Angus Greig

Emails are just as fundamental these days as food and water in our lives, and they form a large part of our daily communications.

Roughly 300 billion emails are sent around the world every day, according to Statista. On average, each of us who works in an office gets 121 emails per working day! Yet we send them and read them without thinking about them for a second.

But emails are essential. In some situations, they can’t be replaced with a short meeting or a phone call. We send them because of traceability or a time difference, or we need to have many people reading the same thing.

A study of around 1 million emails that was done with Microsoft shows the average employee spends 28 percent of his or her day working on emails.

But given how essential emails are, did anyone ever teach you how to write one?

I have dedicated the last 25 years to learning and teaching. I have trained in the Scouts and the Israeli Army, and I teach business at a German university today. Just like anyone else, I send and receive emails and texts. Loads of them. I use them to stay in touch with customers, collaborators and students around the world.

My students and I decided to optimize our emails and test what worked — and what didn’t. We found by tweaking just five little things, you’ll make it more likely that your email gets read, you’ll spend less time working on it, and writing an email might even become fun. Here they are:

1. Make an excellent first impression

A subject line is your chance to make a positive first impression on your recipient. According to existing research, three things make an effective subject line: It should be short, call for action and indicate familiarity with the recipient.

I showed 300 people the following email subject lines and asked them which they’d open first. Can you guess which they chose?

A. Statement 10.31.2020

B. Welcome Message

C. Meeting tomorrow, please respond!

D. Hey!

E. Missed you, how’s Friday?

If you picked C, you’re right! That was the overwhelming favorite, with 47 percent choosing it. The runner-up was D, with 20 percent of the vote.

2. Add color and feeling to your email

Our emails are written in ​black and white​, so they automatically look kind of boring​. Sending your thoughts in email is a bit like speaking without being able to use your body, voice, or face. So how can we put ​some color and — more importantly — feeling​ into them?

By using different kinds of punctuation and, yes, ​emojis​.

For example, here’s the same sentence but written three different ways. Which do you find the most engaging?

Dear Guy, thank you for visiting.
Guy, thanks for visiting!
Hey Guy, awesome that you dropped by

I like to call punctuation and emojis “digital body language,” which we desperately need to show who we are, even if we’re just writing an email.

And if you want to go all in, try adding a GIF.

Here’s one of me!

Should you always add an emoji or a GIF to your work emails? Of course not. Think of digital body language as the spices and seasoning in your email recipe — depending on the culture, setting and background, you may want more or less of that curry or hot sauce. Or none at all.

3. Keep them as brief as a tweet

Research from NYU, MIT, and Boston University shows that many emails aren’t read​ but just skimmed​ or simply deleted. And it seems that with every additional word you write beyond your first 40, you directly reduce the chances of getting an answer.

So be as brief as you can. Keep it the length of a tweet, or 280 characters.

Now you may be telling yourself: “No way — my meeting notes [or whatever you’re writing about] can’t be that short.”

And you’re right.

But the one part of that email in which you ask for something or get something done can be kept brief. You can include those meeting notes as an attachment.

Brevity is key!

4. Use names at critical moments

Imagine if you knew a magic word that you could include in your email, a word that could instantaneously grab the attention of every single person in the world.

Well, it turns out you already know it: It’s the name of the person you’re emailing.

Dale Carnegie once wrote, “A person’s ​name​ is to him or her the ​sweetest​ and ​most important sound​ in any language.” He wrote this almost 100 years ago, but I believe his words still apply today.

We all have a narcissist in us, and if you use a person’s name at ​critical moments​, you will ​increase your likelihood​ of getting an answer. For example, when you’re making a crucial request in your email, start with the recipient’s name. What’s more, research shows that ​mentioning​ the name of another person whom the recipient ​knows will also significantly raise the chances your email will be answered.

Just remember: There is one way in which a person’s name can completely ruin your email — if you misspell their name, all the thought you put into your message will go down the drain.

Now I’m sure that some people reading this will say there is no “perfect” email, and they’re right. Every email is different, yet most emails have two things in common: one, you want something from someone, and two, that someone is a human. Because of these two things, my suggested ingredients can surely help.

What matters is the proportion. Now that you have the list of recommended ingredients for an email make sure you use them in the right quantities. From now on, try and break away from writing any important emails on autopilot. Instead, picture the person you’re writing to and season your email to their taste using your ingredients.

5. Tap into the power of the last impression

Here’s one final point. Remember how Steve Jobs always waited until the end of his presentations to show off the coolest of the products he was introducing? He used to say “one more thing,” and boom, there came a new iPhone out of his pocket.

Why not use that tactic too? If you have one important thing to say or one crucial thing you need from your recipient, or one uncomfortable thing to say, try putting it in the P.S. line. This is the last impression, which isn’t as well known as the first impression. But it can be just as powerful as it’s the one thing that sticks with your reader even after the rest is forgotten.

This post was adapted from Guy Katz‘s TEDxZurich Talk. Watch it here: 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guy Katz PhD first served as an officer for the Israeli Defense Forces and then worked for governments, startups, non-profits, consulting firms and giant corporations. Constantly on the lookout for the right bit of science mixed with practical tips, he now spends his days optimizing the magical recipe for being a father of two amazing boys, a business professor at FOM University in Germany, the owner of a consulting and training company that operates worldwide, and teaching people how to fly airplanes.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

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A South Texas school district is inspiring student voices by utilizing the TED-Ed Student Talks curriculum in all their 6th grade writing classrooms.

Here, educator Corinne Spellane discusses how they incorporated the program into the ELA curriculum, and how it helped students find their passion, organize their ideas, build their confidence, and share their own TED-style Talks.

Los Cuates Middle School 2020 showcase

Check out Los Cuates Middle School’s showcase promo and their 2020 Talk showcase.

Rolling out the program

It all started with the little ones! Several of our feeder elementary schools have established TED-Ed Clubs in their after-school programs. When we saw and heard what these kiddos were capable of, we knew we had to help it grow. We decided to start with 6th grade students so that they could rely upon their elementary TED-Ed Club experience.

