Ahmad, this article is GREAT! I am so glad you mentioned it in the workshop so I went looking for it. I'd missed it in my feed somehow. I seem to follow too many people. I use a mixed approach. I often start with a flash of a scene then build both plot and characters around that. Misty Vale, for example, started with a piece of the opening. The thunder, the vale, and the mists. Everything else was built to make that scene make sense. Mudwyrm started with the characters. A lot of the world-building had already been done with my co-authors, @rhondak and @GMuxx, so I invented a lonely lowly dragon that needed a friend and went about getting her one.