A guest blog post by Mitchan!

Do you have problems beginning that new story percolating in your head? Are you feeling afflicted with writer’s block? Are you stuck on a scene with no idea how to move forward? Do you feel that your current ideas are stale and trite? Perhaps the Disney method can help you!

If you work in business or design, you might have heard of it before. The Walt Disney method is a creative strategy designed to find and develop unconventional ideas. While inspired by the way Walt Disney worked, the method itself was proposed by Robert Dilts in 1994.

In the Walt Disney method, the creator divides thmself into three separate roles: the Dreamer, the Realist, and the Critic. These three roles must work separately in three stages: 

First, the Dreamer brainstorms ideas in a focused way. The more the better. No limits or restraint. There are no “bad”, “stupid”, or “impossible” ideas; you can embrace the crazy and the stupid as much as you want. It’s still a focused brainstorm: you’re dreaming for an objective, say, a new amusement park attraction, ways to get your characters out of a pinch, the funniest and/or most character-focused problems you can add to your story... anything you need ideas for. 

Instead of sitting down and writing or typing your ideas, walk around and record yourself saying your ideas out loud. Speak without pause for 5 or 10 minutes. Look above the horizon to stimulate your creative brain. Some business websites recommend setting up different rooms for each stage of the process, so why not try a change of space? Go outside or to a room different from the one you usually work in. 

Once you’ve got loads of ideas, it’s the Realist’s turn. The job of the Realist is to look at the Dreamer’s ideas and think: How do we make them possible? The Realist doesn’t say “No”. It’s not the Realist’s job to say whether an idea is bad or won’t work. In this role, you must assume anything is possible and limit yourself to asking: How can I execute this? For our amusement park example, the Realist would select and bring in specialists who could make plans to turn a crazy idea into a real ride. 

Listen to the recording you made in the previous step. Without discarding any ideas, start with the most interesting or promising ones, and develop them. Write a rough draft or the details of what would happen in a scene. Do the necessary research. Reorganize scenes as needed. Try working on a whiteboard with markers and post-its: a place where you can stand up and look at your ideas in front of you. 

Once you have a solid proposal, or in a writer’s case, a complete first draft, the Critic comes in. The Critic’s job is to detect and correct flaws, mistakes, and risks (something crucial if you’re making an amusement park ride!). This is the moment to evaluate what works and what doesn’t work, what stays and what goes. 

Sit down with the printed-out draft on the desk, where you can look down at it, and use a red pen to mark places that need re-working or any contradictions in the narrative. Tighten the phrasing and clear up confusing details. Clean up the draft.

The stages then repeat as needed: for more ideas, go back to the Dreamer, then develop them, then edit again. 

The changes in position help to change your own perspective on the work, to dream or execute or evaluate more objectively. 

You probably already do something similar in your writing process: you have an idea, make an outline, write a first draft, then a second, a third and fourth and so on. You have alpha and beta readers who help brainstorm ideas, develop them, and correct the draft.  

Personally, the most helpful takeaway of this model is the neat separation of the roles. The Dreamer and the Critic cannot work in the same stage: criticism stifles creativity. When I’m outlining, brainstorming, or writing a rough draft, it helps me to keep this in mind. If I find myself getting judgmental about my story, I take a deep breath and tell the Critic to shut the fuck up. Whenever I’m blocked, I’ve found it often comes from me being too critical in a stage of the process when I need to be dreaming or just executing. 

Of course, the three roles are equally important in the creative process. Without the Dreamer we wouldn’t have new ideas; without the realist we would never do anything with them; without the Critic the work wouldn’t be as clean and clear as it can be. 

I have used this method before to write a stand-up comedy routine, which requires a lot of crazy ideas and well-developed set-ups and punchlines, but it can work for any creative needs. I have also applied the brainstorming method to develop the heist in my upcoming story in She Wears the Midnight Crown, as well as to think up character-based conflicts for previous fanfiction and original stories.

As with any other strategy or method, it’s up to you to try it, use what works for you and discard what doesn’t. I hope this can help you if you’re stuck, or at least inspires you to try something different! 

My fanfiction for Ritsu Sohma and Mitsuru because they are absolutely adorable and I really wanna meet more people who ship them lol.

