I'm working on a short story, and I let my wife read it the other night. She finished and said (among other things), "I liked the bit with the apple. Neat touch." I looked at her for a moment, thought about the scene she was referring to, and thought her comment was very interesting.

See, the "bit with the apple" is a necessary bridge to get from one scene to the next. She saw it as an element I did on purpose, plotted out, that I knew I was going to use an apple to get there. In reality I really quite stumbled onto it. I didn't know until the very minute the apple fell out of her hand that it would lead her to the next scene. I was just relaying what I saw played out in my mind.

It got me to thinking about how I write (how we all write)and how much we can actually plot and how much 'just happens' as we let the story unfold. I'm not a big plot-miester to begin with, but I do generally have an idea of where things are going. And I've heard people talk about the story writing itself, or the characters taking over the story, or doing something even the writer didn't expect. But when I thought about this particular 'bit', it really struck me that I had no idea how I was getting to the next scene (which I knew what the scene was, just not how I was getting there at the moment). And not that I was worried about it at the time, or that I though, boy, how am I going to get from here to there?, I was just wriring scene a and when I got to the end I had the segue to b.

It just came to me, as I watched the story I was writing unfold in my mind. I had the very broad elements, the basics of the scenes, and sometimes nothing more than a phrase. Then as I saw the story with my mind's eye, it filled in the gaps, added the flesh, and even added twists only to untwist them. This may be common place among the rest of you, or perhaps you've never considered it (it's been a while since I've ever thought about it), or maybe something entirely different happens. It just struck me as interesting.

However, I would think that the process for me is more like walking down a road. The sketch I have is my map, showing me where I want to go and pointing out key 'points of interest' that I want to be sure are in there. But once I start off on my journey, I may end up taking a different path-- by choice or happenstance-- that still ultimately leads to my 'points of interest' and final destination.

When I'm writing and it flows easily for me (usually after I've sunk into the first 500 words or so), I'm simply writing what I see and feel as if I were transcribing a movie. That's where the diverging path comes in, I think... No different than an actor picking up a script and using shades of nuances to affect the dialog/action in ways that the screenwriter couldn't have anticipated.