How to Apply TRIZ in Brainstorming

Brainstorming, the venerable cornerstone of creative problem-solving, often succumbs to familiar pitfalls: groupthink, superficial ideas, and a lack of systemic innovation. While free association is valuable, true breakthroughs demand a more structured, yet equally imaginative, approach. This is where TRIZ – the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving – elevates brainstorming from a hopeful exercise to a powerful engine for unconventional, highly effective solutions.

TRIZ isn’t a replacement for brainstorming; it’s an accelerant, a framework that injects scientific rigor and historically proven inventiveness into the often chaotic creative process. It provides tools to systematically identify contradictions, overcome psychological inertia, and leverage universal principles of innovation. For writers, whose craft demands constant reinvention of ideas, plots, characters, and narrative structures, applying TRIZ in brainstorming unlocks a reservoir of fresh perspectives and compelling solutions to story challenges.

The Foundation: Understanding TRIZ for Creative Minds

At its core, TRIZ is a methodology for inventive problem solving developed by Genrich Altshuller, a Soviet engineer. Through extensive analysis of patents, he discovered that inventive solutions often reuse a limited set of recurring principles. TRIZ codifies these principles, offering a strategic toolkit to break through conventional thinking.

For writers, the “problem” isn’t a faulty engine; it might be a predictable plot, a flat character arc, a narrative inconsistency, or a lack of emotional impact. The “invention” is the innovative storyline, the compelling character detail, the surprising twist, or the unique world-building element that resonates profoundly with your audience.

The Power of Paradox: Identifying Contradictions

Traditional brainstorming often seeks a compromise between conflicting elements. TRIZ, however, embraces these conflicts – these contradictions – as the very bedrock of inventive solutions. An inventive solution, by TRIZ’s definition, resolves a contradiction without trade-offs.

Technical Contradiction: One part of a system improves, but another part worsens.
* Writer’s Example: You want your protagonist to be incredibly powerful and capable (improving their effectiveness), but you also need them to face genuine struggles and earn their victories (worsening their challenge). If they’re too powerful, there’s no dramatic tension. If they’re too weak, they’re not a hero.

Physical Contradiction: The same parameter needs to be one way (e.g., strong) and another way (e.g., weak) at the same time.
* Writer’s Example: A crucial secret needs to be deeply hidden (strong secrecy) but also discoverable by the protagonist at the exact right moment (weak secrecy). How can it be both impenetrable and accessible?

Brainstorming with Contradictions:
Instead of trying to find a middle ground, explicitly state the contradiction. Write down on a whiteboard or digital canvas:
* “Protagonist needs to be powerful AND vulnerable.”
* “Plot needs to be unpredictable AND follow logical causation.”
* “Character needs to be morally ambiguous AND sympathetic.”

Once you’ve identified the specific contradiction, you’ve pinpointed the core problem that your brainstorming needs to tackle inventively. This clarity alone elevates the session beyond vague aspirations.

The Toolkit: Applying TRIZ Principles and Tools in Brainstorming

With contradictions identified, it’s time to unleash the TRIZ toolkit. These tools are designed to systematically guide your thinking toward non-obvious, high-impact solutions.

1. The 40 Inventive Principles: Your Innovation Compass

This is TRIZ’s crown jewel. Altshuller codified 40 patterns of innovation found repeatedly across diverse fields. While traditionally applied to technical problems, their inherent universality makes them remarkably powerful for creative challenges. You don’t need all 40 every time, but familiarity allows you to selectively apply them based on the contradiction at hand.

How to Use in Brainstorming:
For each identified contradiction (e.g., “Protagonist needs to be powerful AND vulnerable”), go through a selection of the 40 principles and ask: “How can this principle help resolve this contradiction in my story/character/plot?”

