Forum:The Creative Process

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I've been going through some of the articles on this site recently, and I've seen a bunch of creative and hilarious works. I was wondering how you guys manage to be so original? I have trouble being creative, and I wanted to know if there was any thing you guys (and girls) did that give you these great ideas, and any advice any of you have for thinking of unique ideas for articles. Dogbert99 03:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

• I check out the news very often. Sometimes truth is stranger than...awwww, f#^k it. Anyway, I plagarize a news item then rewrite it, revise it, revamp it, rethink it...eventually it barely resembles its original state. By the time I'm done, even I don't remember the original news feature. --AnalAlien 21:28, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
  • That's a good tip. For instance, I browsed Google News and found an item about Nigeria having a national census. This spawned UnNews:Nigerian census finds millions of rich, desperate princes, one of my better contributions. Always do research! Always! The more information you know, the better (and funnier) your misinformation will be. -- » Sir Savethemooses Grand Commanding Officer ... holla atcha boy» 00:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
• Generally, the process begins by finding someone else's idea, then copying it verbatim. Then, we destroy all traces that the original work ever existed. This may be a load of shit, but others claim that their inspiration comes from some Internet Reality Cabal, or something... I dunno, the chatroom might be worth looking into. I personally am too busy deleting evidence to go there, myself.--<<>> 05:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
• What I usually do is look at photos of my family, think of the first nasty word that comes into my head, and then just put the letters W-I-K-I in front of it. Only takes a few seconds, and it works every time!  c • > • cunwapquc? 05:38, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
• The best tip I can give you is to always write it down. That's why the POST-IT note is your friend. I also find that it helps to work naked. This way, whenever I have an idea, I can write it down on a POST-IT note and stick it to my head. When I can't see any more, I usually open a window and scream out random and incoherent ideas into the street. If someone, an old lady for example, points at me and laughs, then I know I am on to a winner, and I begin writing an article. It's good fun and strangely liberating. I hope this helps and good luck. I also find that it helps to work naked. --Sir Hardwick Fundlebuggy (Bleat) 06:58, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
• Thinking, using your brain, knowing not to be redundandt, knowing to be redundant, lots of that green plant stuff Spang told me was oregano, knowing to be redundant, ellipses, commas, perspective (ooh that's a good one too, write that one down) and not being redundant. Now excuse me, but I must find spang. --Witt E, 08:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Who? What? Me? Personally, I find it helps to think about Hardwick Fundlebuggy working naked. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 00:05, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• Can creativity be taught? I don't know. Truth is stranger (and funnier) than fiction through, so I suggest you try the following:

- Identify something that's stupid in life, but that people accept and take for granted without questioning it. There must be something that's crossed your mind and made you think, "Why the hell do we do this? Whose idea was it?" Point out, by example, how ridiculous it is. People like to laugh at themselves.

- Exaggerate the truth, about whatever you're writing about. Caricature done well is usually always funny.

- Relate commonly misunderstood ideas, old wives tales, conspiracy theories, prejudices, and other misinformation as the absolute truth, and back up this misinformation using other "facts" (true ones, or ones that are misunderstandings themselves).

More often than not, blurred truth is funnier than complete invention. And the ideas are all around you. Unless I'm too stressed out to recognize them (and I am, at times), I usually collect more ideas than I have time to write about, just by observing stupidity in real life and thinking, "That desparately needs to be Uncyclopedeized". ~ T. (talk) 20:24, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

• Most of my post-lobotomy maunderings are in the Prolixipaedia Manual of Comedic Writing. (Nothing survives from before my operation.) (And now I can't even have children.) But that's about technique, not inspiration. Lately I'm thinking about the Moving Target Theory: if you have one (1) idea for an article ("Barry Bonds is teh ghey! hahaha!") then you have material for one paragraph. Maybe. However, if you shift the idea as you go along and start making fun of people who THINK Barry Bonds is teh ghey...and then, somewhere, slyly slip into mocking writers who write satire about people who THINK BB is teh ghey...... Well, then you might have the makings of an actual ardickle. Yass, yass, but I cannot take credit for the idea. Take the Flying Circus sketch in which old ladies beat up on fit young punks...and then the joke slides into "babysnatchers", people dressed as babies who snatch adults...and then gangs of vicious Keep Left signs...and then (and here's where it gets all meta-fictional and deconstructive) THEN the Army Major comes in and says the skit has gotten all silly and it's not funny anymore. Poking fun at the comedy process itself, you see. Like the SNL team would read mocking news stories and then John Belushi would shout out JANE, you ignorant SLUT! and make the news team itself the butt of the joke. Fuck, I think I stopped making sense there. Blame it on the lobotomy. If any of your guys see a couple of frontal lobes laying around, they're probably mine...----OEJ 21:09, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
• Blunt-Object Head Trauma.--Sir Flammable KUN (Na Naaaaa...) 13:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
• Well, thanks for the suggestions. I'll be sure to look for things to Uncyclopediaze or however you say it... thanks again! Dogbert99 02:32, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
• DruuGsz! make me creaive3@! ~ŞÇ13:54, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
• I usually just edit existing articles, since I seem to suck at getting an idea and coming up with a full article to go with it. All I can come up with are lots of good ideas with no body or content to them. I just jot them down on my userpage in the hopes I might come up with more later. --User:Nintendorulez 00:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• Woah, people are still posting here? A semi-serious answer to your question (which others are more than welcome to edit) can be found at Humor Theory.--<<>> 04:49, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• (1) I went ahead and took some of my favorite suggestions from this article, added a few of my own, and created The_Creative_Process. Feel free to add in some new stuff. Come to think of it if I'd been cleverer I'd have called it "How to Get Ideas" or something like that. (2) It might be good to create an "ideas for articles" area where people could throw out concepts that they're not quite sure how to flesh out. Sometimes you just need that little starting kernel around which to build an entire article.InfiniteMonkey 22:41, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
• Somebody start a new forum. All the existing ones are square. Yugoslavian F 22:55, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh man ... I can't believe you aren't cruelly mocking this Dogbert99 guy but are instead just answering his question ... what is wrong with you people ? --Nerd42Talk 16:24, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Lets call it... Turning him into us or maybe infecting him. After that all cruel mocking with be twice as fun. --Vosnul 18:52, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't be jealous just because you aren't nearly as secksy as me. It's a known fact that if everyone in the world except me and their mothers were to roll all their secksiness into a giant ball of secksiness, my secksiness would trump that ball of secksiness 10 times over. That's how secksy I am. By the way, I find sniffing crayons helps. Or chasing the sugar dragon. They're both good. Dogbert99 02:23, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

I wish I still had a sugar dragon. I melted mine with my tears. --L 09:15, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

You can use the power of rainbows to bring it back! I believe in you!! Dogbert99 00:37, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

• The process of writing articles is fully documented at Uncyclomedia Foundation. With a helpful illustration. - David Gerard 10:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)