Thanks everyone for your wonderful comments. It was so nice to delve back into the world of imagery again.

This speech, of course, was a mistake, though not my worst before the night was over.

Sadly, or perhaps thankfully, I never got the chance to down those shots.

And then, to my utter humiliation, the unspeakable happened; I tripped.

Something new - a bit of imagery with a slightly dark theme. Comments most welcome. :)

http://storymash.com/u/JD_Renaissance/pinamene/

Thank you, LadyA!

Welcome to the site, Moogle!

Again, thanks! Don't worry about Mr. Kindle, he'll get his comeuppance. In the mean time, no the story is not coming to an end soon. :) I'm a little over half way there. However, I think I'm going to have to take a break from working on it for a while. Life seems to be getting in the way.

Thanks, Dkk. I think if I rewrite the previous chapter well enough, then I can in turn make this one a bit faster paced. Not sure.

For me, it depends greatly on what comes first, character or setting or story idea.

Now, no laughing - If I come up with a great character but no plot, I play act as that character. I create dialogue with other imaginary characters, put myself into different situations, etc. What I'm looking for when I do this is conflict. If I can give my characters some sort of dire situation, some conflict, then I have a plot, or at least the seeds of one. (I also jot down every great dialogue and action sequence I have with myself for future reference.)

And if I come up with a great story but no characters, I do the same thing only putting me into the situation and seeing what kind of character I would need to be to overcome it.

A lot of times, the conflict comes to me before everything else, plot or characters or settings. This is fun because everything seems to just flow from that conflict and how to resolve it, including other, deeper, conflicts.

A note on conflict - there are several kinds and there can be many in one story. Character vs character, character vs situation, character vs self, etc.