Let’s take the “Protagonist: Powerful AND Vulnerable” contradiction and apply a few principles:

• Principle 1: Segmentation. Divide an object into independent parts.
  • Application: Protagonist is powerful in one domain (e.g., combat strength) but profoundly vulnerable in another (e.g., emotional intelligence, social anxiety, a specific fear related to their past). Or, their power operates only under specific conditions, leaving them vulnerable otherwise.
  • Example: A superhero who can move at light speed (powerful) but suffers from crippling agoraphobia (vulnerable).
• Principle 3: Local Quality. Change an object’s structure from uniform to non-uniform; make different parts fulfill different functions.
  • Application: The protagonist’s “power” isn’t uniformly distributed. Maybe it has a time limit, or a specific area of effect. Or their vulnerability isn’t a general weakness but a specific, localized Achilles’ heel directly tied to their power’s origin or nature.
  • Example: A wizard whose magic is incredibly potent but draws from their life force, physically weakening them with each major spell.
• Principle 10: Prior Action. Perform the required action in advance.
  • Application: The protagonist becomes vulnerable before the story begins, through a past trauma or self-imposed restriction, which then shapes their present powerful actions. Or, their power itself has a built-in pre-emptive consequence that creates vulnerability.
  • Example: A detective who, prior to the story, sacrificed an important relationship for their career, and that lingering regret makes them emotionally vulnerable despite their professional success.
• Principle 15: Dynamicity. Make an object or environment able to adjust to optimal conditions.
  • Application: The protagonist’s power and vulnerability are not static; they dynamically shift. Their power might diminish when they are emotionally vulnerable, or their vulnerability might lessen as they grow in power, creating an internal struggle throughout the narrative.
  • Example: A character whose telekinetic powers fluctuate wildly with their emotional state, making them both incredibly dangerous and incredibly unpredictable to themselves and others.
• Principle 24: Intermediary. Use an intermediate carrier or process.
  • Application: An external element or another character acts as an intermediary for either their power or their vulnerability. This allows the protagonist to express power through something else, or for their vulnerability to be triggered by an external agent.
  • Example: A king whose political power is absolute, but whose emotional vulnerability is entirely managed and manipulated by a manipulative advisor through an intermediary (e.g., rumors, carefully curated information, proxy conflicts).
• Principle 35: Parameter Change. Change the physical or chemical state of an object, or its concentration or flexibility.
  • Application: The nature of the protagonist’s power or vulnerability changes throughout the story. Perhaps their power evolves into a different form, or their primary vulnerability transforms into a strength, or vice versa, based on story events.
  • Example: A character with photographic memory (powerful) who, through a traumatic event, begins to experience their memories in a fragmented, disorienting way (vulnerability by parameter change), forcing them to find new ways to use their intellectual gifts.

Actionable Step:
Print out the 40 Inventive Principles. During a brainstorming session, after defining a few key contradictions, challenge your team (or yourself) to apply 3-5 random principles to each. This forces divergent thinking and often sparks unexpected connections. Focus on how each principle could manifest in your specific story, character, or plot.

2. Separation Principles: Resolving Physical Contradictions

When the same parameter needs to be one way and another way, TRIZ offers four powerful separation principles:

