The Green Eggs and Ham model of creativity

Hi there writing friends, Chris here,

A while ago now I won a short comedy film prize. I had to submit a script, and the prize was to have the film made. I knew at the time that films are expensive things to make (no great surprise there), and producers sifting through the entries would be keeping one eye on the quality of the submissions and another eye on their wallets.

So I gave myself some constraints - not that I called them that at the time. The film would be no longer than eight minutes and it would be set in a cafe with just two people chatting over some soup - the cheapest format I could think of. Once it was out in the world I went along to a lot of film festivals. Many of the films there had been made with large Arts Council grants and no time limits at all. The shorter films made on a shoestring were almost always better. Less bloated, more concise - funnier too.

Constraints can work. But do they always?

I’ve started reading ’s Inside the Box, a book all about constraints. In it he writes about the Green Eggs and Ham hypothesis, a 2016 study led by Catrinel Haught-Tromp. In 1960, Theodor Geisel - Dr Seuss - was given a challenge by his publisher: write a compelling children’s story using fifty words or fewer. Constraints are counter-intuitive like that. We tend to assume the creative process should be open-ended and free wheeling - that to generate ideas or do our best work we need lots of time and space. The Green Eggs and Ham hypothesis suggests the reverse is often true. Just like Dr Seuss, Haught-Tromp’s studies found people given writing exercises were significantly more creative when given constraints - write a rhyme using these particular words - than when they weren’t.

Constraints give people focus. They fire up the more effortful, less autopilot part of the brain - what psychologists call ‘System 2’ thinking. Constraints make us work harder and that effort makes the results better. When we have too many options or too much time, we default to the obvious and the easy. Haught-Tromp writes about something called the ‘streetlight effect’, or the ‘drunkard’s search’. A drunk has lost his keys and is searching for them under a streetlight. A policeman joins him and asks if he’s sure this is where he lost them. No, the drunk says - he lost them in the park. He’s looking here because this is where the light is. When a task calls for creativity, having no constraints can push us toward the same streetlight: the familiar, well-lit, easy-to-search place. Not because we like constraints - we don’t, they feel harder - but that feeling can be misleading.

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I was going to end this post here, extolling the universal benefits of constraints. But something happened while I was writing it that made me pause; namely that Bec and I had a session on our new book proposal. We’ve been working through a template that gives us a daily prompt: ‘write the overview’, ‘define the audience’ and so on. Today’s prompt was ‘write the title and subtitle’, and it came with an instruction - brainstorm for no longer than 15 minutes. A time constraint, in other words.

So, that’s what we did. We tried one 15-minute brainstorm. Nothing. We tried another. Still nothing that we liked. And another still. So, we changed tack. We just sat with it for three hours - coming up with names, moving things around, feeling tired, drinking coffee, going back to the drawing board, starting again. We were about to call it a day but suddenly, we landed on a title that we liked. It was one of those slightly fizzy everything-slotting-into-place moments you might have had yourself. They don’t happen very often, but when they do, they feel great.

⚡Read more about the characteristic of the aha moment: On breakthroughs

What’s the takeaway? You might reasonably ask…

We have a mantra you’ve probably heard us say many times if you’ve been around us for a while and it’s this: productivity is personal. When it comes to getting the writing done, there’s no one approach that works for everyone.

The possibly underwhelming takeaway from this post is that constraints work amazingly well - apart from when they don’t. Sometimes they’re just what you need to make the System 2 brain roll up its sleeves and come up with novel connections. While other times, constraints are well… just too constraining. Sometimes, you just need to sit with a problem or an idea for a long, long time.

All I know from this experience is that on that particular day, considering that particular topic, constraints didn’t work. I have no neat explanation as to why. But it did end up with a fizzy feeling and a book title and subject we’re both excited by.

(And no, I’m not telling what the title is yet.)

Keep writing,

Chris

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