A bit like industrial management...

"I do a lot of careful construction, I do a lot of thinking about what I'm writing, most of that thinking is trying to imagine exactly what things will be like for this particular character in this particular situation, and also trying to imagine how things actually work, what will actually make someone do something, why would they do this rather than that. I, whether that's thinking or whether that's imagination I don't know, somewhere on the borders of the two perhaps.

"...I've sometimes thought that writing a story is a bit like industrial management, you, you've got something you want done, there's a plot you want, you want carried out by the characters and the characters have got ideas of their own, just like a workforce, and you have to negotiate with them, persuade them, bully them, bribe them, in order to come to some compromise arrangement where they, their interests are respected and your interests are respected.

"...it is one of the sobering lessons of being a professional writer, as with so many other things, that you cannot predict public taste at all. You really do not know how other people will, will react to anything until it's happened."

Michael Frayn - interview with Radio 3