Imagination aint Creativity

By Jonathan Halls
 

IN THIS ARTICLE:

• Imagination is not creativity

• Imagination only becomes creativity when combined with critical thinking and an action plan

• Ideas need to be carried through with discipline

Some people confuse creativity with imagination. This is unhelpful because to be creative, you also need to be highly disciplined. 

Creativity is not simply about dreaming up new ideas.  It's as much about dreaming as it is critical thinking and discipline.  Nowhere was this more clearl than when I ran TV training at the BBC.

I consider having had responsibility for the BBC’s Television training a real honor.  I worked with some of the best people in the industry and I learned so much from my colleagues.

But like any job it came with its frustrations.  One of those was meeting people at cocktail or dinner parties who had notions they were, ”creative”.

Imagination not creativity

It usually played itself out like this.  Someone in their mid twenties, who I’d never met before, would amble up to me and say, “I’m a really creative television director.” 

Basically, they wanted a job.  And while they’d never actually made a TV program, they crowned themselves with the title “television director”. 

So I’d ask, “Terrific, what have you created?”  At which point would ‘umm’ and ‘ahh’.  Sure they knew how to create a program but they had not actually created one for broadcast. 

All they had done was dream up some ideas.  So rather than creative, they were imaginative.  They’d made it onto the first step of creativity but not the second or third.

Creativity = imagination + critical thinking + discipline

True creativity is more than just using your imagination.  It involves critical thinking, a skill in itself.  And it involves hard work and discipline.  Without hard work and discipline, a lot of ideas would never make it off the ground.

When I talk about discipline, I refer to it in the sense of an area of specialism.  For example, the discipline of production.  Let’s consider the discipline for a moment.

The reason TV programs are so successful is that they are produced by people who are experienced in the discipline of TV.

Script writing takes real expertise and skill.  As does planning a shoot, building a set, lighting it, setting up the sound, and coordinating all the people to make it happen on the studio floor.

You can’t just have a great idea for a TV show and expect it to happen.  All the hard work must come into play.

Discipline

Consider master spy novelist Robert Ludlum.  He created the Bourne Trilogy which was later adapted for Hollywood and starred Matt Damon. 

If Ludlum could dream up plots for novels but couldn’t write he would never have created the Bourne Trilogy.  Sure, ideas are important. But his skills and discipline were essential to create it.

Being able to write is a skill or discipline.  And to turn ideas into something successful, writers have to learn basic grammar and the art of narrative.

Great ideas don’t automatically turn into something.  They have to be created by combining imagination, critical thinking and hard work and discipline. 

This applies to any field.  Architects can’t design a house without first learning about construction methods.  Engineers need to know physics to create bridges.  Doctors can’t create miracles in the operating theatre without first learning anatomy.