I do so love writers. People with boiling imaginations with the gift of turning those ideas into words on a page, to be turned into films. I’ve been a huge fan of the annual Academy Awards show — the Oscars — since forever (don’t ask how long). Yesterday, I watched Anora on Prime Video. Outstanding! Playboy son of a Russian oligarch meets an exotic dancer. Blew me away. If you’ve not seen it, watch it. It won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress, and with no doubt Mikey Madison earned it!
Tonight I watched Conclave, also on Prime. I won’t give the story line away but this thing ends with a twist that nobody would expect. I’m laughing as I write this. I hadn’t read the 2016 novel by Robert Harris which was adapted into the movie by Peter Straughan, so it was a complete surprise. It had a huge emotional impact upon me. The creative process is figuring out how to combine two dissimilar ideas into a coherent, entertaining whole.
I asked Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, to whip up some thoughts on the process, and Grok wrote:
A writer can take two dissimilar ideas and weave them into a plausible, unexpected story by leveraging the interplay of contrast, connection, and creativity. The process involves finding a subtle thread—or inventing one—that ties the ideas together, while leaning into the absurdity or surprise of their pairing to keep the reader engaged. Here’s how it works:
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Identify the Core Essence of Each Idea: Strip each concept down to its fundamental qualities. For example, take “quantum physics” (complex, intangible, rule-bending) and “Victorian tea parties” (formal, social, ritualistic). On the surface, they’re worlds apart, but both involve systems—whether the laws of the universe or the etiquette of high society.
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Find or Forge a Bridge: Look for a shared element, however faint, or create a narrative device to link them. Maybe it’s a quirky character—like a physicist obsessed with tea—or a bizarre situation, such as a tea party where guests unknowingly manipulate quantum events with their gossip. The bridge doesn’t need to be obvious; it just needs to hold up under scrutiny by the story’s end.
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Embrace the Unexpected: Lean into the oddity of the pairing to subvert expectations. Nobody expects a prim Victorian lady to accidentally collapse a wave function by dropping a sugar cube, but if the writer grounds it in enough detail—like the clink of porcelain and the hum of subatomic particles—it starts to feel plausible. The trick is to treat the absurdity seriously, not as a joke.
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Build a Narrative Arc Around the Collision: Use the tension between the ideas to drive conflict or revelation. Perhaps the tea party is a front for a secret society controlling quantum experiments, and the protagonist, a nosy debutante, unravels it sip by sip. The story’s momentum comes from how the dissimilar ideas rub against each other, sparking something new.
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Ground It in Human Experience: Readers will buy into the wildest mashups if the emotions or stakes feel real. Love, betrayal, curiosity, or fear can anchor the narrative, making the leap from teacups to quantum entanglement less jarring.
For instance, imagine a story blending “deep-sea fishing” and “medieval alchemy.” A grizzled fisherman hauls up a strange, glowing fish that turns out to be the key to the Philosopher’s Stone. His quest for a big catch becomes a descent into arcane obsession, with salt-crusted nets tangling with alchemical sigils. No one sees that coming, but if the writer commits—describing the fish’s eerie shimmer and the fisherman’s growing madness—it’s believable.
The beauty lies in the writer’s confidence. Don’t apologize for the weirdness; sell it with vivid prose and a tight internal logic. Readers love being blindsided when the pieces click into place in a way they never imagine.
Well said, Grok! God bless writers.