Writing - Planning or Stream of Consciousness

[tessarin]

Well real life and a general fatigue has slowed down my writing a fair bit recently. However, that slow down has proved useful in another way. It's forced me to reappraise whether I am over planning my fics. On some days I have struggled to write portions and yet on other days when inspiration has hit me and I have disregarded my plan, I have been

Comments

[electricalgwen]

I have almost never outlined a fic, although I should note I tend to write short one-offs. I have written outlines for two major multi-chapter things and then... not written them, or at least not gotten past the first chapter as yet. (In both cases, I had written the first chapter before the outline.) It seems as if having the outline written puts me off - I've told the story to myself, I know where it's gone, and the actual getting there isn't important anymore. I want to go and write something new, something that I don't know where it's going yet. Usually I start writing and keep going until it gets to a natural end.

That isn't to say that what I end up posting is all stream-of-consciousness. I do some editing, and not infrequently I'll jump down and write a couple of chunks out of sequence (but knowing somewhere inside where they'll end up, without actually writing it down in an outline) and then stitching them together. I may then do a bit more editing depending on what the beta readers say (and I usually like having two), and read through to see how the balance feels - is there too much intro, etc.

I have never written bios. When things are going well, I just type down what the characters are saying in my head. They usually reveal their motivations etc. along the way.

Possibly, however, I am just lazy. *g*

[tessarin]

Thanks.

'It seems as if having the outline written puts me off - I've told the story to myself'

Actually that is exactly the sort of problem I was alluding to. When you just write it down as it occurs, you keep that joy of discovery thing going. Planning does seem to remove some of the edge and turn the getting the A to B into a bit of a chore.

The out of sequence thing I only tend to do when I get stuck, jump ahead and then come back when the transition presents itself.