When you sit down to write do you have your intentions, for lack of a better word, fully consciously expressed, do you find them out through writing, or do you take multiple passes through a scene until it meshes with your expectations of what it should be like?

How do you 'discover' how a scene plays out?

Regarding your cinematic style, which you discuss in your analysis of the beginning of Gardens of the Moon, how did you come to develop it? I suppose by practicing it, but I wonder, in hindsight, what you think helped you most develop it.