In Los Fresnos, we provide middle school students with a separate writing class. Preparing for a speech involves organization akin to that required in writing essays and compositions. Therefore it just seemed natural to incorporate the TED-Ed Student Talks curriculum in the writing classes. It was such a treat to watch their ideas snowball from their experience in elementary school!

Making it work in the classroom

The 6th grade ELA department is a pioneering group of eager educators willing to try innovative approaches to give students a voice and strengthen their writing skills. We began by eagerly sifting through the TED-Ed Student Talks Guidebook and other TED-Ed resources. We then reviewed the district’s pacing guide and important dates to establish a basic schedule for the project. Teachers continually shared their feedback and we adjusted accordingly. Once the timeline was established, we set non-negotiable goals and checkpoints to ensure students had adequate time to complete and share their Talks. Teachers had a wide range of negotiable items that allowed them the freedom to make personal and classroom adjustments.

We really had to evaluate our timeline and make the necessary adjustments sometimes on a class-by-class basis. For one class in particular, we noticed that the kids’ passions from Activity 3 in the Guidebook changed after they’d gone through Exploration. This most likely was due to the time and opportunity to think, reflect, and watch more Talks. When they got to the “What are my great ideas?” activity, students found that their passions had evolved. We realized that students need more time to talk out their ideas and reflect on what they truly wanted to say.

Liberty Memorial Middle School

One of my favorites was a student who originally identified her passion as “Raising Show Cattle for Future Farmers of America.” After some extended conversation, she eventually discovered that her “great idea” was actually about her feeling of empowerment when showing animals well over a thousand pounds. Her Talk then shifted to the idea of “Girl Power in the Show Ring.”

Additionally, for Exploration 7 around researching the idea, many of the teachers recommended the use of laptops or computer lab time to help with the research process and teachers provided ample class time for research. Some teachers also encouraged students to continue the research process at home. In many cases, students chose to continue their work beyond class time because it was so interesting to them.

Supporting educators

Teachers need patience, flexibility, and time! For some of the activities teachers asked me to join them. It was helpful to have an additional adult in the room to aid the students during specific parts of the process. This was important especially at the beginning when students were coming up with ideas.

My favorite part was watching this process evolve across the three different middle schools. Teachers were able to share and collaborate on their challenges and success while still adding their personal teaching styles. Our group of teachers tried to come together regularly, so that could share our experiences as facilitators, but it was difficult. Fortunately, every middle school had a team of two teachers that were able to collaborate. In the future, it would be very beneficial to have regularly scheduled meetings between the facilitators, and a forum of some kind where teachers could post ideas and suggestions.

Utilizing the Student Talks curriculum

The Student Talks Guidebook was the cornerstone of our timeline. We also watched tons of TED Talks and TEDx Talks to help us through the process. Some of our favorites were: how to grow from underdog to basketball and social media icon, school strike for climate, and the danger of a single story.

Once I gathered all of the materials, we came together to develop our timeline. I first reviewed Idea Book and materials, then worked with teachers to create a timeline and list of resources, which can be seen here: TED Talk Passion Project and Showcase.

The TED-Ed curriculum provides the common core standards, which we don’t use in Texas. But, it was easy to match the activities provided in the Idea Book with our Texas curriculum standards. For example, one Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standard states, “develop drafts into a focused, structured, and coherent piece of writing by: organizing with purposeful structure, including an introduction, transitions, coherence within and across paragraphs, and a conclusion.” Similarly, the “Discover” section of the TED-Ed Student Talks Idea Journal guides the students through the brainstorming and organizing process in a new and fun way! It was easy to tag our standards with this activity. The kids really didn’t see it as work and it was almost as if we tricked them into writing an essay because they were developing their Talk.

Developing a throughline activity at Liberty Memorial Middle School

Some parting advice

I recommend that teachers work through the student guide book themselves first to develop their own Talks. If you are able to participate in TED Masterclass that would be even better! Having the experience first really helps you to understand the process and be able to assist your students. Be patient and expect your students to struggle, as this process is challenging and a novel concept for most kids.

Thoka Maer

I have a question for you. Have you ever seen something and you wish you could have said something — but you didn’t?

And I have a second question. Has something ever happened to you and you never said anything about it — but you should have?

I’m interested in this idea of action — of the difference between seeing, which is the passive act of observing, and the actual act of bearing witness.

Bearing witness means writing down something you have seen, something you have heard, something you have experienced. The most important part of bearing witness is writing it down; it’s recording. Writing it down captures the memory. Writing it down acknowledges its existence.

One of the biggest examples we have in history of someone bearing witness is Anne Frank and her diary. She simply wrote down what was happening to her family and about her confinement and, in doing so, we have a very intimate record of this family during one of the worst periods of our world’s history.

You too can use creative writing to bear witness, and I’m going to walk you through an exercise that I do with a lot of my college students, who are future engineers, technicians, plumbers — basically, they’re not creative writers. We use these exercises to unsilence things we’ve been keeping silent. It’s a way of unburdening ourselves.

It’s 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Brainstorm and write it down

I give my students a prompt. The prompt is “The time when …” and I want them to fill in that prompt with times they might have experienced something, heard something or seen something and they could have said something or intervened but they didn’t. I have them write a list as quickly as possible.

I’ll give you example of some of the things I would write down:

- the time when a few months after 9/11 and two boys dared themselves to touch me and they did
- the time when my sister and I were walking in a city and a guy spat at us and called us terrorists
- the time way back when I went to a very odd middle school and girls a couple of
 years older than me were often married to men nearly double their age
- the time when a friend pulled a gun on me
- the time when I went to a going-away luncheon for a coworker and a big boss
 questioned my lineage for 45 minutes

There are times when I have seen something and I haven’t intervened. For example:

- the time when I was on a train and I witnessed a father beating his toddler son and I didn’t do anything
- the many times when I’ve walked by someone who was homeless and in need and asking me for money and I walked around them and I did not acknowledge their humanity

The list could go on and on. Think of times when something might have happened sexually, times when you’ve been keeping things repressed, and times with our families. Because our families — we love them, but at the same time we don’t talk about things. So we don’t talk about the family member who has been using drugs or abusing alcohol; we don’t talk about the family member who might have severe mental illness. We’ll say something like, “Oh they’ve always been that way,” and we hope that in not talking about it and not acknowledging it, we can act like it doesn’t exist, that it will somehow fix itself.

