How constraints in writing helped Dr. Seuss change the future of children literature!
Freedom is revered Western culture, but it turns out that we do our most creative thinking within constraints and boundaries. David Epstein is a journalist who specializes in the science of success, and he joins Adam to talk about his new book, Inside the Box, and what he learned by setting his own constraints while writing it. They break down how innovators use limitations to drive breakthroughs, take a closer look at why a lack of restrictions can actually limit potential, and riff on how our favorite sports could harness new rules to make the games more interesting.
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Dr. Seuss as the turning point in children’s literature
AGAdam Grant
If you look at before Seuss and after children's literature, it's not just him. It's like night and day in how creative and interesting it becomes. At one point, Dr. Seuss was given a vocabulary list for kids, told to use only 200 words, which is not very many, and, and write a children's book. And at first he's looking through it and he starts complaining to his wife, right? He says, "There's no adjectives. How am I supposed to write a book with no adjectives?" And then in, in fine Seussian form, he says, "I'm just gonna take the first
0:30 – 1:00
The 200-word constraint that sparked *The Cat in the Hat*
AGAdam Grant
two rhyming words and, and write a book about it." And the first two rhyming words are cat and hat. And that restriction, first of all, gives him an idea and a place to start, but also forces him to focus on rhythm because he has so few words. And then it happens again. After he does that, he's bet by a publisher that he can't do it with just 50 words, and that becomes Green Eggs and Ham, where again, so few words that he has to focus on rhythm and story and all this other stuff. One of your colleagues, Katrin Elle Tromp, calls it the Green Eggs
1:00 – 1:23
Restrictions as a creativity engine: rhythm over vocabulary
AGAdam Grant
and Ham effect, this idea that when you box somebody in, they often find more creative solutions. And after that, started this, the most successful children's book imprint co-founded, uh, called Beginner Books, and he put all these constraints on the other creators. Like nothing could be pictured if it wasn't actually also described in the story, and all of the images had to run across two pages so that when you opened it, it was like one storyline. He just layered constraints on them and
Episode duration: 1:23
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