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What comes first to you — character, setting or plot?
My stories are driven by character, but informed by setting, and so when I’m planning a piece, Setting is the first thing I build. It provides context for the character. And, as my stories tend to be driven by like...character interactions and their internal navigations, the plot largely comes from how the character has been shaped by their specific environment and how they’re interacting / reconciling with it now.
Give an example of a motif/symbolism you have used in a WIP.
Here’s Ambrose’s psychological state being personified by his house:
Ambrose wasn’t a stage medium, but his home felt like a stage. The parlor, with its ornate furniture that crowded itself along every wall, the bookshelves with their gleaming gold leaf spines, the dead birds in their display domes, the cases of ferns and flowers, the busts of philosophers and goddesses, all were there for the benefit of strangers. All carefully curated, and orbiting the centerpiece that was his lacquered tea-table. Behind the other doors sat his spartan life, but he kept the key to those rooms cold against his chest.
Describe your editing process.
Oh it’s awful. I definitely finess each passage as I go and read it 400 times rather than doing a whole first draft pass. The good thing, I guess, is by the time I have a first draft done it’s pretty tight, but it’s still...probably not the most productive or smart way to go about things. I also workshop with a writing group, and when it’s as good as I can get it, I hire a professional editor to call out my lingering bad habits.