This story is basically my take on the aftermath of Ritsu and Mitsuru's relationship after the events of episode 19 of the 2019 Fruits Basket anime and how they fell in love and how she finds out about the curse and everything. (Also yes i edited this image XD) 

shigure’s editor is so funny lol

sometimes i don’t know whether to laugh at ritus’s behavior or be sad lol she just said ‘i’m sorry for breathing’ which they play off as humorous lol but its equally sad lol

lol tohru immediately knows who ritsu is by the way her crazy mother was lol (also i refer to ritsu as she because that’s how i think she wants to be perceived and it makes her feel more safe as she says so yeah)

i also like that they play like metal music when she’s having a fit lmao

shigure fucking with her, what a dick lol

and getting books of fruit because she didn’t know what fruits they would like lol i mean that’s one way to go about it lol, but its kind of an insight into how people with anxiety who over think act

tohru saying that ritsu is more beautiful when smiling with a blush on her face, bi tohru is canon

shigure is a dick lol he knew his challenge of having her not apologize wouldn’t work, he just wanted to see the shit hit the fan lol

aw a little ritsu looks like kisa!

aw tohru is so loving and accepting she’s like it’s fine if you want to dress as a woman! you look beautiful! we all need a tohru in our lives

shigure calling mitchan a stalker omg

and she’s about to hang herself with a noose jfc lol

its nice that ritsu still cared to help her even though she thought she was a stalker lol

when she’s on the roof it reminds me of that scene in scary movie when the guy is on the school roof and someone is screaming ‘JUST DO IT’  but not to that guy and he’s like ‘what?! fine!’ omg lol

i feel like ritsu is the only one who had good parents and she still ended up traumatized god this family sucks lol

i feel like we all sort of come to this point though (maybe not so dramamtically or severely) but i feel like a lot of people once they are like 19-21 have this feeling of like what am i even doing here? like what is my purpose? because when you are a kid in school you don’t really think about it like just being a kid is your purpose but then you grow up and its scary trying to find out why you were put here 

it kind of gets hidden in humor and her crazy antics but its really sad that she thinks she’s worthless and has no point in living

i like that tohru says like i don’t think any of us were born with a specific reason to live but that its essentially something we have to find along the way, it can be for a dream or a job or a person. i don’t totally like that tohru says for another person but i get what she means when she said she wants to live for the sake of others, like she finds such joy helping others and making sure her loved ones are ok, but i think at this point she’s still in a place of like doing everything for others and nothing for herself which i think it untimately unhealthy. like kyo says, we need to be selfish sometimes. but her overall meaning of like we have to make that decision for ourselves is a very good one

its so sad though that tohru is basically saying her reason to live was her mother and kind of implying that she doesn’t have a reason to live anymore and is trying to find a new one. its interesting that like with a lot of episodes we get a sohma’s issue but then tohru will also have her own issue that relates so while she is helping others, she is also helping herself along the way.

here goes shigure setting people up again lol, but i love the ritsu/mitchan friendship, i think they are a good match and i’m glad they both found a friend and its cute that they could be that other’s ‘person’ 

i also like that the episode starts and ends with ristu and mitchan apologizing to each other like crazy lol

i kind of think that of all the zodiacs, tohru’s most meaningful impact (other than yuki and kyo) was ritsu, like ritsu was basically suicidal but tohru gave her something to hope for.

but i think this is a good look into how people with anxiety work and like a lot of people on the outside don’t understand and think you’re being dramatic but sometimes you just need someone who gets it and can help you through it <3

Also, in the manga, Ritsu and Mitchan clash really randomly, but in this version we see 100% Shigure's influence. And this coincidence in how he uses his lies is too obvious. He persistently pushes people towards each other. Of course, in doing so he will get his share of the stupid fun from the mess around, but he really ... is a demonic Cupid.

He literally brings them together. I really shouted “Shigure, you damn matchmaker, oh my God” when I watched him convince Ritsu that he should solve the problem with Mitchan. 

(I must also note how he casts off his ostentatious laziness and just rewrites this ill-fated manuscript to show Mitchan that all is fine  in the end).

So meeting Mitsuru while she’s being a working adult - and seeing how she’s still doing her job despite her own anxiety, and her shortcomings, it was probably a good thing. And she’s confident about it! She knows it’s not her fault, calls Shigure on it, knows it’s not her fault! Shigure is the devil, but he’s also very relaxed about work culture, and while it’s terrible work ethics it also might help demystify Ritsu’s anxiety over it.