Writing - planned or unplanned

[devilchicken]

Mike - I was wondering if you could give me some insights into your writing process.

When you start a new story - is it a planned process (where you work out the basic story in your head, characters, basic events etc), or is your approach more intuitive - just putting pen to paper and see where it goes?

You also mentioned on the other thread about world building being the death of imagination' - so do you start with a character and a situation (say with Elric, the first book starts with Elric in his throne room watching the dance), which you can then build all the other characters and events around?

I know some authors like to meticulously plan everything they write and then fill in the blanks as it were. Is this something you do?

[Michael Moorcock]

It's more like poetry. Associative. Images, symbols working together. Almost all my fiction is produced like that. Plot and so forth is usually secondary. Character first, I supposed. I can't begin until I have a strong sense of who I'm writing about. I don't work from formal plots, as such, but from diagrams which tell me what's needed where.