Good Tools: The Lateral Leap

If I really want to make forward progress, I might have to move to the side. I don’t mean step aside, as in bow out or leave. I’m referring to a strategic lateral, or sideways, shift. Sometimes, I find I can change the limitations of my world with a strong leap—out of one way of thinking and into another.

You know those scenes in a movie where the protagonist is desperately trying to run away from some huge thing barreling behind him? A boulder, a train, a troll? Do you also find yourself yelling at that protagonist? Just jump to the side, for the love of all things good and holy, jump to the side!! Or is that just me? If dude would just think (while he’s running for his life) and make a quick leap to one side or the other, the huge thing would barrel on in its track. Big things don’t pivot easily or quickly—but we can!

For years now, I’ve thought of the lateral shift as one of the most powerful tools that any person can acquire and develop. It is the quickest and most joyful way to something fresh, original, unexpected. We have other terms for this. The epiphany. The eureka moment.

Sometimes these moments happen so quickly that we think it’s an accident, or a twist of fate, or divine intervention that brought us there. But our minds, I believe, love to leap. If we let them. I think kids do this naturally and all the time. They play with big ideas, allow them to collide together. They see endless potential in every facet of the world they encounter. They transform the everyday (cardboard box, abandoned shack, pretty rock) into powerful possibility (a ship, a mansion, a jewel). They do this for the sake of joy and play.

As we grow up, maybe we abandon this practice because we think we have to stay in our lanes, follow the prescribed track to the big prize. Pay our dues and all that. I don’t think we really forget, however, how important it is make the lateral leap. How often are we asked to “think out of the box” to come up with a solution? Yep, the lateral shift is so old that there are cliched phrases built around it and it’s so powerful and valued that we hear those phrases all the time.

Three ways of looking at a wine cage. Photo by author.

What does a lateral shift look like in practical terms? Never one thing—that’s the beauty of it. A lateral shift idea is often simple, but always fresh. Like opening a door that wasn’t there before. It might be finding an alternate use for an every day object. Finding a different route to the same old destination. Or using space in an innovative way. Or making use of a pocket of time that seemed empty or wasted before.

In a great narrative, the lateral leap is a twist so good that you never could have seen it coming the first time around. A regular twist might be that, out of all the suspects, the murderer is the most innocent-looking one. A really good twist (with some lateral work going on behind it) is that all the suspects collaborated to commit a crime—no one is innocent.

I think of it as an elegant swerve. A simple solution that no one thought of before because they were only thinking in one direction, with all of their prejudices and preconceived ideas left unchallenged.

I’ve been pursuing lateral thinking ever since I discovered the “two minute mystery,” a misnomer since solving one might take an afternoon unless you have at least one smart friend working on it with you.

A woman walks into a bar and asks for a glass of water. The bartender pulls out a gun. The woman says “thank you,” and leaves. What happened?

If you know, you know. The answer is the easiest thing. It’s just…getting there. It requires a leap to the side. (I don’t believe in offering spoilers or giving answers away, but if you want to work on this mystery with me, leave a comment below.) The solution to these puzzles often comes after you’ve been chipping away at it with yes or no questions for some time. But not as part of a logical progression forward (necessarily). It’s usually a little sideways leap that gets you there. A moment when you confront certain assumptions that you’ve been harboring—and decide to let them go so you can step into broader possibilities.

I’m honing my lateral thinking skills right now for the sake of my current protagonist—Vi, a brilliant 9 ½ -year-old, who lives in a house that is like a giant puzzle box. In some ways this story has been easy to write. I can hear the characters talking to each other, so dialog almost writes itself. Other scenes, where I have to get Vi into a part of the house that she’s never discovered before, are much more challenging. To help her find a secret corridor or hidden panel, I really have to labor. I have to think about architecture (not my field) and physics (also not). Then, I’m sweating…until I remember that maybe I could just leap.

Noelle Beverly writes poetry and prose, supports local writers in the surrounding community, and is a member of the BACCA Literary group.