All Things Writing Forum How To Start

How do you begin? Where do you start your story? Do you get an idea out of the blue or do you sit down and start to sketch? What do you consider most important? What do you develope first: characters, environment or the plot? How do you work: mind maps, scribbling on tons of paper or just wing it? What is your writing process?

As befitting of any author in the Gothic and Weird Genres, my ideas for a story generally arise from a fear. This is not just any fear though, it is a fear of what I may become if I am not careful, what kind of broken person I would be if I succumb too deeply to my faults and fears. As a student of philosophy, I know what I must do to prevent this fate from befalling me, but these stories are not about me, so I imagine what would happen if someone else who was less controlled than I embraced their Shadow Side, so to speak. As will be evidenced in my future writing that I will post here, I have a deep fear of my own loneliness, arrogance, sorrow, obsessiveness, and fearfulness. This fear then manifests itself as a character who I embellish and flesh out to make more interesting than a caricature or carbon copy of myself. I then pull elements from philosophy, religion, psychology, mythology, Gothic fiction, and the occult to create a plot-line that outlines this character's journey.