Fountain of Knowledge

Ariana-

I have what I consider to be a fairly "weird" method of starting whatever it is I'm writing. I have never been structured enough to even consider an outline per se, yet I have always had a difficult time deciding upon a lot of the "peripherals" of my story (for instance, is it day or night, hot or cold, city or country, past or present or future, # of characters in initial scene, domestic or abroad, north/south/east/west, paper or plastic -you get the idea)! So, I end up wasting time on many incidentals that many times I end up changing or altering anyway.
What I discovered over time is that I seem to have more success getting the "creative juices" flowing when I get "artificial parameters" (also known to WDCers as "prompts") It forces me to think, and although it's without doubt a psychological ploy (since I'm convinced it works, it inevitably always does "work").
What I do is put a bunch of different variables that will fit the basic premise of my story into a number of "variable" envelopes and select one "prompt" from each envelope, and those parameters constitute the beginning of my story. Somewhere down the road, I may change one of my original conditions to make the story better, but the idea is that - with a "mandated" set of conditions, I can get to writing and go from there.
This no doubt must sound idiotic to some others who have more "structure" going in , but it works for me!

WordImperfect