Speaker's ToolsWhat's next the Combo or the Reverse. Where's my notes at. The COMBO! Oh, great. Great technique. Get some blank pieces of paper ready folks.
There's two methods for writing the combo joke: Combining things that share - NO MATTER HOW TENUOUS - a similar trait, quality, or property. And combining unrelated things that have nothing in common.
We're going to work on the first one. The second technique is to combine unrelated things. What you would do is take your car list and arbitrarily make a list of unrelated items: Can opener, book, Thesaurus, chair, comb... Then you plug them together to see how they bounce of each other. There's no real teachable technique for the second one.
Now for the first one, we're going to go into a different list. We're going to set aside our original list for a few minutes. We've already started with our subject matter. We're dealing with an automobile. Automobile has a lot of traits. It's made out of metal. It's manufactured in America. It moves with a hundred and one traits we can look at. It has paint, it's got moving parts. For the sake of the exercise and direction, I'm giving you something. The fact that the car is mechanical electrical - it has mechanical parts and electrical parts.
Ignition parts - electrical. Mechanical, the fact the seats move forward and back. It has both mechanical and electrical aspects.
Now, get a blank sheet of paper out. Let me give you a little structure for this. What you are going to do is a diagram. At the top label it Combo Technique. You are going to have four areas as if you drew two lines and divided the paper into four parts.
Label each of the squares 1 through 4 with 1. at the left top quadrant, 2. in the right top quadrant, 3. bottom right quadrant and 4. left bottom quadrant.
1. Subject: Car
|
2. Quality: Mechanical/Electrical
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| 4. (Write your ideas here): | 3. Association List |
a. |
Hearing aid |
In position 1. you take your subject and your subject is car or automobile. So write that down in position 1.
In position 2. you write down the trait you've decided on and in our case we decided on Mechanical/Electrical.
In position 3., we forget about automobile for a minute and we start making an Association List of other things that are electrical/mechanical. I've got some starter ones here. Hearing aid, electric razor... So just start making a list in that column. Things or people we can associate with electrical/mechanical. Now what are some other stuff that comes to mind?
Answer: A lawn mower.
John: A lawn mower.
Answer: An answering machine.
John: An answering machine.
Answer: Electric toothbrush.
John: Electric toothbrush.
Answer: Washer/Dryer.
John: Washer/Dryer. PG&E person.
Answer: Beeper.
John: Beeper.
Answer: And one tank.
John: And one tank. Okay. Some more stuff.
Answer: Life support system.
John: Life support system.
Answer: Electric chair.
John: Electric chair, robot.
Answer: Horsepower.
John: Horsepower.