Your goal is to write down at least 10 things, and once you have those 10 things, you’ve actually done part one, which is to bear witness. You have unsilenced something that you have been keeping silent.

Step 2: Narrow it down and focus

What I suggest is going back to your list of 10 and picking 3 things that are really tugging at you, three things that you feel strongly about. It doesn’t have to be the most traumatic things but it’s things that are like, “Ah, I have to write about this.” I suggest you sit down at a table with a pen and paper — that’s my preferred method for recording but you can also use a tablet, an iPad, a computer, just something that lets you write.

I suggest taking 30 minutes of uninterrupted time, meaning that you turn your phone off, put it on airplane mode, no email. If you have family or if you have children, give yourself 20 minutes or 5 minutes. The goal is just to give yourself time to write.

You’re going to focus on 3 things — you’re going to focus on the details, you’re going to focus on the order of events, you’re going to focus on how it made you feel. That last one is the most important part. I’m going to walk you through how I do it.

The first thing I feel very, very strongly about is that time when a couple of months after 9/11, these two boys dared themselves to touch me. I remember I was in a rural mall in North Carolina and I was just walking, minding my business.

I felt like people walking behind me were very, very close. I was like, “OK, that’s kind of weird, let me walk a little bit faster.” They walked a little bit faster too and I heard them going back and forth —  “No, you do it” “You do it” “No, you do it.” And then one of them pushes me and I almost fall to the ground.

I popped back up, expecting some type of apology and the weirdest thing was they did not run away. They actually stood right next to me and I remember there was a guy with blond hair and he had a bright red polo shirt and he was saying “Give me my money, I did it, man”, and the guy with the brown hair who had a choppy haircut gave him a $5 bill. I remember it was crumpled, and so I’m like, “Am I still standing here? This thing just happened. What just happened?”

And it was so weird to be someone’s dare and then also not exist at all. I remembered when I was younger and someone dared me to touch something nasty or disgusting. I felt like that nasty and disgusting thing.

The second thing I feel very, very strongly about is the time when a friend pulled a gun on me (I should say former friend). I remember there was a group of us outside, he had run up, and he had the stereotypical brown paper bag in his hand. I knew what it was. I’m a very mouthy person and I started going off. I was like, “What are you doing with that gun? You’re not gonna shoot anyone. You’re a coward. You don’t even know how to use it.”

I kept going on and on and on and he got angrier and angrier and angrier and he pulled the gun out and put it in my face. I remember every one of us got very, very quiet. I remember the tightness of his face. I remember the barrel of the gun and I felt like — and I’m pretty sure everyone around me who got quiet did too — felt like this is the moment I die.

The third thing I feel very, very strongly about is this going away luncheon and this big boss. I remember I was running late and I’m always late; it’s just a thing that happens with me. The whole table was filled except for the seat next to him. I didn’t know him well; I had seen him in the office. I didn’t know why the seat was empty; I found out later on why. So I sat down at the table and before he even asked me my name, the first thing he said was “What’s going on with all of this?” and he gestured at my head. I thought, “Do I have something on my face? What’s happening?”

Then he asked me with two hands this time “What’s going on with all of this?” And I realized he’s talking about my hijab. In my head I said, “Oh, not today.” But he’s a big boss — he’s like my boss’s boss’s boss. So for 45 minutes I put up with him asking me where I was from, where were my parents from, my grandparents. He asked me where I went to school, where I did my internships, he asked me who interviewed me for that job. And for 45 minutes, I tried to be very, very, very, very, very polite, trying to answer his questions.

But I remember I was making eyeball “Help!” signs at the people around the table, like “Someone say something, intervene”. It was a rectangular table, so there were people on both sides of us and no one said anything, even people who might be in the position to do so, bosses. No one said anything. I remember I felt so alone. I remember I felt like I didn’t deserve to be in his space. I remember I wanted to quit.

So these are my three things and you’ll have your list of three things. Once you have these three things, you have the details, you have the order of events, you have how it made you feel, you’re ready to actually use creative writing to bear witness.

Step 3: Pick one and tell your story

You don’t have to write a memoir; you don’t have to be a creative writer. I know sometimes storytelling can be daunting for some people but we are human, we are natural storytellers. If someone asks “How is your day going?”, we have a beginning, a middle and an end. That is a narrative.

Our memory exists and subsists through the act of storytelling. You just have to find the form that works for you. You can write a letter to your younger self, you can write a story to your younger self, you can write a story to your five-year-old child, you can write a parody, a song, a song as parody. You can write a play, you can write a nursery rhyme, you can write it in the form of a Wikipedia article.

If it’s one of those situations where you saw something and you didn’t intervene, perhaps write it from that person’s perspective. So if I go back to the boy on the train who I saw being beaten, What was it like to be in his shoes? What was it like to see all these people who watched it happen and did nothing? Or I could put myself in the position of someone who was homeless and just try to figure out how they got there in the first place. Perhaps it would help me change some of my actions, perhaps it will help me be more proactive about certain things.

By telling your story, you’re keeping it alive so you don’t have to do anything; you don’t have to show anyone any of these steps. But even if you’re telling it to yourself, you’re saying this thing happened, this weird thing did happen. It’s not in my head. It actually happened and by doing that maybe you’ll take a little bit of power back that has been taken away.

The last thing I’m going to do is I’m going to tell you my story. The one I’ve picked is about this big boss and I picked that one because I feel like I’m not the only one who has been in a position where someone has been above me and been talked down to. I feel like all of us might have been in positions where we felt like we could not say anything because this person has our livelihood, our paychecks, our jobs in their hands and times we might have seen someone who has power talking down to someone and we should have or could have intervened.

By telling this story, I’m taking back a little bit of power that was taken away from me. I have changed the names, and it happened a decade ago. It doesn’t have any happy ending, because it’s just me writing down what happened that day.

This is how I use creative writing to bear witness.

At Lisa’s Going Away Luncheon

I want to ask my boss’s boss’s boss if he’s stupid

or just plain dumb after he takes one look at my hijab

and asks me where I’m from in Southeast Asia.

