JOE GUPPY’S CREATIVITY QUIZ
QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS
1) What is the best mindset for a CREATIVE WORK SESSION?
a) Always keep in mind your ultimate goal: success!
b) Make each working session fun, meaningful or both.
c) Never start a session without a long stretch of undisturbed time in a quite space at a time when you feel inspired.
Answer: b) Make each working session fun, meaningful or both.
Writing my memoir was the biggest and most difficult project I’d ever attempted. It helped to tell myself that each work session had value to me, whether the book was ever completed or published. Each time I worked on it, I was either enjoying myself, learning something, or gaining a deeper understanding of my experience, and often all three.
The other two answers are, for me, counter-productive.
2) What is the most important rule for generating ideas and text through TIMED WRITING?
a) Make it legible so you can read it later.
b) Be thoughtful.
c) Keep your hand moving.
Timed Writing, which I first learned about through Natalie Goldberg’s book, Writing Down the Bones, through a workshop at Hugo House, is a terrific tool. You start a timer for a given amount of time—5, 10, 15 minutes—and “keep your hand moving.” No getting bogged down looking for the perfect words, no excuses like “I don’t have any ideas.” Just keep the words coming, even if you are scrawling out: “I can’t think of anything to write right now.”
3) What stops creative people from FINISHING a work?
a) The Inner Critic.
b) “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
c) Fear of success, fear of failure, or both.
d) All of the above.
Answer: All of the Above.
4) What are the advantages of a CLUSTER MAP over a LIST?
a) A cluster map encourages spontaneous flow of ideas.
b) A cluster map is more linear.
c) A cluster map keeps ideas in their right categories.
d) A cluster map reveals unnoticed connections.
e) both a) and d)
Answer: Both a) and d) A cluster map is a brainstorming technique in which ideas, images or
concepts, are represented by a word or two, which are written down at random on a large sheet of
paper. Each word or phrase is circled. Later lines can be drawn, representing connections
between the ideas, which at first may have seemed unrelated.
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5) Why do so many creatives, despite all the awesome devices and software out there, still GO
ANALOG, with white boards & post-its, cork boards & index cards?
a) The analog methods are physical objects in three-dimensional space, and we are
embodied beings.
b) Most creatives have a Luddite streak.
c) They read that’s how Loren Michaels has produced Saturday Night Live for four
decades.
Answer: a) The analog methods are physical objects in three-dimensional space, and we are
embodied beings.
Moving physical objects, like post-its, around on a large open space, like a white board, helps us
visualize and organize the big picture in a way screens never can. Especially helpful with
complicated narratives.
6) What do film-makers Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood have
in common?
a) Nothing. Their films are completely different genres.
b) All four were born in America.
c) Their best films were made with the same set of collaborators.
d) They all demand total control over the process, especially the actors.
e) They are all older men. Your references date you, Joe.
Answer: c) Their best films were made with the same set of collaborators.
In our culture we tend to worship individual achievement, but, while I agree that each of these
film-makers have deep and amazing bodies of work, their best films could be seen as being made
by a TEAM, of which the director is the captain. Generally, directors with outstanding teams
have no problem giving lots of credit, and expressing lots of gratitude, to their collaborators. For
all creatives, this means—team up! There is nothing at all wrong with working solo, but, if at all
possible, find your people and make your work as a team in some fashion.
7) Who said this? “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated
simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
a) Science fiction & fantasy writer Lois McMaster Bujold
b) Jazz musician Charles Mingus
c) Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
d) Essayist Joan Didion
Answer: b) Jazz musician Charles Mingus
I like that this was said by a musician, and that it also applies to writing, visual art, dance, etc.
etc.
8) What does it mean to “table a script?”
a) Gather actors around a table and read through it, to determine the acting beats.
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b) Postpone producing it.
c) Gather writers around a table and revise it, line by line.
d) Lay out the latest script version on a table for cast and crew to pick up.
Answer: c) Gather writers around a table and revise it, line by line.
I learned this technique when writing for television in Los Angeles. Individual episodes were
written by one or two people, but no script went to production before being meticulously
reviewed by the entire writing team, sitting around a conference table, reading through the script
numerous times, as led by the head writer. We would track the overall plot line, then examine the
A-story, B-Story, C-Story; track each character to check dialog, make sure no character or story
was abandoned; add new jokes. A powerful tool.
9) In general, which of these is the best way to get exposition into a narrative?
a) Anytime the exposition needs clarification, have an omniscient narrator break in with
an explanation.
b) Explain everything with a receding text crawl, opening with someting like—“A long
time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
c) During a conflict between characters.
Answer: c) During a conflict between characters.
Orienting your audience as to basic who, what, when and where near the beginning of your
narrative work can be challenging. The first two options could work, but are kind of obvious and
clunky. Working in exposition during character conflict is a great way to lay in basic info while
keeping the story moving. Special note: option b) has been rather successful in one case--$69.4
billion total gross for the Star Wars franchise.
10) What is the best way to keep a reader / audience engaged in a narrative?
a)Build in lots of action sequences.
b) Put questions in their mind they want to know the answer to.
c) The writer should always stay one step ahead; too much clarity of the premise equals boredom.
Answer: b) Put questions in their mind they want to know the answer to.
These questions keep your readers turning the page or your audience watching your play or
video. “What happens next?” is the most basic question.
Comments on other answers: a) Action sequences, although exciting, actually stop plot development until they are resolved.
c) The basic premise should be clear almost immediately, although it’s great if the stakes get higher, mysteries are revealed. But don’t leave your audience wondering about basic information, or that will take up their brain space.