HOW DO YOU DO IT?

Q.  Mrs. Naylor i know that writing is hard work but how exactly do you form the ideas inyour head befor you put them down on paper?

Phyllis replied:

It’s really hard to describe how I write exactly, just as it would be hard to describe riding a bicycle.  There isn’t a list I follow, but through years of experience, I find myself mentally calculating a number of things with each new chapter, each paragraph, even each sentence I write:  Does it follow naturally from what came before?  Is it necessary for furthering the plot and/or defining a character?  Is it well motivated?  If dialogue, is it natural?  If descriptive, and told in the first person, is this the way that character would talk or think?  Is it exactly what the reader would guess would happen next and, if so, is it too predictable?  These are just some of the things I think about as I write, but also, I have to make sure all the parts equal the whole, that everything seems to come together in the end.