How do you sit down and begin?

Inspiration strikes like lightning but too often it’s no more than a nugget. Your next challenge is building that lump into a full story.


Agatha Christie was rumored to do her first draft in her head before she ever sat down and started typing. Writers of that caliber seem to just let the creative juices flow. This sounds good and I envy those who can carry it off.

When I've tried, I found my creative juices didn’t "flow"--it came in lumps and blobs--in a less than orderly stream. Ideas popped up like prairie dogs whenever they pleased. As a result, I did a lot of backtracking during revisions in order to get the storyline details straight.

Tired of this, and needing to get the process sped-up, I’ve gone back to the drawing board. Consulting some writing how-to books, reminded me of the type of process learned in grade school and promptly forgot. In short, their recommendation was to use some kind of storyboarding or outlining, or a combination. Bottom line is that you have to do some level of planning before you start writing. What a surprise, huh?

A crucial part of part of the planning outlining/storyboarding, involves developing profiles for each main character: What are their physical and mental traits? What drives them? What’s their environment like? Listing these will keep you from having characters that are tall, dark-haired in one chapter while being short and light-haired in another.

Planning and organizing on the front end will reduce the work on the back end. My gut feel is that while it's important to plan, to develop these character profiles, they are only aids to achieving your goal. Recognize that allowing yourself to get carried away is just another form of procrastination.

Today’s question: What’s your approach and how has it worked for you?