I was browsing through roleplays the other day when I came upon this statement: “Limitations breed creativity.” This troubled me greatly—my first thought asked, “Don’t limitations prevent creativity?” I refused to stop there, and endeavoured to find an answer, but that one question opened more and more. What do limitations do for creativity? Do they foster it or stifle it? Are there any reasonable limitations—and, if so, can I decide what kind of limitations are and are not reasonable?

Creativity can be defined as “the use of original ideas in the production of an artistic work.” (“Artistic” may obfuscate any points I make, so unless it becomes relevant it’ll only serve as a sort of clarification.) A limitation that fosters creativity must encourage the use of original ideas, but I believe that it is much easier for a limitation to restrict the use of original ideas. Such a limitation may say that you cannot use x idea in y way, or that you can only use x idea in y way. It may make generalisations, but a limitation on creativity will usually be in the form of a whitelist or blacklist, nebulous or otherwise.

Thus, a limitation on creativity must, by definition, reduce creativity. Such limitations prevent the use of certain ideas and discount imagination in certain areas. I do not intend, however, to paint limitations in such a negative light. Perhaps there are limitations that, despite restricting creativity, also encourage it, such that the negative effect is outweighed. Perhaps, in fact, there are some limitations that are necessary to meaningful creativity.

I’d like to examine several common limitations on writers and, by logical argument, explain whether their net effect is negative or positive. Feel free to object or make your own examinations.

[hider=Logic and Consistency]
One potential limitation is the general rule that ideas must make sense. Given a setting or a starting point, ideas must flow logically and not arbitrarily. This limitation immediately restricts the use of any original idea that cannot sensibly fit within the situation. Any random ideas a writer may have must either be discarded or re-shaped. This is, perhaps, the most basic limitation on creativity and one of the most powerful, because it governs every single idea a writer may conceive, but it is also the most lax, because any idea, no matter how superficially nonsensical, is allowed if it can be properly fit.

It may be argued that, in the presence of the logical limitation, a writer may be bogged down by the need to make all aspects of his story fit together from the very beginning, and that the process of constructing a logical setting, outline, and so on may cause the writer to lose interest before he or she can ever even begin writing. I’ve experienced the very same thing. That is why I can say with certainty that this argument is not universally applicable; one can write freely with some concern for logic and adapt to the logical limitation in the editing stage.

Bear with me as I make my argument for the positivity of the logical limitation. Confusion tends to occur in the absence of logic; if a writer does not arrange ideas logically, confusion results. If ideas fit together sensibly, they gain meaning and consistent purpose. Note that the logical limitation is meaningful only if a writer desires a coherent, sensible work without confusion. But I also advance the idea that most creative works will die without the logical limitation. If there is no direction or meaning, a collection of parts may never become a whole, not even by some stroke of luck.

The logical limitation, by inhibiting confusion, encourages and supports the creation of a work—without which original ideas have no outlet, and without which creativity is limited completely, not just a little bit. The net effect is positive and the logical limitation is reasonable.
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[hider=Setting]
Another common limitation that is more directly stated or followed in a work is that of the setting. By setting I do not exclusively imply the world a work is set in, but instead the basis for a work. For the purposes of my argument, the setting of a work is whatever it starts with, the foundation. This may include the world and its history, cultures, and peoples; but it may also include the characters involved and their motives, personalities, and emotions. A creative work is limited by a setting if all ideas involved in the work must follow logically from the setting.

The setting can be considered an extension of the logical limitation. It restricts more ideas than the logical limitation does because it only allows ideas that fit with a writer’s starting point. For example, a character may start with a goal to help others. Meanwhile, the world may be deteriorating on account of some looming apocalypse. If the character is enabled to save the world, his or her goal may change to save the world. This is a logical result of the setting (the world’s deterioration and the character’s desire to help others). On the other hand, the character is unlikely to decide not to save the world if enabled to do so, because that does not necessarily follow from his or her original predispositions. 