• Separation in Time: The conflicting properties exist at different times.
  • Writer’s Example: “Secret needs to be hidden AND discoverable.”
  • Application: The secret is hidden now, but becomes discoverable later based on a specific trigger or event.
  • Example: A hidden diary is unbreakable and invisible for years, but a specific astrological alignment or the touch of a specific bloodline makes it appear and open, revealing its contents.
• Separation in Space: The conflicting properties exist in different places.
  • Writer’s Example: “Secret needs to be hidden AND discoverable.”
  • Application: The secret is hidden in one location, safe and inaccessible, but a fragment or clue to its existence and location is discoverable in another, more accessible place.
  • Example: The complete plans for a superweapon are locked in an impenetrable vault (hidden), but a seemingly innocuous coded message containing a single coordinate is publicly available in an old newspaper archive (discoverable elsewhere).
• Separation on Condition: The conflicting properties exist under different conditions.
  • Writer’s Example: “Secret needs to be hidden AND discoverable.”
  • Application: The secret is hidden under one set of conditions (e.g., unless a specific action is performed), but discoverable under another.
  • Example: A magical artifact is invisible and untouchable to anyone of ill intent (hidden under condition A), but perfectly visible and tangible to those with a pure heart (discoverable under condition B).
• Circumvention of the Contradiction (or System Level Separation): The contradiction is resolved by looking at a higher or lower system level.
  • Writer’s Example: “Secret needs to be hidden AND discoverable.”
  • Application: The secret itself isn’t truly hidden; rather, the meaning or implication of the secret is hidden until a higher-level pattern or interpretation is revealed. Or, the secret isn’t a single item but a composite of many small, individually discoverable, but meaningless, pieces.
  • Example: The “secret” is a complex algorithm. The algorithm itself is public knowledge (discoverable). However, the specific input parameters that make it catastrophic are hidden within seemingly random, unrelated public data points (circumvention – the secret is in the combination at a higher level of understanding).

Actionable Step:
When a brainstorming issue points to a ‘Physical Contradiction’ where one element needs to be ‘X’ and ‘not X’ simultaneously, dedicate 5-10 minutes to explicitly applying each of the four separation principles. This structured approach forces you to consider solutions outside simple compromise.

3. Ideality: The Ultimate Vision

TRIZ’s concept of “Ideality” (or the Ideal Final Result – IFR) suggests envisioning the perfect outcome where the desired function is achieved without any negative effects, expenditure of resources, or complexity. It’s often impossible to attain, but it serves as a powerful mental compass, pulling your brainstorming towards elegant, resourceful solutions.

How to Use in Brainstorming:
* For a Character Arc: What’s the Ideal Final Result for your protagonist? Not just overcoming their flaw, but how do they ideally embody their journey’s lesson without any remaining negative traits or further challenges? This might seem counter-intuitive for narrative, but it can reveal profound growth metrics or ultimate purposes that inform their entire journey.
* Example: A character struggling with self-doubt. IFR: They exude quiet confidence, inspire others effortlessly, and achieve their goals without internal struggle or external impediment.
This IFR then helps you brainstorm the specific steps, epiphanies, and trials that would lead to such an ultimate state, revealing unique plot points or character revelations.

• For a Plot Point: What’s the IFR for a crucial plot twist? It occurs, has maximum impact, yet requires minimal exposition or setup, and doesn’t create any new plot holes.
  • Example: A crucial piece of evidence needs to be discovered. IFR: The evidence simply appears, directly in the protagonist’s hand, is immediately understood, and solves the major mystery seamlessly.
    This reveals the need for elegant integration. Brainstorming around this IFR might lead to ideas like: the evidence was always there, hidden in plain sight; the evidence is an intrinsic part of the protagonist’s own being or memory; the evidence is found by a minor character who has no further plot relevance, simplifying the narrative.
• For World-Building: What’s the IFR for a fantastical element (e.g., a magic system)? It operates perfectly, integrates seamlessly, requires no complex rules or hand-waving, and always serves the narrative.
  • Example: A magic system for healing. IFR: Wounds simply disappear without incantations, ingredients, or side effects, requiring no narrative focus.
    This might push you to reconsider why you need the magic. If the IFR is simple, perhaps a simpler, more elegant magic system is needed, or perhaps the ‘healing’ is metaphorical, or perhaps it’s not magic but an advanced biological function.

Actionable Step:
After defining a problem, ask: “What would the Ideal Final Result look like if all problems vanished and the function happened effortlessly?” Then, reverse-engineer: “What would have to be true for that IFR to exist?” This opens doors to truly transformative ideas.

