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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Berandor" data-source="post: 3365309" data-attributes="member: 225">That's a really interesting approach; I might try that next time.What I tend to do is look at the pictures looking for my protagonist; if I can't find him/her, then the pictures must have been taken from his/her point of view. Next I look for the picture that is central to the story – this is often the picture that I find the most difficult to integrate or interpret.If I have some idea of a protagonist, and a central picture, then I try to fit the pictures together somehow. I usually have either a very firm idea of how the story will end (but not begin), or of a central theme I want to write about. I usually look very closely at the pictures then to find some idea or hint that they belong together (for example, in the first story, the riot police in the background weren't in formation, it looked as if somebody might have rushed past or through them).[sblock=About my stories]In the first story, the most difficult image for me was the guy on the fan-bike. This would have to be central, and that often means it's related to the climax. I didn't really find a protagonist, but the crawling guy might do. I knew the climatic action would be the guy – clearly not the protagonist – rolling off. I was also interested in doing a "skeptical" story, so some kind of debunking (or failing to debunk) was supposed to happen.In the second story, the mannequin image seemed to be the most difficult one, but closely related to the deformed person. I wrestled with either making it into a story about my protagonist being outside of the pictures, trying to get a perfect child by cloning; or with the deformed child as the protagonist. One would have been mostly about ambition, striving for perfection without regards of the costs, the other would be about the costs driving towards an evolved body and an angry mind. I found the latter idea to be stronger, so I went that way.[/sblock]After reading Piratecat's last story, though, I had a different idea. If I had advanced, I would have started the next story by first trying to find a conflict in the pictures, and then building theme, characters, story around that conflict.I'm notoriously bad at world-building though, so your approach might help me in that regard. Even thinking about my previous pictures in a way you described gives me great ideas. You may have just told your greatest secret... muhahah! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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