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Are there “kinds of imagination”? It would seem all imagination is, if not the same, at least “good”. “Imagination is all I want from you” an 80s song goes – yes, I’m getting old – and with only minimal… imagination, we can totally picture a writer looking in the mirror and whispering these magic words. 

After all, it would seem impossible to write without imagination, since it refers to our ability to form ideas, have thoughts, or even experience emotions that, though perhaps inspired by our environment, are not directly available to our senses.

For example, when you see a red car brightly reflecting the afternoon sunshine and it triggers a memory from your childhood, that’s imagination. Indeed, if you can “see” a red car reflecting the sun while you’re reading these lines, that’s imagination too!

However, imagination is a tricky concept. Because of its abstract nature, imagination can come in various forms – as perhaps you noticed already in the few paragraphs above. For instance, it takes one kind of imagination to watch a film and then write a review about it, and entirely another to create a modern art installation.

The key issue, then, is to be able to recognize these forms imagination takes, and take advantage of them according to the needs of our writing. As I will show you in this post, we could think of three kinds of imagination – creative, productive, and reproductive – each with its own patterns and applications.

The Three Kinds of Imagination

As a concept, imagination has occupied the minds of some of the greatest thinkers in history. Indeed, part of the inspiration for this post – and as the perceptive reader that you are, you surely see how imagination plays a part in this very process! – came as a result of reading Ricoeur and Castoriadis in Discussion, where the two philosophers discuss imagination and its forms.

The very brief version – one necessarily incomplete and partly adapted to our purposes – is that we could approach imagination from three distinct directions. Let’s take a quick look at them, and then I’ll offer you examples and ideas on how to use these kinds of imagination in your writing.

• Creative Imagination. This refers to the kind of imagination that, as you might guess, creates new forms, a sort of ex nihilo creation, creating from nothing.
• Productive Imagination, on the other hand, is interpretative in nature. That is, it reconsiders and reexamines existing information, combining its various expressions to generate something that, though perhaps directly new, is indirectly a reorganization of something preexisting.
• Reproductive Imagination. This kind of imagination is of a somewhat lesser value. Here there is no claim of reinterpretation or novelty, even superficial. It’s simply the reproduction of information that is already available, perhaps in a slightly altered form. However, this kind of imagination also has its uses, as I will show you.

For Ricoeur and Castoriadis, their main philosophical disagreement was whether imagination is creative or productive. Ricoeur affirmed the latter, essentially rejecting that there can be anything truly new, whereas Castoriadis supported this idea.

I won’t engage in any philosophical speculation, though I do recommend the short book as further reading. Instead, I use these concepts as a starting point – a metaphor, even – to see how they can help us write better texts.

Examples and Ideas on Using Imagination

Let’s now take a look at some example cases, so that it becomes easier to detect how these different kinds of imagination become optimal for a given writing purpose. I will give you one example for each case.

Using Creative Imagination

In a way, this is probably what most people understand when they think of “imagination”: the ability to be creative, to “come up with stuff”, implicitly from nothing. Of course, the crucial element here is that not everything we create comes from nothing.

Indeed, most things don’t!

The truth is, even texts that seem to be incredibly original, usually can be traced to existing ideas. It’s a well-documented fact that Shakespeare – arguably the most celebrated writer in the English literary canon – worked with stories created by other people.

Nonetheless, there is such a thing as creative imagination, that is, creating something new, something from nothing. Perhaps one could attempt to detect some sort of preexistent elements in everything (remember the disagreement between Ricoeur and Castoriadis), but we must draw the line somewhere. Shakespeare might have used others’ stories, but he coined almost 2,000 new English words.

Although an observer could claim these words weren’t “new”, since they were combinations of other words, loans from other languages, and so on, we’ll leave that philosophical debate to philosophers and focus on the practicalities: Coining new words is an example of creative imagination.

Overall, every time you make something that is virtually unprecedented, it’s an example of creative imagination. It could be a new word, a new formatting choice – think of Cormac McCarthy not using quotation marks – or even, why not, a new genre.

Of course, the key here is to recognize when it’s appropriate to do that.

The truth is, there is no hard-and-fast rule; it comes with experience. Very generally, the more formal and fact-based a text is, the less room for such creativity. Perhaps coining a new word and term – provided you explain it well – would be a positive thing even in an academic text, but I would certainly avoid disregarding rules of punctuation and the style guide!

Using Productive Imagination

Whereas creative imagination, the way I’ve defined it above, is rather rare, productive imagination is ubiquitous. I mentioned in the previous section that most people associate imagination with “coming up with stuff”, implicitly from nothing. This is particularly the case for writing, as most people think it simply involves sitting at the computer and starting to type.

Of course, as most writers would share with a smile, there are a ton of things that need to happen before actually sitting at the computer. From a simple blog post to a fantasy novel, a writer needs to plan, reflect, and above all experience the world around them. 

All these processes refer to productive imagination. When you begin to find connections between seemingly incongruous things, when you see a particular shade of green and it reminds you of a vacation five years ago, productive imagination is there. 

Productive imagination helps you code a modern text adventure game, compose a postrock album, or write a nonfiction post using stream-of-consciousness.

So, where can you use productive imagination? The answer is, virtually everywhere! From all the various kinds of imagination, productive imagination (as I’ve defined it in this post) is where you should focus your writing efforts, as most of our imaginative processes exist here.

In other words, most of the time you’re trying to come up with a new idea, something unprecedented and unique, you’re likely doing it wrong. Most great ideas aren’t a result of “coming up with stuff”, but of intriguing combinations. Find connections between things, reexamine old patterns, reinterpret old suggestions. That’s where most things worth writing about exist.

Using Reproductive Imagination

I mentioned earlier that this kind of imagination isn’t as valuable, because it doesn’t really involve much more than copying existing ideas, rather than combining or reinterpreting them to create something new.

You might be wondering, then, why do I bother referring to it – indeed, why do I even bother calling it “imagination”?

The truth is, there is some novelty involved and, as a result, there is some sort of imagination required. It also means, there is still value. Perhaps the process only involves copying and redisplaying, but a minor adaptation can still make a difference.

The best example I could give you here is about having to explain a certain concept or text to an audience. If, for example, the topic was about Othello, you would explain it one way to a group of postgraduate students of literature, and entirely in another to a group of junior high students. In the latter case in particular, you couldn’t simply do a mental copy/paste of what you know.

In a way, reproductive imagination is a kind of editing, as it allows the writer to practice restraint, avoiding infodumps, especially to an audience not equipped to receive them. 

There might be no new information generated – not even via combination or reinterpretation, as in the case of productive imagination – but there is value still, and imagination needed to know what to mention (and how) and what to leave out.

Kinds of Imagination, Intelligently

Using imagination – all kinds of imagination – is the key to any kind of progress. From finding solutions to an engineering problem to coming up with a narrative strategy for your next essay, imagination is an integral part of the process.

However, like all abstract concepts, it contains a certain sense of ambiguity. Sometimes imagination seems to even get in the way of things, or at least offering you the longest way there. Just think of Wile E. Coyote using the most bizarre Acme gadgets to catch the Road Runner. Plenty of imagination, but little substance.

In other words, no point reinventing the wheel.

In a writing context, recognizing where to use the different kinds of imagination is the key to channeling this power intelligently. There are times for creating something new, as there are times for simply reinterpreting something old. There are also occasions where imagination simply means to control the flow of information.

Ultimately, imagination – our ability to form ideas, have thoughts, or experience emotions – is precisely that: an ability. Which means we can practice it, become more experienced in its use, and learn how to make the best of it.