Lateral thinking is a term that was coined by Edward De Bono, a physician and author, in 1967 that involved the process of looking at problems under a new light to come up with creative and indirect solutions to them. Thinking outside of the box, essentially.
This manner of thinking can be adapted to most situations someone may face in their day to day lives, from an office environment to something less creatively restricting like art. It’s all about attaining information that may not have been immediately obvious or possible to gather through traditional means.
In this post, I’m going to focus on how lateral thinking can be applied to storytelling and the writing medium as a whole.
Applying Lateral Thinking to Writing
To get a better understanding of this process, I would first like to look at René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images or This is Not a Pipe. 1929.
This painting subverts the traditional thinking pattern and teaches us to look beyond the literal meaning of what is in front of us.The caption, “This is not a pipe,” breaks the relationship between words and images and forces us to abandon rationalism – creating new and different interpretations of the painting . This is not a pipe, it is a painting of a pipe. Or rather, this is not a pipe but a photo of a painting of a pipe. Maybe it’s referring to the material components that make up the pipe or the canvas it has been painted on.
When it comes to storytelling, we can take lateral thinking and the message behind Magritte’s painting and use it as inspiration for various themes and plots by applying the thought process to everyday objects. Take a seashell for example: what starts as a souvenir from the beach, may suddenly become a vessel for the ocean – because of what we hear when we put close to our ears – a communicator to a different world or a voice on our shoulder tempting us with strange words. Not only can lateral thinking be used as an instigator for these ideas, but it can also be used to spur them on and nurture them throughout the rest of the story. Now that your protagonist has found this strange shell that has suddenly begun speaking to them, where does your story go from there? How are they going to react? Who are they going to tell? You can use lateral thinking to come up with unique and interesting ways to resolve these plot points.
Putting it to Use Myself
In an attempt to get a better grasp on the concept, I applied lateral thinking to a random word (design) to see how many interpretations and meanings of it I could find. To do this, I spent a day in the city collecting photos of various objects that I felt fell under the term.
Unfortunately, it seems that these benches were designed to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them. 
Architectural design. 
Fashion design. 
Fashion design. 
Artistic design. 
Artistic design. 
Graphic design. 
Graphic design. 
Graphic design/character design. 
Graphic design. 
Game design/graphic design. 
Graphic design/character design 
Graphic design/character design 
Locomotive design. 
Automotive design.
Towards the end of the exercise I had started to break the word into two distinct categories: efficient design and aesthetic design. The former consisted of technical representations of the word, such as architectural and engineering design, that are made to complete a particular task as efficiently as possible. With the latter made up of things that still fulfil a certain purpose but with a greater emphasis on being visually appealing (fashion/art design for example).
To contextualise this from a writing perspective, these two interpretations of the word could then be expanded upon to form the baseline of a story idea. In pitting the two ideas against each other, I could perhaps tell a dystopian story that entails the gradual decline of creativity in favour of a rigid, bland and more efficient society. Maybe it’s the other way around, and the story depicts a world where people have become consumed by frivolity and self-indulgence – structure and discipline thrown to the wind.
I tried this thinking exercise once more, but this time on a single object with a focus on coming up with story ideas.
This is a photograph of me and my grandma when I was baby and, naturally, is very personal to me. Thus lending it significance and meaning that is great to pick apart with lateral thinking. This time around I broke my thoughts up into two columns:
Literal
- It is simply a photograph me and my Grandmother. Or it is a digital photo with a framed photograph of us.
- It is the materials that make it up: velvet, wood, metal, glass and paper.
Lateral
- It is a time capsule. Storing a frozen memory from eighteen years ago.
- It is a window into the past, a different timeline merely seperated by glass.
- It is a different version of us. Existing in another time.
- The frame is a prison. Trapping us.
Witchers and Witches 