A lot of people emphasize out-of-the-box thinking as a means to creating a great book (or a great anything). In my experience, though, the creative process alternates between out-of-the-box and in-the-box thinking. Go out of the box to explore new thoughts. Go inside to focus them and make them relevant for your audience.

The first is a process of ignoring constraints. The second is a process of complying with constraints. In-the-box thinking may actually demand more creativity.

If, say, you’re writing a how-to book, you could start from scratch and invent a new structure. Use out-of-the box thinking. On the other hand, many good structures exist already (e.g., “ten secrets to....”). Disciplining yourself to develop in-the-box messages may actually serve your readers better.

Charles Eames, perhaps the greatest industrial designer of the last century, made a point of out-innovating competitors in the face of a long list of strict design constraints—he didn’t complain about being boxed in. He famously said, “I don’t remember ever being forced to accept compromises, but I have willingly accepted constraints.”

Necessity, in other words, is often the mother of invention.

Ultimately, one of the toughest tasks for authors is defining their constraints. What goes in the box that defines your book’s scope and what does not? In a book project, the edges of the box can be defined by...

• Content
• Concepts
• Theme
• Treatment
• Tone
• Authority
• Originality
• Target reader
• And so on

I once talked with an author who wanted to write a book about sales. He had a million clever ideas of what could go in it. But bookstore shelves are filled with clever ideas about sales. What he needed was to define fresh boundaries that cut the outlines of the topic in a new way. This is where he had to get much more creative—and the demand for in-the-box thinking stalled his project entirely.

If you want to think about in-the-box thinking in another way, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUO-pWJ0riQ Improv teacher Dave Morris captures the essence of in-the-box thinking.  As he says—counterintuitively—“Rules free us up to improvise.”

[Revised January 2020. Originally published June 13, 2012]