Which leads the way, plot or characters or theme?

Cuppa: A hand-poured cup of the best ideas about writing I've tasted lately

Hey, y’all—

This week’s Cuppa starts off with a chicken-or-egg conundrum: Which leads the way in a story, the plot or the characters or the theme?

In terms of the process of writing your first draft, you’ll probably cleave to one dynamic first. You may have always imagined the story happening a certain way, or you wanted to show a particular sort of char…