How much do you plan out before you post?

How much of your fic do you have planned out before you post it?

 

All of it.

 

Hehe, usually not much at all. For my entire Anakin/Tahiri trilogy, and the majority of my Mara/Luke story, I had only the barest ideas of what I wanted to do. I'm usually like, well, I want to do this, and I want to do this, but I'll have to fill in the thirty pages between the two. So then I just write as I go. I think the Anakin/Padmé story I'm writing now is the first one I actually have an outline for.

 

Depends really on short and long term fiction.

If it's one of my Nadja shorts, than the story is like developed about three days in advance and then I spend one night, maybe two, just posting it. Since they are short not a lot of heavy detail goes into it.

Long term fiction, on the other paw, is.....well, another story.

I have a general idea with what I want to do, and then over a period of time think about before writing, not posting, it; it depends how unique and challenging and epic I want to make it. When I start writing the process continues; subplots change, elements get switched around, character live and die. Eventually I come to terms and that's when the rest of the story gets hammered out. At that point I stay about 5 chapters ahead of what I have posted: that is if I have finished writing Chapter 40, than I'm posting 35.

 

Hmm, for long stories I have the basic plot figured out but not the details. I usually have at least the first few posts ready before I start putting them up. But because keeping up with them now is too hard, I'm finshing them before I start posting at all. For short ones, I have one idea and just write it out and what ever comes to mind.

~Swede

 

I do a lot of planning. In the case of my Aftermath Saga, which begins with Carthan Fire, the planning and refining took literally years. I like to plan well in advance and like to know the beginning and end before I think to much about the middle. For the saga, I'm planning a fairly long story-arc, so i had to put a lot of thought into everything before I could even start writing. Mostly my time planning is taken up by working out the small details. Since most of my stories (SW and otherwise) incorporate mostly original material, I usually have to spend a lot of time working out everything from characters to cultures.

 

I write my whole story out and then post it. Otherwise, I would probably have days, weeks or even months of writers block!

 

I always have a rough outline of the story, but if inspiration strikes I have been knwon to completely change the entire plot of my story just to fit in one cool scene I come up with in the middle of study hall (lol). My most recent fic, Jedi War, I actually wrote the entire first three chapters in school. A lot of times I make stuff up as I go, but I usually write better fics when I've at least planned a great majority of it out in advance, if not written it all out in advance. It's usually pretty easy to tell which ones are written as inspirations strikes and which ones are planned out, though (heheh, since Lonewolf reads all my fics he'll probably go insane trying to figure out which ones are written in advance and which I make up as I go )

 

*franticly looks at each post one at a time*

Great, you just had to mention that!

 

I've written different stories by different methods. Some of them I just kept a rough outline in my head and wrote them post by post.

Others I had almost completely written before I started posting.

 

Some I have written completely, others I have posted as I write. Others, still, I have done a combination. With Legacy, I had the baest idea of what was going to happen. I knew who the characters were at the beginning, and I knew who I wanted them to be at the end, but I had no idea how long and ocmplex it would turn out to be. I was still making it up as I went along as I got into the third part, then my beta and I in two intensive hours basically planned out the whole thing. Then I wrote out a plan for each post, and an now strictly following that plan (while improvising enough to keep myself in suspense ). So basically, whatever works for each fic.

 

Varies from story to story.

 

The whole thing is completely written out and beta read before I begin posting, though I may tweak a sentence or a phrase.

It's too easy to run into writer's block or an attack of RL, and it doesn't seem fair to leave your readers hanging. And sometimes a good idea just doesn't pan out (witness the hundreds of abandoned threads floating around on the boards). I have a Looooong story archived on a floppy, a great idea, full of action & intrigue, and WHAM! Ran into a wall, got my heroes into a situation and can NOT figure out how to get them out. If I had posted as I went along, my readers would be screaming at me; the story's been in limbo for over a year now...

If I do a RR, I do "wing it," though. What I write there usually depends on what's preceded it.

 

I've written the whole of 2 stories that I can't be bothered to copy up due to lack of interest.

 

I prefer to have the whole thing done before I post. Otherwise it would take forever the way I re-do things, and there is always that fear of writers block.

 

In my early fics I would write and post whatever I came up wiith but that led to alot of them being not to good or just dying .But now I plan more before I write.

It depends on the subject matter. I come up with an idea, take about a day or two and think about where I want to take the story. Dicuss realism with my friend Mollie the Schizo do a little reading on other fics that might have touched that subject or reaserch if it's something medical or taken from real history. Then I write a bit in my copybook, post each chapter when their done and thats pretty much it.

I can get really technical when it comes to some of my stories. I had this one that dealt with the christain persecution in 64 Ad but I had to rewrite the whole thing because the colosseum wasn't built till 80 AD. Mollie the schizo said I was crazy.

Felici Z.

 

I really have to have all of it written and beta read, cause if it's not then I'll never post all of it. But sometimes if it's a really long story then I'll start when I'm maybe halfway done with it.

 

I usually have a sketchy outline for the plot and what I want my characters to go through and then I just start writing. The biggest problem I find, though, is getting things too complicated. I have so many different plot lines going on it all gets a confusing.

 

The best advice I can give you, Lonewolf, is a quote from Terry Brooks from the interview in the paper back of the Episode I novelization:

"Read, read, read. Outline, outline, outline. Write, write, write. Repeat"
-Terry Brooks


(LOL! It's good advice, seriously.)

 

I don't plan more than five minutes ahead (whether I'm writing or doing anything else at all). Plans never work. Even when I write a story and envision how it's going to turn out, it always starts taking its own path and never, ever comes out the way I originally thought. It's not a bad thing, cos by and large, the way it turns out is even better than the original idea.

Y'see, in my stories, more often than not, the characters really have to think on their feet in order to survive. Accordingly, I just dive right into a lot of scenes with no idea of what's going to happen, and then I just make it up on the fly. Yes, writer's block inevitably sets in sometimes, but the rest of the time I'm satisfied with the resolution.

Oh, and writing a future scene helps, too. If I have a really good scene in mind that's going to come later in the story, I just skip ahead and write it. Then it's not usually too hard to write what leads up thereto.

 

That's good advice from Terry Brooks! I like that!

I outline and plan and write everything in advance. All too often, I get to the end only to find that I have to change something at the beginning. I don't post the fic until I'm satisfied that it's as perfect as I can get it.

 

I have a general outline and then a few more detailed outlines of certain scenes. I have a pretty good sense of where I want things to go regarding various characters/plotlines.

However, I don't adhere to my plotline rigidly-I've been known to change things here and there. I find that a basic skeleton plotline containing major, important events a must-have, but I know how I often get ideas that just come out of the blue, and overly rigid planning can sometimes kill a good idea.

Often, I'll work on the next post and at the same time have a much, much later post going, for scenes late in the fic that either a) take a lot of planning or b)I have a great idea and I want to write it NOW.

-Tim

 

I'm always one or two chapters ahead.

 

I have found that preplanning is very good. I have written one fic and I completely 'winged it' as Mistress Renata called it. It was in first person which easier for me to write not planned.

With stories I plan to post in the future, which there are two in the works, a basic outline and then write it. Then send it to the beta, and after that post!