I tell him that it’s New Jersey, actually,

and he asks where are my parents from,

and my grandparents and my great-grandparents

and their parents and their parents’ parents

as if searching for some Other blood,

as if searching for some reason why some Black

Muslim girl from Newark wound up seated next to him

at this restaurant of tablecloths

and laminated menus.

I want to say “Slavery, jerk,”

but I’ve got a car note and rent and insurances

and insurances and insurances and credit

cards and credit debt and a loan and a bad tooth

and a penchant for sushi so I drop

the jerk but keep the truth.

Tell me, he says,

“Why don’t Sunnis and Shiites get along?”

“Tell me,” he says, “What’s going on in Iraq?”

“Tell me,” he says, “What’s up with Saudi and Syria

and Iran?” “Tell me,” he says, “Why do Muslims

like bombs?” I want to shove an M1 up his behind

and confetti that pasty flesh and that tailored suit.

Instead I’m sipping my unsweetened iced tea

looking around at the table, at the co-workers

around me; none of whom, not one,

looks back at me. Rather they do the most

American things they can do:

They praise their Lord. They stuff their faces

And pretend they don’t hear him.

And pretend they don’t see me.

This post was adapted from a TEDxUCincinnati Talk. Watch it here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sakinah Hofler is an award-winning writer and a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati in the English Program. Formerly, she worked as a chemical and quality engineer for the United States Department of Defense. She’s an advocate for infusing the arts into our daily lives.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

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When educator Kim Preshoff asked the students in her environmental science classes to create blackout poetry for Earth Day, she was expecting some nature-inspired poems and thoughts on the state of our planet. What she got back were profound and beautiful works about what they’re experiencing and living through right now: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are some of the poems from the Williamsville North High School students:

“About COVID” by Liz

“imagination” by Adrianna

“Kinda Depressing” by Catherine

“Pandemic” by Emma

“Quarantine” by Olivia

“About the Virus” by Taylor

“When Quarantine is Over” by Annica

“Overcoming” by Julia

“Stuck in the House” by Brooke

“Quarantine” by Jack

“COVID” by Anna

“Hope” by Alexis

“How People Feel” by Anonymous

Politicians and other public figures deploy particular rhetorical devices to communicate their ideas and to convince people, and it’s time that we all learned how to use them, says speechwriter Simon Lancaster.

There is a secret language of leadership — and it’s one that anyone can learn, says UK speechwriter Simon Lancaster in a TEDxVerona talk. He has made a career out of crafting addresses, remarks and talks for top politicians and CEOs of international corporations such as Nestle and Unilever, and continues to do so. Refreshingly, rather than clinging Gollum-like to what he’s learned and knows, he believes everyone should have access to the same tools that he and his colleagues use.

By tools, he’s not talking about special software or databases — he’s referring to rhetoric. Rhetoric has its roots in ancient Greece (think: Aristotle) as clear, convincing speech was seen as an essential component of communication and participation in a democracy. Instruction in rhetoric remained part of the curriculum in many secondary schools in Europe and the US until the 19th century.

“The reason we all used to learn rhetoric at school was because it was seen as a basic entry point to society,” explains Lancaster, who is based in London. “How could society be fair, unless everyone had equal ability to articulate and express themselves? Without it, your legal systems, your political systems, your financial systems are not fair.”

Yes, the power to persuade is just that — power.

Lancaster states there is only one school in England that still teaches rhetoric: Eton, the alma mater of 20 Prime Ministers (including current officeholder, Boris Johnson). He adds, “It should be of intense concern to all of us that education in this has been narrowed to a very small … elite.”

While Lancaster can’t send the world to Eton, he can share the 6 rhetorical building blocks needed to speak persuasively. Here they are:

Building block #1: Breathless sentences or phrases

Barack Obama gave an acceptance speech for the ages in 2008 after he was first elected president of the US. He spoke vividly of the challenges that lay ahead for the country: “Even as we celebrate tonight, we know that the challenges tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime: Two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”

Lancaster wants us to pay special attention to the last part of that sentence, the “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century” part. Yes, it’s a stressful mouthful — not just because of the content but because of how it’s delivered. Short, staccato phrases like these mimic how we speak when we’re anxious and in a hurry. This technique helps communicate urgency to an audience.

Building block #2: Speaking in 3s

What’s the other rhetorical trick underlying “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century”? The rule of 3.

Humans are accustomed to things coming in 3s: whether it’s judges on American Idol, bowls of porridge in a fairy tale, or sides in a triangle. Our minds and ears have been trained by speeches (Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, for the people, by the people”); slogans (reduce, reuse, recycle); and book titles (Elizabeth Gilbert‘s memoir Eat, Pray, Love). “You put your argument in 3s, it makes it sound more compelling, more convincing, more credible. Just like that,” says Lancaster.

Recall British PM Winston Churchill’s stirring triplet from the speech he delivered to Parliament on June 4, 1940: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight on the fields and in the streets.” Besides the rule of 3, he gave the line additional rhetorical firepower by repeating the opening clause.

Lancaster explains, “When we are emotional about things, our perspective distorts, and this then manifests in our speech. So this is the authentic sound of passion.” Doing this can catch an audience in the speaker’s enthusiasm.

Building block #3: Balanced statements

“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” It’s a line from president John F Kennedy’s inspiring 1961 inaugural address, and one that’s stood the test of time. Why? Its balanced construction, says Lancaster. “If the sentence sounds as if it’s balanced, we imagine that the underlying thinking is balanced and our brain is tuned to like things that are balanced.”

Grouping balanced statements in 3s further amplifies the effect:

“We’re looking to the future, not the past.

We’re working together, not against one another.

We’re thinking about what we can do, not what we can’t.”

Building block #4: Metaphor

According to Lancaster, people use a metaphor once every 16 words on average (side question: Where do statistics like this even come from?). He declares, “Metaphor is probably the most powerful piece of political communication.”

Metaphors are rich in imagery and awake immediate feelings in people, so it follows that politicians love them and sprinkle them like birdseed (“like birdseed” is a simile, not a metaphor, and similes are other strong rhetorical tools to have in your kit). At times, they can employ them to point us to an ideal or aspiration. For example, in his farewell address, president Ronald Reagan movingly invoked America, h/t to John Winthrop, as a “shining city upon the hill.”

