One Recipe for A Story

Necessary ingredients may include:

love of language and good writing

curiosity

passion

patience

determination

vision.

Steps (not necessarily in order):

Mix together ingredients for characters until they appear more real than people, one character to a bowl. Don't worry if the batter appears curdled or muddy. This is to be expected.

Fold each character in, carefully and one at a time, to a profound fictional world. Do not beat the characters at this point. Maybe later. The batter is likely to...