“Write anything” can be the hardest prompt

You open a blank document. You can write about anything: love, outer space, the neighbour’s renovations. You write the document title. Then you edit the title.

Now try a different task: write two lines that include an umbrella.

There is something to respond to. The umbrella might get lost, argue with the rain, or resign before Monday. You do not have to decide what to tell humanity yet. You just have to deal with an umbrella.

A small constraint can sometimes help you start by making the task more specific. That is a practical suggestion, not a guarantee that writing will feel easy. Research gives us reasons to try it, but not a rule that more restrictions make better poems.

One word changes the task

Compare “write an original birthday greeting” with “write one that includes a drum.” You already have a connection to figure out. Perhaps the neighbours are celebrating too loudly.

In Catrinel Haught-Tromp’s study, published in a journal issue in 2017, participants wrote short rhyming occasion greetings. The first experiment recruited 64 undergraduates; five were excluded, leaving 59 for analysis. Some greetings had to include a given concrete noun, while others did not.

Three judges who did not know the conditions or hypothesis gave the required-word texts higher creativity ratings. In the second experiment, participants first chose their own nouns; the advantage of the extra rule appeared again.

Even without the required word, the task already specified two lines, rhyme, and a greeting. This was an extra constraint versus no extra constraint, not absolute freedom versus rules.

Getting started is not the same as becoming more creative

Those experiments assessed finished texts. They did not measure whether blank-page anxiety disappeared or whether people became more creative in everyday life.

Our modest takeaway: try a concrete word as a starting point. It does not issue a poet’s licence. Fortunately, it does not ask to see one either.

Writers have been inventing strange rules for years

Oulipo, the French experimental literature workshop founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, explored form and language constraints. The Bibliothèque nationale de France describes its history.

Georges Perec’s novel La Disparition is one example: the French original contains no letter e. Oulipo lists it as a lipogram, a text that deliberately omits a letter.

Two lines will do for now. The novel can wait until our umbrella agrees to return to work.

This shows what a voluntary rule can produce. A book’s success is not scientific evidence that the rule will help everyone.

Not every restriction is helpful

A 2019 review by Acar, Tarakci and van Knippenberg synthesized 145 studies of creativity and innovation in organizations. The findings varied: constraints can help or hinder, depending on their type and context.

“Include an umbrella” and “make a masterpiece without time or resources” are different situations. An organizational review cannot prescribe the ideal poetry evening. It does caution us against romanticizing every shortage or pressure.

If a rule leaves you doing nothing but counting and crossing things out, loosen it. Nobody is coming to revoke your rhyming privileges.

Try one small rule

Choose an object and write two lines. Here is our invented umbrella example:

Every umbrella is on strike today.
The rain goes to work alone.

It does not rhyme. The task concerned an object and length, not every poetic skill at once.

Next time, leave the length open but describe a morning without “good” or “bad.” Or pass your line to someone who may continue only what they can see. Our shared-poem prompts and collaborative poetry games offer starting points.

These are play suggestions, not a validated creativity programme. Start with one rule and keep permission to change it.

Rhyma already limits a few things

You add one line, see the last written line, and discover the whole poem after completion. With limited context, the shared text can go somewhere you never planned.

These studies did not test Rhyma. We do not know whether the format makes anyone more creative. You can simply play and see what happens.

We removed most of the earlier text. We still have to establish whether that is a creative method or just us withholding information. At least every author can now honestly fail to answer “what did the author mean?”

Sources

• Haught-Tromp (2017). The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis: How Constraints Facilitate Creativity.
• Acar, Tarakci & van Knippenberg (2019). Creativity and Innovation under Constraints: A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review.
• BnF. Oulipo.
• Oulipo. Lipogramme.