Pretty much everybody agrees at this point that "planning ahead with an outline" versus "creating the narrative on the fly from one scene to the next" is a spectrum, not a binary yes/no, so I thought I'd start a poll about how much everybody is of each rather than having to focus on the binary.
I plan each chapter, down to the event, but I don't plan it all. I leave dialogue and reactions to the event for when I'm actually writing. I also leave a little room for my characters to grow and expand. So I'd say I'm neutral with planning tendencies.
I plot out the overall arc of the story, but I can't tell you what's gonna happen between point A and point B. It's mostly just.... winging it. Definitely neutral with panster tendencies.
I do like to do an basic outline of the general idea of my longer works; such as the base introduction to the novel, vital characters, chapter outline, etc. However, if I plan too much of my work I end up feeling chained; and, in consequence, I loose my inspiration to write the work at all. When it comes to shorter stories and/or my essays, I just freewrite.
I'm with drunken on this one, I plan my overall story, and chapter events and all the likes. but all the minor stuff, dialogues, etc... I do on the fly.
By inclination i am pure pantser but I have to wrap my head around that it will not be possible to write my story this way
I have "planned" the world in which my story takes place , and have a rough outline idea of what happens - beyond that i tend to pants the detail and/or plan a chpt or so ahead in my head for example in recent chapters my MCs and associates attacked a base belonging to a mercenary force working for the antags - my plan for the attack was that it would be based on the SAS/LDRG ops in the western desert in big mistake number 2 - ie it would involve disguise, daring and having balls like turnips , and that my good guy team need to suffer casualties during the attack and the E&E that follows as i need to reduce numbers for plot reasons to follow. That was pretty much the extent of my planning , and i pantsed the actual raid after reading lots of source material about similar attacks.
I've tried to plan. But usually when I think... Okay, what's gonna happen in chapter one? I just end up writing chapter one. Same goes for chapter two.
I wish I could write that way! For me I feel compelled to know exactly everything that's going to happen in a scene and a chapter overall before I'll write anything.
Who is kidding...I bullshit everything. Though I kinda had Marckus figured out, the other characters and the story just kinda showed up out of thin air.
I'm pretty strange on the whole thing. I tend to have the character's first and play around with them. Making small little stories to get to know them better. Then I actually try and put them into a story, so I'm pretty neutral on the whole thing.
I am a planner. I only start writing the beginning when I already know the end. This takes a long time to make up the whole story in my mind but I think it's worth it because I like to play with forebodings and metaphors throughout the entire story. I can use the same metaphor at key points as a sort of "refrain" throughout a long novel, a reminder for the reader that things are going "this way" from the beginning. It's also useful to leave some juicer parts for the end, or very near the end. I don't write thriller/suspense but that doesn't mean that I cannot write the story in a way that keeps the reader wondering what's happening next. (I didn't know I was able to do this when I started writing.)
Planning is my kryptonite. It sucks the life out of my writing. Seemingly. But I need a healthy dose of it every now and then to keep my writing on track. So consider me a gardener with an architect's sense of boundaries.
Right now, in life, definitely neutral with pantser tendencies. I formed what is likely a bad habit many years ago, in that I do all my planning in my head, but that generally only happens after a short story has been written that I then decide to write "sequels" for. This plotting and outlining on paper/software/post-its/whatever is new to me, and I'm poking at it with a stick to see what happens.