When I start outlining my first novel and started writing it .I hated , because it was going to directions that I didn't like . But as I start writing , sudden ideas made take another route .Mainly , because they were too good not to use .I loved how excited become by just by following my heart .Instead my prison myself to plot . I usual have general idea what plot going be for example trial , war or kidnapping operations.I think as long you have good idea of general idea (not vague one ) and some points and knowledge of character .Its much better easier to bend the story and changes much faster than the planner.Idk of this help.
I agree with this, however much my ameteur opinion is worth. Perhaps it's based on experience or just our own personal mental make-up. How do you clean your house? Do you work better when you clean one room, top to bottom, completely spotless, before moving on to the next? Or do you gather dishes from every room first, then throw laundry from every room into the hallway, then dust every room, etc. Personally, I've written 6 books but have so far only published one. I find the editing stage to be very daunting. I have two friends who are currently doing my editing, one a story line and structure geek the other a grammar nerd. They each are working on a different book right now, and a third is currently being steadfastly ignored by me as it languishes in my hard drive wallowing in all their changes. A fourth book is just sitting there, staring at me, saying what gives every time I look at it. My editors absolutely destroyed this book, and I agreed with this destruction. I've made all the changes they recommended which I agreed with. Yet still, it feels stilted and fake, like I took a bunch of letters and just forced them to mean something. That last book is the one I wrote an outline for and always knew exactly what would happen next. It's probably my inexperience and lack of any formal training or education, but I tried too hard to make the events and characters fit that outline. And the results are a stiff, blah series of events. Welp, she died. Okay, what's next? And my "editors" agree with me. I still tend to curl up on the closet floor with my blankie when I think of their comments. My books that work I handled in a more natural manner. I have a general idea of the main event, and then just let the story flow from there. So, maybe to each their own, maybe it just depends on experience and training, maybe on mentality. But you can really see the difference in the feel of the voice. And in how much wear and tear my blankie gets.
Same here. I used to just come up with an idea and run with it; it worked in the past (I got two novels out of it), but the lastest just wasn't working. It wasn't until I actually sat down and starting planning things out that it all came together, and even then I pants'ed a bit - I wrote out a bunch of important scenes and some random stuff so I could get a feel for what I wanted to do. I'm almost 70K words into this thing, and now that I have a clear idea of the plot, the characters, and the villains, I've stepped back to do worldbuilding and such. I'll have to rewrite it all, but I can still maintain my enthusiasm because I know where it's all going. And like Sack-a-Doo said, setting a schedule makes a huge difference. If you can sit down at roughly the same time every day and write even a little bit, you'll find things coming more and more easily as you "train" yourself to write. That's how I wrote my second one - sitting down every night over the course of a summer and banging it out. No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
