Believe it or not, this post isn’t going to be about Lego bricks.
I rewind back 35 years and remember building with Lego. The interesting and creative thing about Lego bricks is that they were just basic shapes, but you could assemble them in any way you wanted- sometimes in ways they weren’t intended. But the only limit to what you could build is how many bricks you had, and your imagination.
Today, there are every kind of Lego kit, with all kinds of special pieces, decals, and instructions. You don’t need any creativity to buy a Harry Potter or Star Wars Lego kit and assemble it. It just requires following instructions, and patience.
In the modern “Creative World” there are tons of people cranking out content, but there are precious few people that understand how building blocks of creativity work.
Let me explain:
Music, as we know it today, is made up of building blocks. There are certain fundamental parts to a song that you can assemble different ways, but in the end, they’re what makes something a song. Things like tempo, time signature, instrumentation, key, melody, lyrics, and such are uniquely identifiable parts of a song, but don’t make a song by themselves.
Writing is much the same way. If you’re writing a fiction story, say a sci-fi novel, there are certain things it’s going to have in it. Dialogue, main characters, secondary characters, plot, setting, and so forth. You can change out any of these elements and it becomes a different story- but it’s still recognizable as a story.
If you examine any one of these building blocks by itself, it doesn’t make up a complete work. But they’re necessary to make the whole.
Here’s the interesting part: You and I could take the exact same structure “blocks” as it were, and still make completely different songs. We could take the same ideas, setting, and characters, and still write totally different books.
Have you ever heard of a “remix?” It’s where they take someone else’s song, and rearrange the parts of it in a new way- sometimes adding elements of their own- to create a “new” song. We see this in things like FanFic, or movie adaptations of books and comics, too.
If you’re stuck at a creative standstill, you can go back to the basic elements- the “building blocks”- and rearrange them into something new. You don’t have to create blocks from scratch!! It’s perfectly acceptable to take the things you know, and put them together in a way that’s unique to you. That’s still creative.
Using common elements to make something new isn’t a new idea. It uniquely represents your take on those common elements. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
And another thing: you can study music, literature, and art by breaking it down to its most core elements. Once you’ve done that, you can rebuild it, or “remix” it into something that’s uniquely your own.
I’m a big fan of what’s called “Live Looping.” It’s when a single musician builds a song by layering parts one at a time until there’s a complete, recognizable song. They’re able to do this despite only playing one or maybe two parts at a time, so it requires them to know the song’s individual building blocks.
The very best Live Loopers can build a song very quickly, without it seeming boring or repetitive. They know which blocks can be shortened, they practice switching instruments quickly, and they know how to multi-task to distract you from the fact that they’re building layers while you listen. It’s truly an art form.
If you wanted to get into Live Looping, you’d need to learn how to disassemble a song to its core parts, and then be able to reproduce them individually. You learn through trial and error which parts need to be accurately reproduced, and which ones can be shortened or simplified, and still not lose the song’s feel. You want to make the songs as complete as possible with the minimal amount of effort.
A lot of what I like about music is breaking it down to its core parts, and this is also part of why I like Live Looping. You get to hear the song being built one thing at a time! As a multi-instrumentalist, it sparks all kinds of ideas in my brain.
These same principles apply to writing. You learn how to dissect a story into the core parts, the parts that define it as a story. Once you can do that, you can either reuse or replace parts of it, and create something new. And just like Live Loopers, you want to be able to tell which parts are important, and which ones can be shortened or skipped, and not “break” the story or lose the reader.
In writing, there are “Story Templates.” In songwriting, they use song templates all the time. If you know ahead of time which parts of the process won’t change, then why not save them and reuse them later? It saves time and effort. Using templates is not cheating. And it’s not the same as following instructions to build a Death Star Lego kit.
Think of templates as collecting your basic building blocks ahead of time, laying them out, and taking a snapshot of them. You don’t necessarily have to use all the blocks, or even use them in the same order. But it’s a good place to start when you’re stuck.
So what about you? Do you understand the basic building blocks of your craft? Could you distill them down the bare essentials and still have a complete work? And if you do, can you reassemble them into something new?
The answer is: Yes!