In, "Fire in the Crucible" John Briggs discusses at length the notion of an "image of wide scope" which shapes one's creative processes and thinking. Briggs asserts that when we encounter even the most mundane things, our subconscious files them according to nuances and themata, often differing greatly from the way we would consciously file the same data. For example, if one were to look at a tree, traditionally you would categorize it as "a green plant" or "something you see at the park." According to Briggs however, the subconscious categorizes the same tree relative to emotions you may be experiencing or nuances surrounding your sensory perception. "Thoughts containing a similar nuance of feeling are filed together, even if they aren't logically or chronologically connected" (49). Thus, accoring to Briggs we assimilate thought-emotions into emotional-cognitive structures determined by similarities in nuance or feeling rather than cognitive commonalities. This leads one to the reasonable conclusion that an image of wide scope could be just about anything. Briggs clarifies what might constitute one's image of wide scope by suggesting that it will in some way relate to a childhood experience or memory that in some way has shaped your creative processes throughout life. Though the image originates in childhood, it evolves and grows as one accumulates a wider range of experience and knowledge.

According to Briggs, the key to finding one's image of wide scope is to reflect back on a range of events, feelings, and memories from childhood. Memories which stand out particularly vividly, despite relative unimportance with regards to conscious processes, constitute those worth looking at more closely. Also, when you reflect on your childhood, focus mainly on those images which emerge during your first 5 minutes of thought, rather than in the first 50. Those images which are most readily called up from the subconscious are most likely the images most active in your thought processes. Once you have narrowed the field of potential images, compare them with creative works you may have done, or particular drives and desires you have but, as of yet, have not been able to explain. Now this is by no means a suggestion that if, after five seconds of reflection, you recall an image of a puppy you should change your major to veterinary medicine. The initial image merely serves as a stepping stone for further exploration into your image of wide scope.

Briggs tells the story of Nikola Tesla to illustrate the importance of nuance and the image of wide scope. Tesla is best known for inventing the alternating current system of electrical distribution, the radio, and the first robots. Tesla's remarkable innovations are said to have stemmed from his belief that nature was an infinite source, capable of being tapped into for energy. When Tesla was a small boy in Croatia, the village where he lived had just bought a new fire engine. Unfortunately however, when the fathers of the village tried to show off the new pump, no water came out. As the grown men stood in confusion, young Tesla jumped into the water and discovered that, as he suspected, the hose had collapsed, rendering the water power inaccessible. Years later Tesla made use of his sense that nature contained a vast, unused natural energy. Tesla's initial assumption, combined with his experience with the water pump, shaped his ideas of resonance and his subsequent "resonance principle." "Tesla's resonance principle is what Howard Gruber calls an 'image of wide scope,'that is an image- often visual- used repeatedly in the creator's thinking"(46).