4. Smart Little People (SLP) and Scaling: Zooming In and Out

SLP models are a powerful visualization technique, encouraging you to imagine components of a system as “smart little people” interacting. Scaling—looking at the problem from vastly different size, time, or cost perspectives—also helps break mental barriers.

How to Use in Brainstorming (SLP):
* For a Complex Social Dynamic: Imagine each character or group within your story as a “smart little person” with their own agenda, capabilities, and limitations. How do they interact? What are their conflicts, their alliances?
* Example: A divided kingdom. How do the “smart little people” of the nobility interact with the “smart little people” of the peasantry? What are their individual motivations, their specific tools, their perceived obstacles? This can reveal hidden power structures, unforeseen alliances, or untapped leverage points for the protagonist.
* Application: If your character is struggling to manipulate a political opponent, imagine the opponent as a SLP with their own specific fears and desires. What “buttons” can the character press? What information do they need?

How to Use in Brainstorming (Scaling):
* Problem with Pacing (Time Scaling): Your story’s middle sags.
* Scale down: What happens in a single, isolated scene? Where is the energy lost? Could a single line of dialogue or a minor action accelerate the pacing significantly?
* Scale up: How does this problem look over the entire narrative arc? Is the sag symptomatic of a larger structural issue, or just a few slow chapters? Consider the entire story in two paragraphs. What’s missing in the middle?

• Lack of Impact in Climax (Intensity Scaling): The final battle feels anticlimactic.
  • Scale down: What’s the smallest, most personal stakes at play for the protagonist in this moment? Can that be amplified?
  • Scale up: What are the universal, cosmological, or philosophical stakes? How does this battle resonate at a grand, epic scale? Can the climax include echoes of larger conflicts?
• Character Development (Complexity Scaling): Your character is two-dimensional.
  • Scale down: What’s one tiny, seemingly insignificant habit or quirk of your character? How can that reveal a profound aspect of their personality?
  • Scale up: How does this character represent an archetypal human struggle? What universal themes do they embody? How do they fit into the grand tapestry of human experience?

Actionable Step:
When stuck on a problem, explicitly draw SLP models on a whiteboard. Label each element of your system (characters, plot points, emotions, world elements) as a “SLP” and draw their interactions. For scaling, challenge yourself by asking: “What if this problem happened in a millisecond instead of a year?” or “What if this conflict affected a single person instead of a planet?”

5. Using Resources: Nothing is Waste (Even in Writing)

TRIZ emphasizes maximal use of existing resources, even seemingly negative ones. This directly challenges the “more is better” mindset often prevalent in brainstorming. For writers, “resources” aren’t just tangible things; they include character flaws, plot holes, narrative constraints, genre tropes, or even negative reader feedback.

How to Use in Brainstorming:
* Negative Resource – Character Flaw: Your protagonist is arrogant. Instead of trying to fix it immediately, how can this arrogance be a resource?
* Application: Their arrogance might lead them into situations a more cautious person would avoid, thus driving the plot. It might be mistaken for confidence, earning them allies, or it might mask a deeper insecurity that gets exposed at a critical moment.
* Example: A detective’s arrogance leads them to dismiss a key witness, only for that witness to become the killer, dramatically raising the stakes and forcing the detective to confront their hubris.

• Negative Resource – Plot Constraint: You’re writing a novella, so you have limited word count.
  • Application: How can this limitation be a resource? It forces brevity, tight plotting, focused character development, and a reliance on subtext and implication. This can result in a powerful, dense narrative.
  • Example: The constrained length forces you to drop extraneous subplots, making the main narrative thread incredibly compelling and impactful.
• Negative Resource – Reader Feedback: A beta reader says your ending is predictable.
  • Application: This “negative” feedback is a resource. It tells you exactly where the audience’s expectations lie. How can you leverage that expectation to surprise them even more profoundly?
  • Example: You brainstorm ways to set up the expected ending even more strongly, only to subvert it with a shocking, yet logical, twist that the reader never saw coming precisely because they were so sure of the predicted outcome.
• Underutilized Resource – Setting: Your story takes place in a generic city.
  • Application: What are the unique, often overlooked features of a generic city that can become crucial plot elements or character reflections? The specific architecture, the public transport system, the sounds, the history of a particular district.
  • Example: The labyrinthine sewer system beneath the city becomes the perfect hiding place for a secret society, or the daily grind of an anonymous commute provides an unexpected opportunity for two characters to connect.

