David Bridger has moved

"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
Thucydides 5th century BCE

This week I'm going to migrate my account from here on mastodon.social to writing.exchange. Been putting this task off for months because it's daunting, the partial brain damage I sustained some years ago making the learning and application of new software etc quite problematic and sometimes bloody upsetting. But it's time for me to make this jump, so here goes....

#WordWeavers 2nd Mar 2026. Do you write scenes out of order?

I tend to write linearly, on a compass bearing, from a skeleton plan of one sentence per chapter, starting at A and ending at Z. Occasionally, something or someone new and unplanned will occur on the landscape while I'm working, requiring - if I decide to include it - that I insert it somewhere and maybe juggle things around a bit. But mainly I write on my compass bearing.

#ScribesAndMakers 2nd Mar 2026. Do you know your story ahead of time?

Ahead of writing it, yes. I'm a planner. I enjoy pantsing short stories and narrative poems, but when it comes to novels pantsing only ever ends up a hot mess that takes longer to fix than it would to write with a good skeleton plan. Every novel starts with a character or two in a situation. I live with that scene in my head for a while and at some point extend its scope, and sooner or later the story forms in my mind.

#WritersCoffeeClub 2nd Mar 2026. Does your overall goal differ from project to project?

I hope my stories are different from one another. I certainly try to make them that way. What doesn't change is my goal to write books so that after the apocalypse, a few copies here and there might find their way into the hands of scattered survivors, who will I hope share my stories aloud with others around the campfire.