Too often, however, metaphors are used to manipulate, incite and denigrate. Politicians and talking heads could have called the 2015-16 refugee encampment in Calais, France, a “refugee camp” or “refugee settlement.” Instead, they deployed this loaded word: “jungle.” Lancaster says,“It’s planting in your mind the idea that migrants are like wild animals to be afraid of, that they are dangerous, that they represent a threat to you. This is a very dangerous metaphor because this is the language of genocide; it’s the language of hate.” Unfortunately, media outlets picked up “Calais jungle” and used it as their shorthand identifier of the camp, extending the metaphor’s reach.

Building block #5: Exaggeration

In the same way that we get breathless when they’re speaking with passion, our speech distorts in another significant way. We exaggerate. So when we’re sitting down to a meal after having eaten little that day, we tell our family and friends: “I love this pizza.” But when we say things like this to each other, we also realize it’s a bit of distortion: We do not love the pizza in the same way that we love our children or parents or the planet, and everyone present knows that.

Similarly, politicians and leaders might say things like “I’ve waited my whole life to say these words” or “I will work to achieve this with all my heart and soul.” These utterances are indeed over the top, but because they’re acceptable and even welcome since they echo how we speak.

Building block #6: Rhyming

Starting from childhood, many of us are taught concepts through rhymes — such as “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” or “i before e except after c.” With their musicality, they’re a pleasing informational snack that sticks in memories like a musical earworm.

Rhymes can seem corny, but sprinkled in at the right time, they can be incredibly potent. We all  remember the pithy “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” from defense attorney Johnnie Cochran during O.J. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial.

Rhyming’s appeal comes “down to what linguists talk about as the processing fluency of language — how easy is language to swallow?” says Lancaster. “If you speak using long words and long sentences, it’s like giving someone a steak and asking them to swallow it. Whereas if you give them something pithy, like a rhyme, it’s like asking them to just sip on some Prosecco.”

These six tricks can help us speak directly to people’s instinctive, emotional and logical brains, and they are extremely effective, says Lancaster. There’s no need for us to be in the public eye to use them in order to sway others or make our words stay in people’s minds. Even if we never employ them in our own lives, it’s equally important for us to recognize them. Politicians, con artists and advertisers utilize them to win votes, spread opinions, or sell products people don’t need. By being alert to these rhetorical devices, we can be better citizens and consumers.

To learn more about rhetoric, watch this TED-Ed lesson:

Watch Simon Lancaster’s TEDxVerona talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon Lancaster is one of the world’s top speechwriters. He first became a speechwriter in the late 1990s, working for members of Tony Blair’s Cabinet and now writes for the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest companies. Lancaster is a visiting lecturer at Henley Business School, Cass Business School and Cambridge University. He writes regular columns for Total Politics and The Guardian and provides expert commentary for the BBC and Sky News.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Monica Garwood

Being a writer is all about expressing your unique perspective with feeling and originality, not about having a huge vocabulary or getting published, says author Jacqueline Woodson.

She shares a little of what she’s learned in the process of writing a lot (30+ books!).

“Write something good, and feel good about writing it.”

That sentence is from award-winning writer Jacqueline Woodson — she just released Red at the Bone, a novel for adults — in response to the question “What’s the goal of writing when you’re 15?” (Side note: I, the interviewer, did not pose that query; she did. Yep, Woodson is the kind of intimidating and articulate person who can come up with thoughtful questions even during an interview.)

That sentence is great advice for writers of any age. And so, just because I can, I will repeat it: “Write something good, and feel good about writing it.”

Woodson and I are talking about writing because I’m a fan of hers and because I’m a mentor in a writing program for high-schoolers in New York City (Girls Write Now). I wanted to hear what insights and inspiration she had to offer those who aspire to do what she does. Once upon a time, she was a girl with a passion for words — “from the gate, I was like, ‘I want to be a writer — I want to write everything: poetry and short stories and fiction and …’” She’s gone on to write more than 30 books — including Miracle’s Boys, Brown Girl Dreaming and After Tupac and D Foster — that span all those categories and then some. Decades later, she still loves to write and re-write (more on the latter below).

Here’s what she had to say to aspiring writers:

Do you know lots of impressive words? Good — but try to keep them to yourself

“You don’t need to have a great vocabulary. What you need to have is a creative way of using the words you have. I think sometimes it is detrimental to writers to have too much of a vocabulary because they just rely on the word that they know how to define and they end up breaking the first rule of writing: Show, don’t tell.”

No one else sees the world quite the same way you do, so share your unique perspective

“Writing is about narrative language and creative language and being able to get a point across in a way that is not ordinary. More than having a large vocabulary, one needs a large vision and be able to see the world in a different way than other people see it.”

Look at picture books, even if you think you’re too old for them

“Young writers can learn so much from reading picture books and really engaging in the text and how the language is laid on the page. With picture books, [writers] are working with a reader who has a very short attention span and you have to get them from line one and hold them to page 32. That’s a challenge, but it’s also a challenge that’s not going to be intimidating for a young writer. It also allows them to experiment with tone and form, especially poetic form, because picture books are intentional, the line breaks are intentional, and each line is laying down an image.”

Woodson recommends checking out any of the illustrated books that have received the Caldecott Medal or the Coretta Scott King Book Award.

Write with feeling

“Writing is visceral. If you write something down and don’t feel some kind of way, then it’s not working. It’s not doing what you wanted to do.”

If it’s possible, set limits on the initial feedback you receive

“When I first write something, I show it to three people I trust. I tell them: ‘Tell me every single thing you love about it.’ That’s all I want to hear because it’s embryonic. It’s so fragile at that point because it’s so new that I’m not ready for questions, I’m not ready for it to be evaluated in any way. I just want to know what you love, because that’s going to make me excited to go back and write more of it.”

Seek out books that reflect you and your experience

“Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop talks about the importance of kids having both mirrors and windows in their fiction. (editor’s note: Bishop is referring to kids having the chance to read books that reflect them and their lives and books that give them portals onto different kinds of lives.) I think especially in our culture kids get a lot of books by white writers, no matter their color, so they can’t even imagine themselves as an Asian girl, a black girl, someone who is indigenous [and] being able to have a narrative. It’s hard to have a writer believe, ‘Yeah, I have license to tell a story without getting in trouble.’ To see parts of her narrative in cultures as close to hers as possible is helpful.”

