Do you ever go into stories (even short ones) with just a general idea and not much of a plan, or do you generally try to have most of the scenes outlined in advance? What's your process like from "OH! I gotta write about that!" to finished product?
I honestly don’t use proper outlines much at all, and I definitely never outline individual scenes. When I do use them, it’s for larger stories that I’m still in the process of working out where I want to go.
Case in point, these are all of my stories that have outlines, after almost three years of this blog: by the claw of dragon, brick by brick, somewhere surely lived, sarabande, everything that ticked (a btcod sequel), and when we have any power (a tentatively-titled magicians fic). My kuzupeko little mermaid au (low falls the tide) has a document in its folder called “outline”, but nobody in their right mind would call it an actual outline tbh.
That said, I very rarely go into anything without a plan, or at least knowing how something starts and ends. I think I’ve used this metaphor before, but essentially I know what happens at points A, F, H, K, P, U, and Z of my story, and everything else is connective tissue I either have less concrete ideas for, or that I figure out as I go.
The process itself is kind of hard to describe, but I tend to “stub scenes out,” or partially write a few scenes that stick out clearest in my head, usually out of order, and then add/rearrange/split/combine/rewrite them as I feel out the larger image of the story. Then, once I have a solid picture of what the whole story should be, I think through filling in the bits that didn’t jump out of inspiration.
I really enjoy writing that way, because it creates a fun positive feedback loop for me, where small pieces of later scenes create seeds of ideas for earlier ones. (It feels a little like sculpting in my head, coming from someone who is definitely not a sculptor.) It works well, I think, for shorter pieces and one-shots, things that have strong central “spines” of plot, and not too many subplots or interwoven themes.
The problem is the larger a story gets (either in wordcount or plot complexity), that system falls apart fast. Without a roadmap, I’ll write myself into dead-ends much more frequently than I probably would otherwise, or just not do enough groundwork to get the kind of emotional payoff I want.
I only really get “surprised” by my writing (in the sense of being like, “I started this thinking it was going to be [x] but WOW it turned into [y]”) when I’m writing very, very short things, and usually from prompts. For prompt fics especially, I think I’m more likely to just start with a feeling and see what happens.
