One of life’s revelations is the concept of “the presenting problem” and “the underlying problem”. The “presenting problem” may be “we have no food”. Often there is an underlying problem “we have no money”.
As to why we have no money, there will be a number of deeper lying problems.
One can also mistake the problem. I remember an officious person showing me how to use pegs to link clothes on a washing line, because to her the presenting problem was that I was using the clothes pegs inefficiently. Quite soon, she discovered my underlying problem, that I did not have enough line!
I write political stuff. It is important to be factually accurate.
One may discuss the presenting problem as a road to exposing the underlying problem. One can also find whilst writing that one has mistaken the true problem.
One may well have had an intended conclusion, but the process of setting out one’s case means that the conclusion that is written often differs from the original intention. The true question is not what you thought it was.
In writing novels, one may have an intended story line for the entire novel. I tend to think of story lines for my characters, expressed in chapters. I recently had a chapter where the characters working together came up with a different answer to a problem than I had originally intended. That has distorted the whole of the rest of the book, because several characters have had their story lines altered by the decision made. The novel is better for it, but I had previously believed that I was in charge.
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