Cruise Control

There's a point in which things simply fall into place. The point where you no longer are writing a story, natural progression is allowing the story to write itself. You still have to organize it, translate it to paper, and format it so it can make sense, but it's not written so much from direct intention, simply the different pieces of the framework you have built come to play, and it simply makes sense so you go with it, though you may not have ever thought of it before.

This is the way I write, the way I compose stories. I sit back and let my imagination run free with the story, guiding the story along piece by piece with its characters. The characters have no out of character knowledge, so the story builds itself as they learn what is going on, and react to it. This doesn't mean of course that the progression of the story necessarily is halted if your characters can't solve a puzzle, or no longer have clues to move forward. The story is told in one line, but it doesn't necessarily need to be written that way. Non-linear, fourth-dimensional thought can be incredibly helpful, because you can work around something, and then later have a spark of inspiration come to you to complete the puzzle at an earlier time. And it could be much later, years, but the moment it comes to you everything else makes sense.

To be a little more specific, but vague, I found two of such pieces last night, while thinking over some minor script details for Spiral Island. A simple conversation between a couple of the characters led to me filling in a large detail relating to Spiral Island 3's storyline, but it was nothing at all more then naturally connecting dots that had been there for over 5 years, and merely passed over without prior connection. All the pieces were in place, simply the single move had not yet been made that would have set off that chain. But now that it has been made, it is irreversible, because it fits absolutely perfectly in the story.