Every story begins with an idea, one has to write about something, right? Ideas can come from anywhere. Something you hear on the radio or in a song, something you see happening around you or on the television. Something in the shape of a tree you see when you take a walk through the forest, ideas can come from everywhere.
Having an idea you have to put it on paper. Some authors immediately have the whole story inside their heads and they create an outline.
Meaning that they write down what should be happening at the beginning of the story, what in the middle, and how it should end. Often the characters are worked out in that outline as well. Some go even further and make a timeline, setting out what should happen when.
Authors writing mystery novels often use that so there are no mistakes in the chronology of the story and it all fits together at the dramatic conclusion.
When writing was still done by hand and on paper some writers had blank page fear so they wrote on rolls of wallpaper so there would not be a new empty page to fill.
For many writers the above is the perfect way of working, and in many cases it is, it is a sort of lifeline to hold on to.
For me it doesn't work, if I use that way I feel like I'm tied to follow the line set out.
When I start a story I haven't got the foggiest where the story will take me, what characters will show up or what is going to happen.
A very faint idea runs around in my foggy brain for a while and then I see or hear something that makes some cock wheels fall into place, I let them run for a while and then I sit behind my desk to paint a picture with words. I see the picture in my minds eye and it starts to move like film, I simply write down what I see happening.
Some who read my stories always say that is written like a film.
Consciously I don't know yet where the story will take me, without doubt the whole story is in my subconscious mind already steering me where I need to go.
When I have written about fifty or a hundred pages it slowly begins to dawn on me where I want to go to, but not what is going to happen on the way there.
So I make all kinds of sidesteps that, in some inexplicable way, always have effect on the whole story. Sometimes it explains something, other times it is to find something that is needed later in the story, but it always adds pages.
The fun of writing this way is that people who read it get dragged into the story, find it hard to put the book down once they start reading.
Another thing that is fun about writing fantasy stories is that you can make all things happen and you can create all kinds of creatures. Like in the scene the main characters are on their way to Soboií and a Caragh appears. To tell the truth I still don't know where that awful creature came from, probably from some deep place in my mind.
In fantasy stories the only limit is your own imagination.
What is most important is that writing should be fun and in the way I write and deal with it the characters are not just names on a piece of paper they are living and breathing beings to me. I feel their pain, their joy, their fear, and their hope, that is also why, when I finish a story, I am sad for a few days, because I have said goodbye to people that have been part of my life for a longer period of time, people I will never see again.
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