Writers are understandably worried about being replaced by AI. The conventional wisdom is to double down on being human and create things and tell stories that only you can tell. In his book SuperCreativity, author James Taylor explains how creativity works and why it matters more now than ever. As machines get better at spitting out answers, creativity doesn’t lose value. It becomes the skill that magnifies everything else you do.
Creativity Is the Engine. Curiosity Is the Fuel.
Taylor draws a clean line between two words we tend to blur.
Creativity is bringing new ideas to the mind. Innovation is bringing those ideas to the world.
Without creativity, there is no innovation. Creativity is the engine.
But an engine without fuel is just a very expensive paperweight. And the fuel is curiosity.
Machines are extraordinary at processing data and spotting patterns. Ask for twenty loglines, and you’ll have twenty loglines before your coffee cools. But machines don’t wake up in the morning wondering. They can’t decide which story is worth telling. They don’t lie awake at 2 a.m. because a character won’t stop whispering in their ear.
In a world where answers are free and instant, your value is no longer what you know. It’s the quality of the questions you choose to ask.
Every Great Story Started With a Question
Here’s the fun part: the stories we love didn’t begin with answers. They began with a writer poking at something that itched.
Back to the Future started when Bob Gale found his father’s high school yearbook and discovered his dad had been class president. Gale wondered: Would I have been friends with my father if we’d gone to school together? That one question gave us a DeLorean, a flux capacitor, and a time-travel tangle that still makes audiences squirm and cheer.
Inside Out grew from Pete Docter watching his daughter turn quieter as she approached her teen years and wondering what was happening inside her head. What if we could see the emotions running the show? Boom. Joy, Sadness, and one of Pixar’s most beloved films.
Notice what those questions have in common. They’re specific. They’re personal. They’re a little weird. No algorithm would have asked them, because no algorithm has a dad with a yearbook or a kid who suddenly stopped chattering at dinner.
Curiosity is a Superpower. Stay Curious.
Taylor puts it bluntly: AI doesn’t replace creativity. It replaces creativity that is unexamined, unintentional, and unpracticed.
If you’re coasting on your first idea, the obvious idea, the idea anyone would get by typing “write me a thriller,” a machine can match you. But it cannot replace your unique human mind: your memories, your obsessions, your odd little way of noticing things nobody else notices.
So the goal isn’t to out-answer the machine. The goal is to out-wonder it. Wonder. Examine. Dream. Then use every tool at your disposal, AI included, to chase down what you find.
The question to carry into your writing day isn’t “Will AI replace me?” It’s this: “How do I think better, faster, and weirder?”
Curiosity Reps: A Five-Minute Workout
Here’s a quick routine to build your question-asking strength.
Rep 1: Ask “What if?” ten times. Pick an ordinary object on your desk and ask ten what-if questions about it. The first three will be boring. Keep going. The good stuff lives around number seven.
Rep 2: Ask “Why?” five times. Take your protagonist’s goal and ask why they want it. Then ask why about that answer. Five layers down, you’ll hit the real emotional engine of your story.
Rep 3: Flip the question. Instead of “What happens next?” ask “What’s the worst thing that could happen next?” Or try “What would my character never do, and what would force them to do it?”
Rep 4: Interrogate your AI. If you brainstorm with a chatbot, don’t settle for its first list. Ask what’s missing, what’s clichéd, what a rival writer would do instead. Then ask yourself which answer made your pulse jump, and why. The machine supplies options. You supply taste.
Do these reps a few times a week, and you’ll notice your questions getting sharper, stranger, and far more productive.
The Future Belongs to the Question-Askers
Creativity isn’t a gift handed to a lucky few. It’s a practice. And in the age of AI, the practice that matters most is learning to ask the questions no one else would think to ask.
The future doesn’t belong to the writers with the best answers.
It belongs to the ones who ask the best questions.
Dive Deeper
Why Spontaneity Boosts Creativity: 3 Exercises for Writers
SuperCreativity by James Taylor
SuperCreativity on the Creative Penn Podcast
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
Wired to Create by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire
Catch Up Corner
How to Test Your Logline
Why Spontaneity Boots Creativity
Be Creative Everyday
Cheers,
Lindsey
