Need for Creativity or Logic?

While starting a story takes creativity, I'm going to make the argument that continuing-- and finsihing-- a story takes more logic than creativity. The dominoes are all set up, creatively, and there is really only a small number of logical conclusions to the scenario. Especially in crime fiction, I think this holds true.

Crimes are solved more through deduction than imagination. Put together the motive, the opportunity, the means, and the answer comes out. Once a story is set up-- then it becomes a matter of figuring out, from the clues already there, what the most likely scenario is.

Add in the normal facts that crime solvers use-- like how most crimes are committed by someone who knows the victim, and that murders are usually committed by a current or past lover, and it becomes easier to play out the scenarios. There's still some creativity, I suppose, in making up these situations for imaginary people, but stealing from real life doesn't take much creativity. (Watching Court Tru TV will help with this angle.)

A conflict has been presented-- what is the most likely conclusion? What has happened in real life? How can that fit with the story? What if? And what happens next?

Even "uncreative" people can solve mysteries when presented with the clues. So to can writers who've set up the conflict in their own writing.

Bias alert?-- Whenever I take those right/ left brain quizzes, I come up more left-brained. Except it's the right brain that is supposed to be the creative side. As in, writers tend to be more right brained than left. Except me. =) But I guess that just proves that writing CAN be a logical process so much as it is a creative process.