do u make outlines when u write or just kinda wing it (or i guess a mix of the two)? a lot of your fics have a bunch of moving parts that always led me to believe it was heavily outlined but then i saw an authors note on In Defiance about how u hadn’t really expected the chapter or planned for it or somethin so
I don't really preplan my stories. Like, I might have a scene in my head when I start writing but I tend to come up with chapters as I write. For example, Chained is my longest Avatar the Last Airbender fic I have ever written as well as the longest story I have ever written in my life. At 360k length.
I had written about 40k in two days, just nonstop writing cause I had this scene in my head and I really wanted to get it down on paper, and before I knew it I had about 80 or so pages written and no actual plot. So I spent an entire night talking to my wifey about worldbuilding just to give myself a vague direction to go in which sprouted the War Prizes worldbuilding for the Southern Water Tribe and their multiple Chiefs and tribes. And every couple chapters, i'd sit down and think "what's going to happen next now? What's going on? Where do I need to go to make everything I've written up to this point make sense?"
And just keep going like that. I never have the full story outlined. I rarely ever think of more plot than maybe a couple scenes in my head repeating over and over again, and even then, some of those scenes might not even make it in the final result. It happened in Chained. The original idea was a lot more fucked up and brutal for how Zuko became a war prize. Or for In Defiance We Find Hope, my original idea was just "I want Sokka to have to deal with a tribe that doesn't love him and a Hakoda that is absentee" and then my thoughts for Zuko was "What if Lu Ten was alive and Iroh was Firelord instead?"
And I combined that with "But what if they got crushed in a cave and there was this kind of bodyswap event?"
So that's roughly my writing process. I have NO GOD DAMN CLUE what I'm doing. I just throw shit out there and piece it together to make sense in the aftermath. The shit I DO worldbuild heavily before I even start writing usually doesn't make it far or keep my interest because then the appeal and mystery of "what happens next?" Is gone. I've already ruined the surprises for myself.
So that's why you get comments from me where I have unexpected chapters that happen, or someone asks a question and I usually answer with "only time will tell" or "you'll have to wait and see" because even I don't fucking know what's going to happen more often than not. We're finding this shit out together.
I hope that answers your question.
