Knowing What Lies Ahead: Charting A Story’s Course

A question I sometimes get asked is whether I always know what lies ahead for each of my characters. The answer in the best tradition of Tolkien’s elves, is both yes, and no. Or in more Kiwi parlance, “Yeah, nah.”

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The “yes” response is that sometimes I do know, absolutely, what lies ahead for a characters. On the “no” hand, however, there are cases where (in exactly the same way prophecy works in The Wall Of Night books), there may be many, or at least several potential paths for a charac...