Logical Progression

I was in a discussion about creativity in the writing process. I made the argument that creativity is a small part of the writing process. After the discussion/argument had ended, the day went on, I thought about it further, and I decided I was still right.

I am a scientist at heart. Science is repeatable. The universe is deterministic. If absolutely anything could happen at any place or time, you could never purposely do anything you intend to because you could never be sure of the results. And if you did one thing you liked, you could never know how to do it again. Medicine, technology, even cooking could not exist. The world isn't random, just complex. We can't accurately predict many things that happen because we don't know everything that went into setting up the situation.

Writing functions in exactly the same way. Things cannot happen for no reason. People act because of how they believe and those beliefs come from past experiences. Things happen in the world because something made it happen. Even if the process is long and circuitous, it always has a stimulus. The only difference between the real world and the world a writer creates is that the writer knows absolutely everything that happens in their universe.

The only actual creativity in writing comes from creating the world. Make people who are real and put them in a location or situation. If your characters are fleshed out, with histories and beliefs that come from those experiences, and your locations or situations are interesting (whether they be too close to home or couldn't be further from it), then the story writes itself.

In every book on writing I have ever come across, at some point, the author will talk about times where their characters take on a life of their own and they start doing things that they would naturally do instead of doing what the author wants them to do. This is logical progression. Things happen because they must.

The only other creativity, aside from making the universe, is what I like to call Playing God. It is also known as What If. Stephen King talks about it in On Writing. When your characters are in a situation, you ask yourself, "what if [something] happens?" If it would add to your story, you just make it happen (hopefully you can give some explanation, so it doesn't come off as a Deus ex Machina).

Writing a story is a lot like making a puzzle for laboratory mice. You can set up all the obstacles you want, but in the end, all you are doing is recording what these mice do. A writer makes up the maze and the mice, the rest of it is just the world turning.