Actionable Step:
When facing limitations or negative feedback, brainstorm a list of “negative resources.” Then, for each, ask: “How can I deliberately design this ‘negative’ into a positive asset or a pivotal plot device?”

The Brainstorming Session: Integrating TRIZ Fluidly

You don’t need a strict, rigid TRIZ process for every brainstorming session. The goal is to integrate its principles fluidly, turning them into natural extensions of your creative thought.

Phase 1: Problem Definition & Contradiction Identification (15-20 minutes)
* Traditional: “Let’s brainstorm ideas for the next chapter.”
* TRIZ Enhanced: “What is the core problem we’re trying to solve in this chapter? What contradictions exist? (e.g., How can the detective discover the truth AND keep her family safe at the same time? How can the hero suffer a devastating loss AND emerge stronger from it?). List 2-3 key contradictions clearly.

Phase 2: Inventive Principles Application (30-45 minutes)
* Traditional: “Just throw out ideas.”
* TRIZ Enhanced: For each contradiction, pick 3-5 (or more) of the 40 Inventive Principles. Read them aloud. Ask: “How could Principle X apply to resolving this specific contradiction in our story?” Encourage ideas, even strange ones. Write everything down.
* Self-correction: If stuck, try a ‘Separation Principle’ if it’s a physical contradiction, or consider ‘Ideality.’

Phase 3: Resource Utilization & Ideality Check (15-20 minutes)
* Traditional: “What assets do we have?”
* TRIZ Enhanced: “What seem like problems, limitations, or ‘wasted’ elements in our story/character/world? How can we turn these into resources? What would the Ideal Final Result look like for this plot point/character arc/world element? How can we get closer to that without compromise?”

Phase 4: Synthesis & Selection (10-15 minutes)
* Traditional: “What do we like?”
* TRIZ Enhanced: Review all brainstormed ideas. Look for ideas that elegantly resolve contradictions (minimize trade-offs). Identify ideas that leverage existing resources in novel ways. Prioritize ideas that move towards the Ideal Final Result. Narrow down to a few promising concepts to develop further. Don’t discard the others; they might be useful later.

Maintaining Flow & Nuance:
* Facilitator: If a group, one person should facilitate, guiding the application of the TRIZ tools without stifling creative flow.
* No Bad Ideas (at first): Just like traditional brainstorming, suspend judgment during idea generation. Evaluate later.
* Iterative Process: TRIZ is iterative. You might define a problem, apply principles, find a new problem, and repeat.
* For Writers (Solo): Keep a TRIZ cheat sheet (40 principles, separation principles, IFR questions) next to you during your brainstorming sessions. When stuck, pick a principle and force yourself to apply it to your specific writerly problem. This structured provocation is where the magic happens.

Conclusion: From Brainstorming to Breakthroughs

The beauty of applying TRIZ in brainstorming, particularly for writers, lies in its ability to transform conceptual challenges into solvable problems. It shifts the focus from hoping for a good idea to systematically engineering one. It doesn’t replace intuition; it sharpens it, providing a robust framework for channeling creative energy.

By embracing contradictions, leveraging universal principles of innovation, envisioning an ideal future, and transforming limitations into assets, writers can move beyond predictable narratives and one-dimensional characters. TRIZ offers a path to truly inventive storytelling, ensuring your brainstorming sessions generate not just more ideas, but better, more original, and profoundly impactful ones. It is a commitment to depth, to ingenuity, and ultimately, to storytelling that truly resonates.