Author C. M. Skiera's Blog

Opening the Creativity Diamond: The writer's guide to creative thinking by Tony Jones, is a book designed to help writers unleash their potential. In his book, Mr. Jones reveals proven ways to 'jump-start' your brain, including detailed examples, puzzles, and brain teasers.

The book begins by explaining what the Creativity Diamond is, and how a writer can benefit from understanding it, while Chapter Two explores the Myers Briggs personality traits, and how you can understand your own traits and learn how they influence your creativity. From this foundation, Opening the Creativity Diamond goes on to provide creativity-generating techniques like brainstorming, anchoring, random stimulus, role-storming, and more. In general, the book defines a technique, explains how to use it, describes why it works, and offers tips for implementation.

A favorite example of mine is The Six Questions (or 5Ws and 1H): Who, What, Where, When, Why and How? Mr. Jones describes how you can use these prompts to make sure your writing is creatively providing your reader with the necessary information. Even if you don't answer all six questions in your scene, mentally addressing each will help you craft a coherent and robust narrative, and possibly provide you with fresh ideas you may have overlooked by not considering the 5Ws and 1H.

Although I've read many guides on the various components of writing, and a couple books on personality traits, I've not read a book combining the two into a creativity guide. I found found Opening the Creativity Diamond to be a short (50 pages), fun, educational read, and recommend it to any author searching for ways to maximize their creative potential.