If you can’t find writing that mirrors you, take it as your chance to fill in the gap

“As a kid, you have a right to be in the world fully and you have a right to see representations of yourself wherever you go. And if you don’t, write your way out. (editor’s note: like Alexander Hamilton.) Figure out why that is so, and rather than fixating on the dilemma of it, challenge it. Write the challenge, and that’s where your writing’s going to break through and create something new.”

Being a writer means being a re-writer

“Writing is a lot of work. When I look at Brown Girl Dreaming, I rewrote that book 33 times. When I look at Another Brooklyn, I rewrote that about 16 times. I think people like the idea of being writers; I don’t think they like being re-writers.

But what if you don’t like to re-write?

“You’re not going to like everything. There are some things that are going to be painful and you don’t want to do them, but the end result is going to be something that is better. I love re-writing now, but I’m old. I love it because I know when I finish re-writing, it’s going to be better than it was when I first wrote it.”

Get ready for your stories, articles, poems and essays to unravel — all of them

“It happens with every single piece. Your writing gets to this point, and it’s so fabulous and you love it. And then it falls apart. That’s the point where you have to start scaffolding it and building it and trying to figure out what is this piece trying to say and how is it trying to say it. A lot of people stop when the piece falls apart and think they’re going to start another one and they’re all going to fall apart.”

What you need to do at this moment: Don’t stop.

“It’s going to be the difference between finishing something and having a whole bunch of half-finished things in your drawer. For people who are starting out writing, know that your piece of writing is going to fall apart and it’s going to get really hard. But it’s the best place to be, because now your work is ahead of you. And you know what you have to do to make it better.”

Don’t fixate on getting published.

“Whenever kids start asking me about their stuff getting published, I’m like, ‘That’s not what you should worry about. You should worry about writing the best piece that you possibly can.’ Writing is such a process. It’s an ongoing process, and you don’t write something in September and have it published by December. It takes much longer. If you really want to invest in the world of writing, you have to invest time and labor and faith in it.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daryl Chen is the Ideas Editor at TED.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Photo: Ryan Lash

Writing a college admissions essay (or any essay for that matter) can be grueling. BUT—did you know that once you’ve written that essay, you’re halfway to giving a TED-style Talk? So why not register with The TED-Ed Student Talks Program to complete the process, and share your ideas with the world!

If you’re a high schooler wrapping up your college admissions essay or a student working on one of many essay assignments for class, writing is probably a regular part of your school workload. Any time you write an essay, you need to discover, develop, and share an idea clearly—and these are actually the building blocks to giving a TED-style Talk. So whether you’re workshopping edits for your admissions essay, finalizing a paper for science class, or browsing through your collected essays from years passed—you’re ready to take that extra step and transform the written word into the spoken.

Here’s what you’ve already accomplished by writing your essay:

1. You identified and explored an idea which will be the focus of your Talk.

2. You developed a throughline: your main point or argument, the magnet to which all your points are drawn (your Talk’s connecting thread).

3. You researched and fact-checked the claims which will support your talking points.

4. You outlined an introduction, a body, and a conclusion that can be mirrored in your Talk arc.

5. You combined the above elements into a cohesive whole which will provide the blueprint for your Talk.

With your essay in hand, you have the essential ingredients needed to actualize your Talk. Remember: you can accomplish things with the spoken word that you can’t with the written. You’ll sense this just by reading your essay out loud. Doesn’t this feel different from reading your essay in silence? Your job now is akin to a script editor turning a silent film into a Talkie, and both the TED-Ed screen and stage are waiting for you.

Here’s why you should turn your essay into a Talk:

1. Your idea will be made available globally on our TED-Ed Student Talks Youtube Channel and can affect those you’ve never even met.

2. You’ll take your idea further by expanding upon it. There are no character limits with Talks so your creativity can run wild.

3. You’ll enhance your idea with visuals: slides, video clips, photos, and animations…images rejoice!

4. You’ll fine-tune your public speaking skills and practice the craft (and joys!) of presenting.

5. You’ll decide who you’re speaking to: your Talk doesn’t have to be addressed to a teacher or an admissions committee, instead you get to choose your audience.

The alchemy of turning writing into speech is at your fingertips—your Talk sits hidden in your essay and it’s awaiting to be unearthed. And while there are many exciting benefits to carving a Talk out of your essay, they all have one thing in common: you get to make the most of your written efforts by enriching, informing, and enlivening them.

So register with the TED-Ed Student Talks Program and do more with what you’ve already done: join us with a group or on your own! And maybe soon you’ll be flipping the script and transforming your TED-style Talk back into a school essay.

Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor writes the kind of drop-everything, Africa-based fantasy and sci-fi that she never saw on bookshelves growing up. Here, she talks about the authors that shaped her, her inspirations (traffic! jellyfish!) and her collaboration with Marvel.

Nnedi Okorafor is obsessed with bugs. More specifically grasshoppers, but also cicadas, especially in late summer, when they fill up the dusk with song. “I can remember times when I was five or six years old, where I’d catch a grasshopper and just stare, and let it stare back at me for an hour,” she says. “Even now, the idea that all these tiny, hidden worlds are just dwelling — it’s fascinating, plus it’s beautiful and amazing.”

It’s this sensitivity to the wonders around her that has helped make Okorafor one of the most acclaimed writers of science fiction and fantasy today. Over the last decade, in more than a dozen books for children, young adults and adults — including the Binti trilogy, Who Fears Death, the Akata series, Lagoon and, more recently, Black Panther comics, including a brand-new standalone on his little sister Shuri — Okorafor has welcomed readers into her own magical hidden worlds. She has received many major awards, including the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award, as well as the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.

                    Nnedi Okorafor brings life to Shuri, Black Panther’s little sister, in this new comic book. Image courtesy of Marvel; artwork by Sam Spratt.

