Writing: Plan or Not to Plan?

[LunaStellaCat]

So, here's what I have been struggling with recently as a writer.  I should be writing right now, but I just came in from a morning go lawn care, and I need a minute.  When you write, do you write by the seat of your pants or off the top of your head?  Or are you the writer who has, like, this planned outline and you're married to it?  Do you find any method helps?  Why?  What would you suggest?  I mean, I know that it's up to the writer.  With fan fiction, you already have your building blocks in a sense  I'm not talking about about editing, no.  That comes later.  I'm talking about getting it out of your head and onto paper and/or word document.  

 

Me?  Ya'll are gonna laugh.  In original fiction, I plan meticulously and then I write, draft it out, and then I plan again?  Fanfiction?  I get an idea, and I immediately start pounding in a word processor to reach a word count.  I used iCloud Notes if and when I have to, but if I can grab the moment, I write, and I know  I have to reach this or that word count to get this out of my head.  I don't outline.  I probably should.  I am a fact checker, though, so I'm likely to have a HP book by my side or the HP Lexicon ready to go as  a bookmark in Safari or Chrome.  

What's your toolkit? Me? 

 

• Macbook 
• iPad with iCloud Notes in case I need a backup 
• A HP reference 
• Ice or Coffee 
• A sleeping cat usually at my side 

I should plan, but I plant the seed and it changes.  It does.  I'll tell you or a beta, "Yeah, I going to write this."  The end product or even the first draft? 

Naw.  Completely different.  Am I the only one with that problem?

 

[sibilant]

Ah... for me it really depends on the idea! For some short fics like one shots, generally I start writing immediately and typically I'm writing little snippets that don't necessarily fit together chronologically--whatever comes to mind. For longer fics & short story collections, I generally record ideas and bullet points. Full length novels are quite difficult for me to write as I have trouble coming up with a plot; my writing revolves around emotions and characters and I've found that it's difficult to build a full length novel out of that--much easier to pack the punch in 1K-5K length fics. 

For all my fics, most of my planning happens in the back of mind as something I think about in spare moments (dozing off in class, etc.) Because I'm "planning" subconsciously pretty much all the time, when I do start writing, it's not too hard to write a lot in a one go--but the editing process can be brutal! 

Sometimes if I get stuck in my thought process, if I can't figure out what should happen or next or find the right words, that'll put a stop my work on that fic for days or even weeks. I slip into writer's block very easily, but come up with ideas for different fics just as easily! It's awful haha. 

My toolkit is quite similar to you, but I have just my Mac and sometimes a notepad if I don't feel like typing. Sometimes writing my thoughts by hand can curtail my urge to edit even while I'm writing (which generally interrupts my train of thought). 

[TidalDragon]

Yes, so...I don't really plan. Often what I post here is a first draft - though TBF my first drafts are more...I edited as a I went along. That said, there are two (2) stories that are/are going to be heavily planned - the first book in my series (I have a massive spreadsheet with the names of every single character and various other relevant info about them and an ever-changing timeline). With Unconfirmed Reports, I'm still working on how to bake in the overall arc for the first season and that's more...a Word document with notes for the episodes that is very much still a work in progress. Those are both stories that are planned to be longer than novels though and so I'd say that's just about the only time I plan. That is the extent of my planning. Personally, I don't include fact-checking in this though that is something I do pretty religiously.

What do I use to write?

1. My laptop
2. Way too much snack food
3. Water, milk, or juice
4. Some errant notes I've made throughout the day/week/month in my journal or on random legal pads (maybe)
5. Procrastination - I'm a professional stop-writing-and-watch-sports-or-netflix-or-play-video-games guy. But sometimes it's the step away I need to jump back in and finish.

#wingingit

[BellaLestrange87]

I don't really plan out anything. Sometimes I know the ending and sometimes I start with a vague idea - snatches of a song lyric, or a general mood, or "I want to write this pairing and make it fluffy". I have plotted out about a third of one of my novels (So Cruel), and I find that I like it. It's easier to write without having to worry about what's coming next and having to think of plotlines because I've already done that.

