Quote:
Originally Posted by dgatwood
[...] What matters most is knowing where you are and where you're trying to eventually be. [...]
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This is very much how I feel about it too.
And in the early development of the story I often don't even know where I'm trying to be. I'll have an idea of some characters and a setting, but I don't know if there is real story in it until I explore. I do that partly in my head and partly by writing some of the initial scenes and background. From that come ideas about what it means and where it might be going. In general, the more I write the more ideas arrive and the more the story starts to take shape. I see this as a response to learning about the characters and setting through writing them, you get to see what sorts of connections make sense. It's why I tend to sound like a broken record in my posts on this list - for me, at least, the way to write a story is to write: write anything, write something, and the rest follows.