"Process" is sadly a much-abused word. Typically, by people who are more interested in seeming artistic than actually creating art, who presume that the more wacky and incomprehensible demands one makes in the name of one's "process", the more arteeeeestic one is seen to be. They insist on writing only on the top half of the left side of a leather-bound hand-stitched notepad with a MontBlanc dip-style fountain pen, the ink of which they have carefully blended with gold dust, saffron and probably the blood of a unicorn. Or something like that.

I'm not talking about that kind of Process, here. I mean the lower-case kind. How do you build a story? Where do you start, what comes to you first (usually)? How do you tease that idea out, build conflict, build an arc, some change, a premise? Do you block things out in scenes, write a whole lot of creative-plop that you then shape, work backwards, jump all over the place?

Look back at how you've created things in the past. Stories you've written. What are the common things you have done that have worked for you? What are the things that didn't work?

The point here is not to be prescriptive - ironing out a method that must be adhered to is unlikely to be helpful. Art is unpredictable, and flexibility is a must, even with the way that you work. But it's beneficial to be able to recognise things that often help you, steps you may forget you need, things that generally lead you down a goose chase or actually help procrastinate.

So - how do you write a story?