In 75 years of reading, I've discovered almost little written about the creative process and almost nothing in the fictional form. The one instance I can remember is an episode in the novel, Leonard da Vinci by Dimitri Merejowski, translated from Russian. Leonardo's peasant servant is visited by a relative from the country, and proudly shows him about Leonardo's house, including the atelier or workshop. Now, Leonardo has been commissioned by a Duke to create some fantastic masks for a ball. Leonardo takes an eye from one animal, ears from another, claws from another, mouth from another, etc., and combines these into a face never before seen on earth. These peasants believe that even an artists can only depict what he has seen. So, if Leonardo can depict a demon such as this, Leonardo must also be a demon, and they flee in terror.

Children can understand this form of the creative process by guided to extrapolate it from their play of "Dressup". Just as children can create new costumes by taking different articles of dress from the attic or family's closets, so also can they create masks or scenes or building or whatever by taking something-of-this and combiniing with something-of-that. And they can also be guided to do the same with Ideas.

Guide them to make lists of functions, operations, processes, and their subsystems. Then "mix and match". In particular, those in the extremes of similarity and dissimilarity.