Why Brennan Lee Mulligan Never Runs Out of Creative Ideas?

I asked Brennan Lee Mulligan the question, "Aren't you worried you'll run out of unique material?" that Emma Rose Miller submitted for the Worlds Beyond Number interview. Here is his answer.

If you prefer to watch it, here it is:

Here's the written version of his answer. Trimmed for clarity.

Emma Rose Miller, thank you so much for this question. This is a really cool question.

I never grow tired of a genre. Does that make sense? I’ve never thought, "I can’t see another [insert genre] movie."

There’s a lot of focus among creators on novelty and originality—"How do I reinvent the form? How do I reinvent the form? How do I reinvent the form?" But to use a weird food analogy, because I’m always quite hungry, people think, "We have pancakes. We have French toast. We have waffles. But you can’t just keep making those. How do we make a fourth fluffy breakfast food?"

As an improv teacher, I used to tell my students that form-breaking—ejecting from genre, chasing novelty—is always a major concern for creators. But in my experience, audiences aren’t really looking for a fourth type of fluffy breakfast food. What they’re looking for most often is a really amazing pancake.

Because you need to eat breakfast every day.

We need new stories all the time. Artists get really focused on form, but at the end of the day, every creator is also an audience member. And it’s funny because I’ll sit there worrying about novelty, originality, doing something new, but then I sit down on the couch with my fiancée, Izzy, and see a new fantasy show and go, "Oh! A new pancake! Let’s see if it’s amazing!"

I think artists sometimes get so obsessed with form that they forget about content—not "content" in the internet sense, but literally, what are you saying? If you tell a story set in a magic forest with swords and adventure and you say something meaningful from your heart, even if it’s been said a thousand times before, you’re saying it for the first time. And because you are unique, no one like you has ever existed before, and that alone brings something new.

This is a weird thing to say, but as someone who spent a lot of time as a teacher, I can tell you: audiences don’t mind repetition.

Think about how many stories there are that say, "You must stand up against evil and cherish your friends." A billion of them. How many do I love? All of them. How many more will I watch and go, "That was the best thing I’ve ever seen?" Countless.

So yes, novelty, originality, expanding the form—those are great. But creators get hit with this fear: "Is this original enough to be worth sharing?" And you want to make sure your take is interesting, but if you’re being authentic, that’s originality.

Because you’re already unique.

Your collaborators are already unique.

That’s the originality.

Make a good pancake.

Because people want the pancake. They need the pancake.

You’re sitting there thinking, "Could it be a cube? A cube of dough?" And people are just like, "Man, I really just wanted a pancake."

A little humility goes a long way. You don’t have to reinvent the form every time. If you’re creating from the heart, your work will already carry the originality of you being a completely unique human being on this planet.