When I write I have:

• My laptop / my notebook (depending on where I am. I usually write on my laptop but if I'm out and about during the day I'll scribble stuff down in a notebook)
• Something to drink, usually my favourite (orange juice)
• Something to eat (snacks and such, usually cheese and crackers)
• Instrumental music playing for background noise

[MegGonagall]

I rarely ever plan. All of my oneshots are completely off the top of my head. Sometimes I'll just get an idea and start writing, or like I'll sign up for a challenge that inspired me to write something, and I'll just write. I'm a textbook "pantser" for most of my work. There are only two fics I have that I "planned" and that's using the term very loosely.

The Fortunate Ones I planned, but didn't write out an outline or anything. I just had the whole outline of the story in my head. I knew what each chapter would contain, and wrote it when I got there.

Saving Severus Snape, I had a rough outline for the first maybe 8 chapters? I do have the class schedule written, so I can keep up with continuity there. And I also have a character sheet I wrote before beginning the fic. But the rest of the story I just talked out with pointlessproclamations (Em). But I don't have an outline or anything for the rest of the story. I just have that conversation stored away, and reference that every so often, or I'll ask her what I was planning if I forget something lol. 

As far as what I need to write, it's really not much. 

- my cigarettes

- iced coffee/latte/macchiato 

- laptop/phone (depending on where I am)

- music quietly in the background 

 

So yeah, overall, I'm really not a planner at all. 

[scooterbug8515]

I do minimal planning, generally speaking for me to be able to successfully write a story I need two things.  I need to have figured out the beginning and know approximately the end.   That changes from time to time, but I need a final goal where I want this to be when it is all said and finished.   If it is a longer project like a novel I many times need one key bridge point to help tie the pieces together but the rest I make up as I go.  Of course, this leads to a lot of re-writes as some ideas just don't pan out but that is part of the writing process.  Occasionally, I'll do a one-shot with no real conclusion in mind, but when one is only writing a couple hundred to a couple thousand, then the ending will make itself apparent. When that happens, I know more of the story and can keep writing, but when I review the last paragraph or sentence, I realize more would potentially break the magic spell thus I call it done.

 

I will say, with my novel, while I wrote it by the seat of my pants toward the end outlined the final scenes so I wouldn't miss things and knew how close I was to being done.  I had sticky cards with what I wanted to happen and would occasionally shuffle them, but that was also partially due to writing a mystery I had to determine reveals and have good timing.  Something that is NOT easy. (As an aside with a mystery, I also have to know who did it before I can write read hearings and hints along the way.)

 

Oh! My writing tools...

 

1. Varric (he's my laptop)

2. A writing program - said program changes with the project but I use Q10, Microsoft Word, Scrivner, Grammarly as my main applications

3. Coffee

4. Chocolate (this is optional at times but eventually a necessity at others)

5. Many times I need good music

[Guest Rumpelstiltskin]

Most recently, I have discovered that when I plan a story out completely, it helps me eliminate writer's block (except for the times that I'm either particularly lazy or struggling with a certain type of scene (eg. a fight scene)). However, that doesn't mean that I absolutely have  to stick to that outline. More often than not, I'll find myself re-outlining due to changes I've made while I'm writing, as I discover that some things work better than others.  Sometimes I find that writing more thorough outlines (like a general outline and then breaking it down, chapter by chapter) helps with spotting places where I may change some of the story aspects, but other times, my muse takes things away in the heat of the moment.

 

I'm actually quite similar in my OF versus FF approach, though I have been planning my fanfictions a bit more thoroughly, which has been helpful. Another thing I find extremely helpful is writing small vignettes as missing pieces or future or past moment from a larger work. In these vignettes, I can work out character backstories and origins and characterization in general. (I'm a huge fan of vignettes, it's what I write and post most often as one-shots. Plus, they can act as supplemental material for those larger works.) And, most generally, those vignettes are unplanned, in-the-moment products of my muse.

 

Things I have when I write:

• COFFEE
• My desktop and/or laptop (depending on what's available to me)
• Phone with headphones for music
• More coffee
• Something to fiddle with (usually a small toy that my daughter has left laying closeby -- most currently a miniature plastic dinosaur and a magnetic letter 'R')
• My splatbook (if writing OF; my splatbook is where all things outlines, characterization, world-building, maps, and other supplementary materials live)
• Paper for note-jotting
• One Ticonderoga number 3 pencil (if you've never tried a number 3, try it now)
• a pen