The chicken or the egg? (What comes first in writing?)

Have you ever wondered where stories come from? Do you sometimes read a book and ask yourself how the author came up with the idea?

I had never really given this question much thought until I started to find it directed at me. Subsequently, I scoured the web, read books on the theory of 'How to write a novel' and came to the conclusion that there are possibly as many answers to the question as there are writers.

Some people have to have a clear map of their plot before they start to write, while others may have only a sketchy outline, depending instead on the storyline leading them through the creative process. Some writers have a message or philosophy they want to communicate, and their story is wrapped around that. In some cases the character or characters come first, and by virtue of being sufficiently well developed they take over the story. Another favoured approach is to take your character and put him or her in a challenging situation to see how they react...

It seemed a simple question when I was first asked...

Where do I fit in? How do I write?

It varies. I suppose my approach is generally a mixture of these approaches, but I'm not one of those who has the plot mapped out in detail before they commit thoughts to paper (or fingers to keys). I read of one very famous (now sadly departed) author who used to set out their plot elements on index cards, and lay them out on the floor so as to show how they inter-related - all this before they started to write. My problem with this method (however much I'm in awe of someone being able to be that structured in their approach) is that for me writing has to be (and to feel like) a creative process, and to do that much preplanning would take all the joy out of the writing that would follow.

I know there is a danger of this sounding pretentious, but one of the reasons I love writing is precisely because it often feels unpredictable. I will have some of the plot planned, particularly where a plot has complex interdependencies that have to be set for the reader to uncoverover, but there's nothing quite like starting to write and suddenly becoming aware that the direction the story is leading you is as much of a surprise to you as you hope it will be for the reader.

The Testing of Archie Rathbone started out as a simple 'what if?' question - what if you woke up on the beach of a tropical island, with no idea as to how you came to be there? The book I'm currently working on is another 'what if?'. Perhaps there's a pattern developing...

In the end, I suppose that for me the approach I take depends on the type of story I'm trying to tell. In some cases the character defines the story, in others the story defines that characters. But in all cases, there is an initial seed - a germ of an idea that sets the whole process going, and because I have no control over what that germ is, or where it comes from, I don't think I have much say in my approach to writing either.