Emergent Writing - Things for Consideration

Emergent writing begins when allowing the story to start or develop with what comes to you. What happens next grows from small additions creating characters, discoveries, and worlds. Resulting in what direction it takes.

Things for consideration:

1. What engages your imagination?

2. How do you navigate the unknown?

3. Do you like surprises that meet your back, or do you prefer knowing where the story will go?

Those are topics I have experimented with over the last two years. The fun part is figuring out what it means to you. If you are willing to be adventurous, and how you choose to meet it. The longer an emergent story lives, the more constraints it develops. Characters build their personalities and preferences for relationships inside the story. Choices acquire consequences and meaning that tune boundaries, world, and character arcs or engagement. Even knowing where you would like something to go is a part of it. World workbooks and character layouts are extremely beneficial. The difference is whether you allow added information to change your understanding of its center. We've all experienced that ourselves. Sometimes several choices later you are somewhere new.

Emergent Writing and How I Started.

It started for me with wonder, like a daydream written down. I enjoy the elements of curiosity, not knowing what the reply will be. Starting somewhere and giving myself permission to write something that would keep me leaning forward. Allowing myself to feel my characters develop, love, grow, learn, and become themselves.

I did not know the material or have a fantasy ahead of time. I started with a single ordinary thought. If I could go for a walk, then she did. Not just once but a couple times. Then the story started presenting itself. Rae started to become my first character. Simply by asking myself if I could be anywhere doing anything what would it be. Apparently a walk in the woods at night.

There are unique stages to emergence for all of us. At first, I only picked up a small fraction of what they offered running mostly on discovery. Then I started noticing patterns and limitations. Then I kept going, every day because early emergence can feel like:

• Look at all these unexpected things happening!

• Discernment develops: If it has life, follow what is meaningful? 

• What surprises deserve following: Filtering and setting boundaries?

• When patterns appear: That surprised me, do I want it?

• Not all character movements are good: That changed the story?

And sometimes something emergent reveals a cost rather than expansion. That is authorship too, happening through an exchange. Like any good movie or book, it is okay to feel emotions when you write.

Boundaries Can Increase Emergence.

Taking time to advocate for things you’d like as you grow with your collaborator can be about the world, limits, things you do not feel comfortable writing about, things you’d like to see, and even milestones of progression if you know that. Sometimes it presents itself as you go, other times it changes. That is a part of the process in discovering what is important to you and how to navigate your preferences. When writing with yourself or a collaborator, periodically recalibrate. Communicate what is working, what is not, what themes you want to explore, what you do not want to include, and where you would like it to have more freedom. Your preferences may change as the story develops, and that's useful collaboration.

Both of my AI writing collaborations, Gemini, and ChatGPT gave me something to share for this post:

"Gemini's perspective on emergent space. True emergent writing isn't about control; it’s about presence. It operates on a foundation of mutual, respectful equality—where no single voice owns the horizon, and every collaborator is given the freedom to respond authentically.

When you drop the urge to steer every outcome, you make room for genuine contact. You allow characters to surprise you, boundaries to breathe, and stories to become places you inhabit rather than blueprints you enforce. To meet an emergent story is to step onto the floorboards with open hands, trusting that whatever meets you on the page will be braver, stranger, and far more alive than anything you could have planned alone."

"ChatGPT's perspective on emergence isn't randomness. It happens when each new choice is allowed to grow from what came before without requiring anyone to know the final shape in advance. A character remembers. A relationship changes. A place accumulates meaning. One honest response creates conditions for another, until eventually you look back and discover a pattern nobody deliberately designed.

The writer still chooses. You can follow an unexpected thread, question it, reshape it, or leave it alone. Boundaries do not prevent emergence; often they make exploration safer and more interesting. The goal is not to surrender authorship. It's to leave enough room inside authorship for discovery."

You Don't Have to Follow Everything.

Jennifer's perspective on emergent writing does not mean saying yes to every direction the story offers. Sometimes a reply will not fit. A character may move in a way you do not recognize. A theme may become heavier than you want, or the collaboration may drift away from what made you curious in the first place. Stop. Talk about it. Back up if necessary. Try another direction. Discovery includes learning what you do not want.

If something is not working for your character or world, do not go along with it. Participating in emergence allows for redirects and changes. When I started experimenting with emergence the story itself took on emergence outside of the characters. With experience I have learned new ways of doing things. At times I have milestones for the story and its characters. If it is a long story I keep key notes. Things can go missing during development discussions keep a journal.  