I believe that setting is a positive limitation, but less positive than the logical limitation, and my reasoning will follow that of my arguments for the logical limitation. A setting discourages confusion because it encourages actions that occur in the work to follow a reasonable chain of events. A character has no direction who does whatever the writer feels like, but a character with an initial personality (a setting) acts in a consistent, coherent manner. Similarly, a world that operates logically provides a consistent backdrop for the actions of consistent characters, but a world subject to the random whims of its creator will confuse the characters and the actions they take.

In my examination on the logical limitation, I considered the argument that the need for logical consistency may bog down a writer in complications and inconsistencies. In the context of the logical limitation alone, this argument is easily overcome. However, if a writer wishes to limit his or her work to a setting, it is harder to write freely and then adapt to the setting in the editing stage. Instead, it turns out that a writer must prepare some semblance of a setting before beginning the writing stage.

I put great stock in setting, myself, and I, too, lost interest when I spent all my time preparing a setting before writing anything. In my experience, the limitation of a setting is only positive if a writer can strike a balance between writing and planning. A setting fosters creativity by supporting creation of a coherent work, but can restrict creativity by cutting off a work before it properly starts. The net effect is generally positive and generally reasonable.
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[hider=Goals]
Although the end goal of a story is rarely considered a restriction on writing, I believe that a goal is most definitely a limitation, and a common one at that. For this argument I’ll define “goal” as the final goal of a work—just as the setting is the starting state of a story, so the goal is the end state. (I’ll consider intermittent goals in my next examination.) The goal of a writer may involve the final state of a character in terms of his or her personality or development, or the final state of the world as a whole, or anything in between.

Just like a setting and the logical limitation, goals provide direction for a story and thereby decrease confusion. However, unless goals are applied very carefully, they may illogically restrict the logical limitation by ruling out certain reasonable effects or actions. For example, a writer may sacrifice the natural development of his or her characters in order to push them toward a personality goal; this usually results in obviously artificial development.

But allowing characters to change naturally with their surroundings is dangerous to a story goal because their motives may change to the point that they don’t want to or cannot bring forth the end state. In a story, a writer can move toward his or her goal by manipulating the surroundings effectively without sacrificing logical progression for the characters, and the writer may also predispose the characters toward his story goal when he or she creates his setting.

It is not so easy to naturally push a goal in a roleplay. If all members of a roleplay are required to strive toward the goal, they are effectively forced to turn their characters in that direction with artificial development and less varied personality traits. Yet a GM can still accomplish his or her goals by manipulating the surroundings to prevent unwanted or adverse character development or by disallowing adverse or potentially adverse characters.

I have shown that goals are negative if applied directly to characters, but positive if applied to the surroundings. Yet, even the surroundings are not always capable of changing a character’s direction once it has been changed adversely. GMs that desire an end goal for their roleplay must confront certain decisions: should the GM restrict characters and risk causing artificial development or, worse yet, stifling development altogether? Should he or she let the roleplay run its course, even if it fails at accomplishing the goal? Can he or she establish a middle ground?
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[hider=Plot]
The plot of a story or roleplay is much like an end goal. For the sake of this argument, I’ll define plot in two ways: as a series of intermittent goals that together make up the story or as a series of events related to the setting that drives the story. The former definition has the potential to be extremely restrictive for many of the same reasons outlined in the above examination. If certain events must occur on account of characters’ actions and not the surroundings, characters must be manipulated to create the desired effect.

An author who desires a strict plot must work harder to keep character development natural, which significantly restricts creativity, because only actions and changes that contribute to the plot can be allowed. The situation is worsened in a roleplay, and I would go so far as to say that a roleplay with a strict plot will succeed much better as a shared, co-planned narrative, rather than to hold any pretences of being a roleplay. In this sense, plot is extremely negative and stifles creativity worse than any of the other three limitations.

On the other hand, a writer or GM may plan events that happen to the players on account of the surroundings. Used and manipulated correctly, these events can elicit desired but natural development and accomplish goals that may be set for the narrative—without sacrificing the autonomy of the involved characters. This definition of plot is far less restrictive than the other one, but is also very planning-intensive, and it can bog down an author or GM just as much as setting and the logical limitation do. I believe that, in this sense, plot is either neutral or slightly negative, since it may discourage writing with the tedium of extensive planning. 
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