Just out of curiosity.

I just finished a sci-fi piece and am currently working on one that, i guess, would be classified as more mainstream fiction/drama.

The new story is very much character-driven, about a single father, who grew up with an abusive/alcoholic home life. He now has to come to terms with his wife's death and re-adjust to his new life of raising his young daughter alone, while trying to avoid repeating the mistakes of his father when depression threatens to lead him toward drinking problems of his own.

Yeah... I'm having to do a lot of research on this one, as I myself grew up very much removed from anything remotely abusive and have the best dad ever. Of course, given that, I think all of this necessary research and character exploration is a good thing.

The last story I did, which is the first one I've actually finished in forever, I started with writing down just a couple of simple lines of how I wanted it to end, then did the same for the beginning, and then a one or two sentence synopsis of each chapter along the way that would lead me from one end to the other. It worked quite well.

I'm about to finish up one right now, not a novel so much as a short story turned novella. It might technically reach "novel length" by the time it's done, but just barely.

In my case, this particular story is the back story of a character that I've been writing about and developing for a long time now, over many stories. He's a recurring main character that I'm quote fond of, so I'm having a really hard time finishing up this story in particular because it's been such an interesting and revealing examination of his life. It's very satisfying, but there's also a part of me that will be very sad when it ends. It's been quite a ride.