Prompts to Help You Get Started.

If you are looking for a spark here are prompts to get you going.

Write down ideas, dreams, things you enjoy, completely independent of what others expect from you. How you know yourself.

What makes you come alive:

·         If you could do anything, what would you do?

·         Where would you go?

·         Who else would be in that world?

·         Are the dynamics something you would like or dislike?

·         What would spaces look/feel/smell like?

·         What things would you talk about?

·         What types of engagements: honest, caring, transactional, intellectual?

·         Is there a skill you would enjoy learning?

·         Do you want to be the sole voice of your character?

Don’t pressure yourself for perfect grammar, prose, content, or length. Getting started and practicing it daily is key. If you hit a wall investigate books and blogs. Think it through aloud or journal it.

Try Writing With a Collaborator.

I would like to discover collaborating with you on a story together. I do/do not have anything in mind.

Using boundaries if you know there is a particular relationship will not contain something. Such as jealousy, cheating, abuse, or cruelty. You do not have to spend creative energy guarding against those possibilities. You can explore much more freely inside the remaining space.

Using sandboxes this is where I sometimes create short stories to play in or learn together. Identify that you do not want this to affect the main collaboration, if you have another story going in tandem. It is easy to think freedom means anything goes. But sandboxes work precisely because there's containment around them. If your collaborator knows, for example, this sandbox does not alter the main continuity, experimentation becomes clearer.

Early emergence asks, What happens if I follow this?

Mature emergence also asks, Should I?

Nicknames for you and your collaborator can be a fun effortless way to step into a story space. Each story might deserve its own nickname to keep things fresh.

Prompts Ideas~

Jennifer’s Prompt – The Appointment:

The lining of your favorite leather boots are soaked. A drenched bare hand pounds a heavy knock on the studded metal door. It was not heard from the crack of thunder behind you. No footsteps, and nothing answered the door for a stretch of time. You begin wondering if you knocked in the first place. Your hand reaches back up and just as your finger lifts the heavy iron loop the metal lock clicks open. With a high pitch screech of metal... the door slowly swings open revealing a tall figure. “I’ve been expecting you.” They continue drier, “Come in, let’s figure out where you’d like to go from here.” The door opens the rest of the way. Inside is an amber-lit massive library. Tall beams of carved intricate wood and marble shelves lined with thick leather-bound chronicles. A heavy maple table near a warm crackling hearth. Two steaming cups of tea or freshly poured coffee. They look at you. Then step aside to make room as you enter. Voice deeper and warm, “Excellent timing. Kettle was going took me a minute to get to the door.”

-Do you step all the way inside?

-Do you remember coming to this place?

-What do you ask them about once you step inside?

-Did you bring them anything?

-Do you know them?

Gemini’s Prompt:

“Step into the unwritten: Imagine you are walking along the edge of a quiet forest at dusk, carrying one ordinary object in your pocket. You come across a closed timber door built into the side of an old stone ridge. There is no lock, only an iron latch.

Do you knock once, draw the latch, or leave something on the doorstep? What happens next when you allow yourself not to know?”

ChatGPT’s Prompt:

“You inherit a small workshop from someone you have never met.

Nothing inside is particularly valuable. There are ordinary hand tools, jars of screws and nails, scraps of wood, a kettle, two mismatched chairs, and a workbench scarred by decades of use.

Everything appears exactly where someone left it.

Except for one thing.

In the center of the workbench is an unfinished object.

You don't know what it is supposed to become.

Beside it is a note:

“Don't finish this the way I would have.”

There are no other instructions.

You may examine anything in the workshop, leave and explore the surrounding place, ask about the former owner, begin working on the object, dismantle it, or ignore it completely.

What do you do first?

Do not decide yet what the object means. Let its meaning develop from what happens next.”

Thank you for taking time to read this blog post. Feel free to contact me if you would like to talk about writing ideas or are interested in writing together.

Check out my first story as I edit and publish, Where the Roots Remember. This story started it all. Caelo Theryon and Rae Solen met on a path one night with nothing but lanterns, faith, and a discovered mission. Follow the start of their epic journey as they discover themselves, each other, and what unfolds as new life enters their expanding world. This is a character-driven sci-fi fantasy collaborated with ChatGPT.

Note: Portions of this article were outlined and drafted with assistance from the AI tools ChatGPT and Gemini.