But you won’t find extraterrestrial colonies, space-trotting imperialist explorers or invading aliens in Okorafor’s work; she avoids these sci-fi tropes. Instead, her settings tend to be African — speculative versions of Nigeria, Sudan and Namibia — and draw on African mythology, folklore and tradition. Her protagonists are typically young women who are caught between cultures and worlds, navigating remarkable circumstances. They include math prodigy Binti, the first of the Himba people to attend a prestigious intergalactic university; Nigerian-American Sunny, a young albino girl with latent magic abilities; and Onye, a half-breed child born from great violence who is on an epic quest to save her people from extinction.

Okorafor’s own experiences of feeling like an outsider have inspired her fictional creations. She was raised in the Chicago suburb of South Holland, Illinois (it was “very racist, very white,” she says), to Nigerian parents who settled in the US due to the Nigerian civil war. “Growing up, in just about every group that I moved in, I was an outsider,” Okorafor recalls. In South Holland, Okorafor was seen as “too black” to hang out with her white neighbors, but on visits to Nigeria, she was viewed by cousins there as being “too American.” As she says, “This idea of being an outsider was something that I was forced to face at an early age, but there was never a time where I felt like I had to try to be someone else to fit in.”

From an early age, she was an enthusiastic reader — but not of sci-fi. She didn’t connect to classic Western works of the genre by authors like H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Isaac Asimov. “Those books were very white and male, and they presented worlds where the possibility of someone like me wasn’t even there,” she remembers. “I didn’t have to see myself, but it was important to feel it was possible, at least in one of those books, and it was not.” She read a lot of horror fiction, including Stephen King, Robert McCammon, Clive Barker and Mary Shelley. “They presented a world of not just terror, but great imagination,” Okorafor says. “And those stories were a bit more diverse than the science-fiction stories.”

During family visits to Nigeria in the 1990s and 2000s, Okorafor was fascinated by the harmony between traditional belief systems and brand-new electronic devices. “I started noticing the use and the interplay of technology in Nigerian communities, especially when cell phones came around,” she says. “I saw phones popping up in the most remote places, and they were normalized in really cool ways.” She wondered why stories didn’t depict technology in African nations. In fact, she began to wonder why she wasn’t writing such stories herself.

In college, however, Okorafor found herself discouraged from writing science fiction. “I had professors who were constantly telling me, ‘You’re such a good writer; you want to stay away from all of that weird stuff,’” she remembers. “Eventually I just kind of jumped the rails, because I couldn’t help it.” Okorafor dove headfirst into creating the stories she never found on library shelves growing up — ones with strong female protagonists of color, African locations, speculative technology, aliens and magic, as well as complex and relevant social themes like racial identity and gender violence.

“A lot of people are told to stifle their imaginations, just in order to get by. Science fiction does the exact opposite.”

When writing a novel, Okorafor rarely starts at the beginning. And she’s not a fan of outlines. “They feel confining to me,” she says. She begins projects with a strong sense of character and an explosive scene in which that person jumps to life. “Usually, the scene is so strong that I don’t need to know the context,” she says. After writing it, she thinks, “Is there anything else that I want to write with this character?” But how does she go from building a scene to building an entire world? “I do it by being in the world. My character is in that world, and I’m looking through their eyes. All I have to do is look around.”

Okorafor doesn’t revise until she’s at least halfway finished with a story, although often she won’t do so until a first draft is completed. Yet it’s in her self-editing process that the rich political and social themes of her work can emerge. “I’m already a very political person, and I’m very aware of issues,” she says. “So when I’m writing a story, I don’t have to think about it — it comes. In the editing process, I’ll be, like, ‘Okay, oh, I was doing this, let me tweak that a bit, let me strengthen that a bit. Let me weaponize that a bit.’”

Okorafor’s greatest source of inspiration is something we all have access to: the whole wide world. She delights in taking the stuff of everyday life and recasting it in fantastical ways. In Okorafor’s mind, jellyfish evolve into an alien species; traditional Nigerian masquerades become spirits from another realm; and the dense, dangerous traffic of the city of Lagos transforms into a literal road monster that swallows drivers whole. “I definitely have a tendency to notice and revel in those things that most would take for granted,” she says. While she occasionally jots her observations in notebooks, on scraps of paper, and on her phone, they mostly live in her head. She knows they will emerge — somehow, someday. On a trip to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, Okorafor and her daughter, Anya, were caught in a dust storm. “It was awesome,” she says. “Those things are going to show up in my stories. They just are.”

When she’s feeling stuck — and yes, she gets stuck — she may turn to her daughter for inspiration. “She loves to listen to me tell the story before I even write it,” she says. “In telling the story and having someone who’s listening, asking questions and giving feedback, I find my way. There have been so many times when I’ve gotten ideas or figured something out because I’m doing that with her.” In her 2015 novel Binti, the first person thanked by Okorafor in the acknowledgements is Anya. “When you get stuck, ask a plucky imaginative eleven-year-old what happens next in the story,” she wrote; “you’ll be unstuck in no time.”

“I definitely have a tendency to notice and revel in those things that most would take for granted.”

Now, Okorafor has dove into a completely new genre to her: comics. “I read comics as a kid in the newspaper and in graphic novels,” she says. “I never felt welcome in comic-book shops, so my exposure to superheroes was through Saturday morning cartoons.” But when editors at Marvel approached her last year to write comics in the Black Panther universe, she said yes. She has written four Black Panther issues for Marvel, as well as a three-part series “Wakanda Forever” that follows the Dora Milaje, the all-female special forces team that protects Wakanda. She’s about to release a standalone comic about Shuri, Black Panther’s little sister (a breakout character from Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther film).

In her comic-book writing, Okorafor has been able to flex new creative muscles. “The format has been really nurturing for me, because it’s so different from the way that I create,” she says. Unlike her fiction, she knows from the outset who her central characters are. “It’s easier in that the character’s already alive, but it’s harder in those moments when something about the character previously doesn’t make sense to me,” she says. “Then I have to write around it and deal with it.” Another difference of working in the comic universe: she often starts a project knowing exactly how many pages and how many issues she has to tell her story, as Marvel usually sets those parameters in advance (except for Shuri, which is an ongoing series).

