Innovation Blog

The Moomins:  Can YOU Invent a Whole New World?

By Shlomo Maital

 

      

A wonderful new translation (into Hebrew) of Tove Jansson’s book The Moomins: The Story of the Magic Hat, brought back wonderful memories of reading The Moomins to our children and watching the superb animated TV series with them.  To this day, one of our four children identifies himself with Snufkin, a sometime-Moomin family character.  There are 9 Moomin books in all, along with a Moomin theme park in Western Finland and a Moomin Museum in Tampere, Finland, which my wife visited and loved.

     The Moomins are trolls, with rounded snouts, and they live in Moominvalley, somewhere in Finland. (Tove Jansson, their creator, was ethnic Swedish but lived in Finland, where there is a substantial Swedish-speaking group).   There is a father, mother, children, and sometimes, an unwanted visitor or an unexpected event.   

      Jansson invents a magical world for the Moomins, and sets them off on wonderful adventures.  By creating non-human creatures, she is able to describe human characteristics and family interactions incisively, perhaps more sharply than she could if her heroes were truly human.  By creating a whole new world, Jansson makes us accept her premise, that we must set aside all our assumptions and preconceptions, and frolic with her, leaping and diving into the world she has created. 

      Here is a small test to see how innovative you truly are, reader.

      Create a new world.  Start with “zoom out” – the physical place.  Describe it. Draw a map, showing where your main characters live.   Then “zoom in”.  Create your characters.  Notice how hard this is – we tend to ‘invent’ things that are familiar.  Jansson’s Moomins are just human enough to be likeable, but non-human enough to be very interesting and draw our curiosity.

       Now, after zoom in and zoom out,  lights!  Action!  Set your characters in motion. What sort of adventures will they have?  What kinds of conflict will they encounter?  Will they have their own internal conflicts?  External ones?  How fanciful will your world be?  Will it have gravity, night, day, time?  Will you manage to persuade your readers to engage in what a famous writer called “the willing suspension of disbelief” – not an easy task, especially in the age of video.    

        There are numerous brain exercises that have proven helpful with creativity. I think that ‘invent a world’ is one of them. 

         Try it.  See if you can draw your characters and their surroundings.  Don’t assume you cannot draw, like me and many others. Just do it.  Find your own style, perhaps simple or stylized.  You will be surprised.