Where do you begin?

[sarillia]

When you first have an idea is it usually based on plot, character, setting, theme, something else?

I'm very much plot-oriented in the beginning. I usually start with a scenario and only later do I think about the person who will be put in the scenario and the surrounding culture.

I do have a list of bits of characterization and setting details that I come up with, but those aren't often the start of my story. I tend to mix and match those with the plot idea that's the real kernel of the story to see what looks good rather than having the story come naturally from that character or world.

How does this work for all of you?

Comments

[splinteredstar]

I start to with a character, generally. A figure doing something. I don't always know what to /do/ with them, but I've got them.

[agilebrit]

It really depends on the story, for me; I don't have anything hard and fast. The one I'm working on now started with "werewolf imprisoned in a sleep lab," but I didn't know who the werewolf was. One of my recent ones was "small town sheriff who is also a wizard," but I didn't have plot for her. The one I entered in the Baen fantasy contest started with characters, but my Hell's Process Server started with "serving papers to Satan in Hell," and I had no idea who my guy was.

Sometimes I'll want to write something about my werewolf PI, or my mad scientist, or my spaceship crew, so those characters provide a jumping-off point when I decide what crazy situation I'm going to toss them into.

And then there was the cyborg werewolf story that started with both plot and character.

The one I'm picking up after the werewolf-in-a-sleep-lab story started with plot, character, and setting, because it's for the "I Am the Abyss" antho wherein your protagonist dies and goes to their version of the Underworld.

Basically, it's whatever hops out of the Plot Bunny Hutch that nibbles the carrot first.

[inkdust]

Mine start with character, but that usually includes at least some of a situation surrounding them. My current work actually began with a name, which vividly sparked a character, and I knew that she was a young French ghost around 11 or 12 who haunted a big house, and I knew she was not the only ghost there. So that led me to start thinking about the other ghosts that might be there, and then I created my protagonist in order to have someone discover these ghosts, and the actual plot developed in bits and pieces from there.

Another idea I have is centered around a wizard type guy with the ability to replay parts of his life as a spectator, and I knew from the start that he didn't have complete control over that ability, that he had some tenuous allies, and that he had a snake demon familiar. Then I started exploring where he might be and who else would be in the picture, but the actual plot is still pretty much a tangled mess of thoughts.

So I'm definitely character first, or character+situation first - whether initial situation or something they run into during the story. But it's safe to say I'm not plot first.

[chordatesrock]

Let me think about that. For one thing, I write a lot of fanfic, so the "idea" actually brings with it a lot of already-existing characters and worldbuilding some of the time.

So let's look at some specific examples of original fics. The Dragon We Feed is a response to a prompt-- and the truth is, so is a lot of my original fic. The prompt was "The Wolf We Feed" and that refers to a story that I've never liked, so my idea was to write something explaining why I don't like it (namely: won't a wolf that isn't starving and desperate be nicer?) and I just felt like making it fantastical, so instead of wolves, it's dragons. The village had to exist to make choices about how to interact with their dragons.

Unicorns and Other Fantasies is another one based on prompts. This time multiple prompts: neurodivergent romance and trying to save a sick unicorn.

The Unknown was for prompts for queerplatonic zucchinis and speculative slice-of-life. So I decided it would be after the apocalypse, and I like competent characters, and the whole thing came together from there. Wanting to write more about Tahara and Rachel, I used that verse for another fic, In The Cold, for a prompt asking for seasons as places.

I'm currently feeling inspired by my own fanart of someone's complaint about someone else's unclear insult. Someone called someone else a "fat pirate dragon-worshiping feminist" and it was unclear whether the feminist or the deity dragon was the fat pirate. And now I'm wanting to draw a comic of my fat feminist pirate character who worships a dragon goddess. (It's terrible fanart, very scribbly. I'm capable of better.) So that would be character first.

Then let's talk fanfics: I'll go through my posted fics on AO3 and try to recall what inspired them.

Artefact Run is actually an expanded version of a bit of fleeting imagery I used in another fic (not posted anywhere yet): in the unposted wip, Damas imagines what it would have been like if he hadn't lost Mar, and I liked the idea so much I expanded it from the few words given to it in the wip into an entire AU fic.

That We Might Live was an attempt to fill four ladiesbingo prompts and a response to something that used to be popular in Kingdom Hearts fandom a few years ago, where people would imagine KH without the Disney. I had thought I would make some meta about that latter idea, but then when I realised it had a fic in there, I made Tess the Keybearer and two other women her companions and then it could be ladiesbingo.

Fix was based on a situation and the character developed as I wrote.

The Road to Yu Dao started as something like "what if Toph and Teo started a disability rights movement in the ATLA verse?"

Dumb Sloth: I was watching the movie and from Sloth's first appearance I knew I wanted him to have a humanising portrayal. I was sure I'd have to work on erasing lots of horrible ideas from the canon, but I found that I didn't, which was a pleasant surprise. So I just gave Sloth and his family some closure, of a sort. (Of the "nope, goodbye, never talking to you again" sort.)

Last Chance: shyrstyne wanted BAMF!Tess for the reward for an art contest for unridiculous redesigns of the female characters. I borrowed the AU premise of a WiP I was already working on and focused on Tess's expanded role in that verse. (Then, to finish up the story, Ashelin and Keira immediately after.)

So I guess I get a lot of ideas for situations, events and premises, and occasional ideas for characters.

[serria]

For me, I think it's almost always characters. Usually not just one, but probably two or three characters whose dynamics I begin to imagine. Sometimes this makes for a tough story - when I actually start storyboarding, it is pretty much from scratch, though I try to come up with situations that challenge the personalities and dynamics of my characters.

Probably secondary isn't quite a story, but a setting. I imagine the world and the atmosphere of a culture. So few of my stories take place in the real world, largely because I enjoy creating fictional societies so much.

I think only one of my stories was actually developed plot-first, and though I think that one definitely has the most concise and interesting story, that's the one I struggle the most with in developing my characters.