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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/16204
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

First you need to remember that people are different. Some are most creative without rules, some are most creative when breaking rules and some are most creative within rules. The best creative engineers fall in the last category.

The rules that an engineer are bound by are physical (gravity, physical properties of beams, etc.) regulatory, and customer requirements. The responses should be embrace, accept and understand respectively.

Now for creative writing, many engineers have difficulty with this. (My Father is a great example, he can build the most unique and wonderful things, write great specifications and documentation, but is completely stymied by dialog.) To showcase their strengths I would start with a two part assignment where you first design something impossible, and then look at its impact on society. As to the impossible thing, you need specific rules on its design, but do not feel constrained in writing the rules to have them all make sense. Some people are less creative when they fully understand what they are trying to do, they just do it, When they are learning something they can play with it.

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