I read once about a creative writing teacher who would help out struggling students in the following way. When a student couldn’t think of something to write about, the teacher would suggest three words, and tell the student to write a story that tied together those three words.
Invariably this did the trick. Armed with those three words, students would turn in wonderful and inventive stories.
Here’s the interesting part: The teacher had a method for choosing the three words entirely at random. Of course he wouldn’t tell the student that the words were randomly chosen.
I wonder whether this idea can be applied to other fields. Suppose somebody is stuck on anything — perhaps modeling a kitchen, or writing a song, or painting a picture.
What if somebody were to give them three elements to work with, chosen at random, and task them with creating something that combined those elements. Imagine how many wonderful creative new ideas might start to flow!