This educational talk will describe and explain local tractography, a popular class of tractography methods that use diffusion MRI data to reconstruct white matter fiber tracts by making local decisions. These local decisions are choices that are made at each tracking step, such as the choice of the direction in which to take the next step. An overview of local tractography methods will be given, including both deterministic and probabilistic approaches. Benefits and challenges of local tractography methods will be described, along with important clinical and neuroscience research applications of local tractography.