First-person writing is something I often see done poorly, especially if it’s meant to come across as something people might actually say. I remember reading a story that was supposed to be a collection of people sitting around a campfire and telling stories to each other, but it was clearly all in written language and not spoken; you could tell, if you tried to read the sentences out loud, that they didn’t flow in a natural, conversational way.

I wrote a story called “Cup and Table” (reprinted in this very magazine back in 2012!) many years ago, about a secret society of people with weird powers on a sacred quest to find an ancient artifact . . . who made money in the meantime by hiring themselves out as mercenaries and assassins. While that story has a rather, ah, definitive end for the characters, I always had the notion in the back of my mind that I could dip into their lives at other points and tell different stories about them.

right now, just under 700,000 pieces of debris larger than a centimeter, according the European Space Agency. Even a piece of debris as small as a centimeter can do serious damage and generate a cascade effect of debris—the Kessler Syndrome. Space mining is a far off prospect, but debris is a very real issue and poses some fascinating and pressing legal and political questions about international accountability.

Mostly my writing process goes as follows: Someone asks me to write a story, either seriously or in jest. I say “no.” I promptly regret my “no.” I amend to “yes.” I promptly regret my “yes.” I put the story on the rolling list of projects. I forget about it until the day the march of projects takes me to that slot, and then I panic, and go and sit on something and stare off into space until my subconscious, which has been working all this time, takes pity and tells me what to do.

I find our reactions to the inevitable fascinating. When you are faced with something inevitable, do you accept it? Try to adapt to it? Fight back? That last can present some interesting conflict, since facing the inevitable—and trying to stop it—presents a genuine challenge, both to me and the characters. Me, because I have to figure out some way to get the characters out of that situation, and the characters, because they have to carry out whatever bizarre plan I’ve come up with.

The story had its genesis in two seemingly unconnected events. The first was a rainy day when I came out of the Embankment tube station, and was in the upstairs passage that leads to Hungerford Bridge. There was a small, triangular window in the passage, and from there I had this view of a tiny, incredibly verdant wedge of land on the other side of the street.

How could I write about damp jungles with dangerous animals if I hadn’t experienced them myself? Somehow I’m always writing about real things, but in my own twisted way.

In deciding how a story should end, the main things that I consider are what makes sense for the characters and the story, as well as how I want the reader to feel when the story ends. But usually I don’t know how a story will end when I start. For me, stories are a bit like life: When you start, there are many possibilities, and as you go on, you make choices that narrow the possibilities until, inevitably, life ends.