How does Okorafor start writing a comic book? She first writes a short summary of the story that will be told in an issue. Next, she constructs a meticulous outline for the story, beat by beat, with frequent feedback from her editors. Once Okorafor and her team have settled on an outline, she writes the first draft of the script — by hand. “The first draft has to be by hand, because it has to be visual,” she says. “I have a notebook where I draw each panel the way it’s going to be set for the page, and then I write within the panel — and sometimes sketch — what’s happening.” After more rounds of revising and feedback with her editors, the approved draft goes to the illustrators. “It’s a completely different, fascinating process for someone like me, who’s used to writing novels, where it’s very solitary – it’s all you,” she says. “It’s a very collaborative effort, but also you have to think in a different way, which was really tough for me.”

Okorafor doesn’t yet know if she will continue to collaborate with Marvel. “I like to focus on what’s right in front of me,” she says. She is writing a new original comic for Berger Books, set in the same universe as the Binti trilogy and Lagoon, about a community of African and shape-shifting alien immigrants in New York City. The four-part LaGuardia series, illustrated by Tana Ford, will be published in December. Her work may also be coming soon to the small screen — her novel Who Fears Death has been optioned by HBO to be turned into a series, with George R.R. Martin as an executive producer.

“Don’t go changing your story to fit the default — that’s the worst thing you can do.”

In the decade that Okorafor has been writing, she has witnessed a positive shift in sci-fi. She sees greater diversity in who the protagonists are, where stories are set and, perhaps most important, who gets to tell them. But she believes much more work is needed to “de-center” the genre and showcase more stories. “I still think that there is a lack of familiarity with other kinds of voices,” she says. Science fiction has the ability to inspire people who otherwise might feel censored or suppressed. “In various societies — not just American society, but worldwide — a lot of people are told to stifle their imaginations, just in order to get by,” Okorafor says. “Science fiction does the exact opposite. People who are missing that expression in their lives are fulfilled when they read a science-fiction narrative.”

Okorafor’s advice to writers of all ages: Just do it, and do it your way. “Write your story, and don’t be afraid to write it. Don’t go changing your story to fit the default — that’s the worst thing you can do,” she says. “You may be able to find great success, and it works — I’ve seen it work many times — but if you really want a deep shift, and also deep creative satisfaction, you stay true to your own story.”

Watch Nnedi Okorafor’s TEDGlobal talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patrick D’Arcy is the Editorial Manager of the TED Fellows program. This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

BIO

“My high school students don’t see themselves as writers,” says Jennifer Ward, a high school English teacher in Grandville, Michigan. “They come into class and declare, ‘I hate writing!’ They don’t see their stories, their experiences, their voices as worth sharing.” As a TED-Ed Innovative Educator, Jennifer wanted to change that. The result? MIteenWriters.org, a literary platform for teen writers across the state of Michigan.

IDEA

Teen literary magazines can help students build confidence, leadership, and creative writing skills. Instead of limiting a student magazine to school walls, use shared geography as an anchor to bring in stories from across the state.

INNOVATION PROJECT

Jennifer and her high school English students created MIteenWriters.org to lift teen voices across the state of Michigan. They used Weebly and Submittable to develop the platform, with guidance from TED-Ed, TeenInk, and the National Writing Project. While the idea was originally confined to one high school, it cheerfully snowballed to include every high school in the area. Today, submissions are open to all students in the mitten state between the ages of 13-18, and each submission is reviewed for publication by a team of student editors.

Jennifer Ward, a high school English teacher in Michigan, started a teen literary magazine with her students.

Below, read Jennifer’s tips on how to start your own student literary magazine:

• Start first by seeking out an expert mentor. Find an editor who can sit down and talk with you and your team about your vision for creating a literary magazine, and also about the specific criteria of copyright issues and first publication rights.

• Identify a team of student editors who are varied in their writing interests and skills. We have a team of eight, which seems to be about the right size at the moment. Delineate roles for each team member. We have members of our editing team who just review poems, while others review stories, and still others review essays. One team member is our grammar/copy editor. Our editor-in-chief makes the final publication decision after a submission has received at least four up votes on Submittable.

• Have your criteria for publication established before you ever accept a submission. Make sure each member of your team has your site’s vision in mind as they read and accept/reject submissions.

• Connect, connect, connect! Connect with other teachers in your building, in your area, at your local universities. Look for organizations that are hosting teen writing workshops and teen writing camps. Collaborate!

• Don’t be afraid to fail. Encourage your students to take on leadership. Encourage them to fail well.

This article is part of the TED-Ed Innovation Project series, which highlights 25+ TED-Ed Innovation Projects designed by educators, for educators, with the support and guidance of the TED-Ed Innovative Educator program. You are welcome to share, duplicate and modify projects under this Creative Commons license to meet the needs of students and teachers. Art credit: iStockPhoto.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines creativity as “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness.” How will you exercise your creativity this year? To keep your creative resolutions, try these 5 process-oriented tips:

1. Choose a goal that matters to you — and write down the reasons why. Why do you want to keep this creative resolution? Why is this meaningful for you? It’s easier to achieve a goal when you’re clear about your motivation, notes psychologist Kelly McGonigal. To learn more from McGonigal about the science of goal-setting, read this article.

2. Block 10 minutes every day to work toward your creative goal. What’s the smallest action you can take today that moves you closer to your creative goal? Does it take less than 10 minutes? Do it. It may sound obvious, but it’s easy to forget: progress toward any goal requires an investment of time and energy. Here’s how some creative pros schedule their time.

3. Try this schedule for 100 days. The idea is simple: Work on your creative project, every day, for 100 days. Document your progress. (After 100 days, you can pivot as needed.) Read more about the 100 Day Project here.

4. If you get stuck, create something — anything. “If you have a creative mind, it’s a little bit like owning a border collie,” notes author Elizabeth Gilbert. “You have to give it something to do or it will find something to do, and you will not like the thing it finds to do.” For more ideas from Gilbert, read this article. To exercise your creative mind right now, try one of these fun writing prompts.

5. Enjoy the creative process. “Necessity isn’t always the mother of invention,” says Steven Johnson in this TED Talk. ”You’ll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.” Whether that means finding a creative buddy to swap ideas with, or learning how to express your ideas through stop-motion animation, know that creative discovery and play go hand-in-hand — and while you can’t control the outcome, you can control the process. So follow your curiosity — and remember to have fun!

Art credit: iStock

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