I wonder what the creative process is like for other people. My friend Ted suggested that I map out the whole arc of the story before I start trying to tell it. This tends to be how I would do things naturally anyway, and it feels like the simplest, most straight-forward way to go about it in my mind, but I could see being of a mind to let events unfold naturally from start to finish, not necessarily knowing where things are going as the story leads you there. Unfortunately, my mind has these pesky things called "goals," which dictate the where and therefore lend themselves to mapping out everything before beginning, since there is a destination charted ahead of time. It seems like the best thing to do now is create a timeline of events and fill that in and then to develop the characters around the events (something like worldview begetting goals begetting ideas begetting events begetting characters). The other way to do it is probably roughlt the reverse of that.

So, I have goals and some ideas and a few events. I need to create a working document for tracking the ideas and events and shaping them into a story and crafting that narrative and filling it with characters. Sounds like [work/fun]. Enjoy!