I usually start writing for basses first. My main strategy is simply to imagine a melody. You'll know you've got something when it spans at least a few measures and has a bit of a hook. If you can't imagine a melody, just start singing one, like you're doing an improvisation. It's similar to staring at a blank piece of paper that needs to be filled with an essay: just start, already!
A side effect of starting with basses is you can get the melody and impact bits out of the way while focusing on only one instrument. With the exception of solos, I like to sprinkle a few unisons among bass melodies. These unisons become the rhythm upon which the snare, tenor and cymbal parts can be built.
Snare parts usually get written next in a way that complements what the basses are doing. Sometimes call-and-response is called for, but lately I've been using more counterpoint. In high school I wrote long phrases with not much more than 16th notes, flams, accents and diddles. That was my dark period, and I don't recommend doing that.
Tenors usually come next. When I come up with a riff that's too hard for a high school bassline to play, I try assigning it to the tenors instead. And while the common, simple advice is to take what the snares are doing and split it up among the tenor drums, I prefer to treat tenors as another voice. They should be involved in the call-and-response or counterpoint riffs that occur between snares and basses. It should be a ménage à trois, of sorts, with the cymbals watching close by.
At every iteration of a piece, I'm constantly going back, listening to it again, in order to identify rhythms that don't mesh, or riffs that are being overshadowed by something happening in another section. Every note is precious; every riff deserves to be heard, otherwise it might as well not exist.
The strategies outlined above are what I've been using lately, but after 3 months of composing I've yet to finish a cadence. And really, the above strategies only seem to work for creating cadence "verses". Another approach is probably needed for writing a "chorus"/groove, which is where I always get stuck.
Speaking of getting stuck -- a.k.a "writer's block" -- I've started making a list of the things I've been trying to get past writer's block. They will be presented in another post.
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