Is This Idea Acceptable?

Take another look

This being an election year in the US, I’m going to use an election analogy:

Imagine if the voting public were allowed to see each presidential candidate giving only one brief speech, and the voters had to make their decision based only on that speech.

Would that be fair?

Most creative people have one pet idea that we’re in love with. We spend a lot of time developing this pet idea, whether it’s a book, script, article, or stand-up bit.

Very few of us properly test this pet idea to make sure it’s a winner before we invest our time on it.

Testing an idea is simple. You show it to a group writing peers, a feedback group, or other such quorum, along with several other ideas, and you get feedback on the whole bunch, not just the one idea.

If you present only one idea to these groups, that’s like asking voters to make a decision based on seeing only one speech from a presidential candidate.

Magic happens when people see a list of 10 ideas. They can compare the ideas, and suddenly some are better than others.

Feedback you get on only one idea is worthless. It’s either sugar-coated, wishy-washy, or devastating.

Feedback you get on a list of ten ideas is actionable. People will tell you their favorite or favorites. They might even get excited about an idea and riff with you on how to execute it.

If you ever hope to connect with audiences, it’s worth your time to write ten ideas instead of one. And test them before you invest in them.

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TODAY’s TIP (below) answers the question, what’s a normal ratio of acceptable to unacceptable ideas on a list?: