I completely agree with your approach Matta. In my own writing I let my characters tell the story. I listen to what they say, follow their thinking and I watch the world grow as they see it with their own eyes. Back in the late 1990s I put together a series of Sci-Fi stories created around six different humanoid races. Eventually an entire very large created universe came into being in an entirely organic fashion as a result of me following my characters around and writing down what they did. If I'd been made to write out detailed histories of all those worlds and their peoples before I was allowed to even begin on telling my stories I would have jumped out a window and run away screaming.
" If I'd been made to write out detailed histories of all those worlds and their peoples before I was allowed to even begin on telling my stories I would have jumped out a window and run away screaming."
Exactly! It’s way better to let the details come out naturally. That way, you have the freedom to shape the story as you go and add details on the fly instead of getting stuck with something that might not even work right from the start.
I completely agree with your approach Matta. In my own writing I let my characters tell the story. I listen to what they say, follow their thinking and I watch the world grow as they see it with their own eyes. Back in the late 1990s I put together a series of Sci-Fi stories created around six different humanoid races. Eventually an entire very large created universe came into being in an entirely organic fashion as a result of me following my characters around and writing down what they did. If I'd been made to write out detailed histories of all those worlds and their peoples before I was allowed to even begin on telling my stories I would have jumped out a window and run away screaming.
" If I'd been made to write out detailed histories of all those worlds and their peoples before I was allowed to even begin on telling my stories I would have jumped out a window and run away screaming."
Exactly! It’s way better to let the details come out naturally. That way, you have the freedom to shape the story as you go and add details on the fly instead of getting stuck with something that might not even work right from the start.