Brainstorming is a great way to bring your inner voice to the surface. During brainstorming, you let all the ideas flow without editing or judging. You write down or say every idea that pops in your head — no matter how crazy it may be. This creative-thinking technique works because it helps to free you from fixed ideas. The intent is to get every possible idea out on the table. You can try brainstorming on your own — with a notepad and pen — but brainstorming almost always works better with a group because you can build on each other’s ideas.
After the idea fountain has run completely dry, stop. Give everyone a final opportunity to add something to the list. Be sure that everyone has articulated every idea that they could possibly have. Then take a little break to let people shift gears from the free-wheeling creative session to the practical job of narrowing the list to a manageable number of ideas. When you are ready, look through your list of ideas and choose the ones that you believe will best yield results during the negotiation process. This is best done by the same group that came up with the list in the first place. That way everyone is heard. No one has sour grapes later when his or her ideas don’t show up on the final list. And most importantly to the welfare of the group, an idea can be fleshed out and explained if the brief expression of the idea wasn’t clear to everyone. Sometimes a good idea doesn’t seem so good until it carries a bit of an explanation.
Take a look at Oliver Stone’s JFK. The film is one big brainstorming session. The film follows New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) and his obsessive investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It’s like a collage of all the books and articles, documentaries and television shows, scholarly debates and conspiracy theories since 1963. We know the events by heart: the grassy knoll, the hobos in dress shoes, the parade route, Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw, the three shots, the eyewitness testimony, the gunpowder tests, Jack Ruby, the wrong shadows on the photograph, the Zapruder film, and on and on. Garrison and his team attempt to put all the pieces of the puzzle together to build a case against Clay Shaw, a respected businessman who is linked to various conspirators. Brainstorming sessions abound between Garrison and his team. It all builds up to the final courtroom scene. Consider the pivotal scene in which Garrison and his investigators sit in a restaurant, brainstorming facts and opinions for the trial. The scene is intercut with shots of the alleged fabrication of the infamous Time-Life photo of Oswald holding a rifle. The rules of brainstorming are clearly demonstrated in this scene. Everyone contributes; some ideas are shot down, while others are praised. As the group breaks up in frustration, the trajectory of the other sequence lands the photo on the cover of Life magazine. Was the photo fabricated? Who knows?
