I can think of at least two of my stories, no three, that start from an experience or a mental image that inspired the story and I created everything else from that one inspiration (maybe four) Two of my favourite stories have been ones where it started off with that single spark, one of which another writer recommended that I start the story from earlier on.  I’ve spoken of looking at the first line of a sentence and asking the question ‘How did we get here?’  I did it with my NaNoWriMo project last year and I know a lot of writers recommend doing this.  The only thing that held me back was that I LOVE the beginning of this story, but I’ve learnt to let ideas float around my head for a while and the more that I think about this one story in particular the more I can see how much richer this story can be. This story is close to my heart, it was written days after a very  important relationship ended and this was how I dealt with it.  I wrote it from Christmas Eve though to Boxing day and wrote the whole story in those three days which I had never done before.  So I was a little reluctant to alter it but now I will make a few alterations and add words to give this story more heart, then I’ll look at the rest of the stories in my Vampire stories and get them all tied in properly and remove a few continuity problems.