that each demand that I narrow my focus to the information before me. To quote a phrase often used by Mark Rosewater, “Restrictions breed creativity.” When you’re staring at a blank page and need an idea, it’s often better to limit what you can do to cut down on analysis paralysis. If you can write anything you want, you might not find a starting point. If you say, “It’s Saturday and on Saturday when I have no ideas, I write about either concerts I’ve attended or childhood memories,” now you have fewer choices. I do a lot of such things to focus my thoughts when I sit down to write, which is why I like these kinds of prompts.
Where they are different is the way it directs my mind to think about the prompt. The What If… prompts were pretty straightforward because they asked one question and everything in the blog post was in service of the answer(s). With the hodge podge post that I did it felt a little more all over the place, because there are multiple inputs, and I have to decide if they relate to each other in any way. I’m not saying that I would have never written a fully serious What If… post, but the questions would lend themselves to more absurdity. I think the hodge podge posts might have more emotional range to them.
I have considered searching the internet for archived What If… questions. If I can find any, I guess asking this question is a moot point. I think it answers a broader question though: “Is format important?” I think it is. You simply don’t get to the same thoughts using one format as you do when using another.
Chris McGinty is hodge podge blogger who seems to do everything according to whim. That’s not why we’re called according to whim. It’s maybe our mission statement though.