You've given yourself leeway to change, if a better idea intrudes as you write (and it will!) but you also know where you want to go. This flexible partnership between these two approaches is bound to succeed. Well said.
Kinda unrelated to the thread, but I don't think it deserves its own thread: How do you guys usually indicate scene changes in a story? I did a strike-thru line across the page. i.e. ______________________________________________
The standard format is to use a hash sign (#) centred on an empty line: Please note that the hash sign should be centred over the page width. For the full standard format (often requested by publishers/editors when you submit your work) I wrote a resource a while back: Standard Manuscript Format - Short Stories It is a format for short stories but most of it should apply to novels as well.
Well, it is a short story. If I put a hash there, what will the magazine put in its place when they publish?
The is entirely up to the magazine to decide (I think), and I'm pretty sure that it differs between different magazines. Here's an example from Lightspeed Magazine: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/scab/ They have choosen to represent normal paragraph changes with with empty space, and scene changes with 4 bullets.
In fiction, I either: Leave two clear lines for place/time jump. Leave one clear line for time jump (later in the day/night) Start a new character POV or ... Start a new chapter. I begin and end flashbacks with a set of five asterisks, centred on their own line.
I'd be careful with these things, especially if you want to submit your MSs to an editor. If the editor is okay with it, go ahead, but I think most will want to keep to the guidelines.
It works for me and as I self publish, I have my own guidelines. But, that's not to say I wouldn't rethink things if an agent/publisher took me on.
I don't have an ending to my story. Only because if I choose an ending, then it is harder to me to figure out how to get there. Instead I choose to set milestones. Instead of taking the story from A->B. I from A->B->C........-Z.
This is what I like about knowing my ending, the fact that I have to deconstruct and work out how and why my story ends the way it does. But I wouldn't suggest it's the right way, each writer has their own way of doing things.
I write detailed outlines. I need to know where my characters will end up before beginning the writing process. Some details change during the writing process, but without a road map for a guide, I would be lost.
I start with a basic situation and a vague sense of where I want the story to go. After that, its pretty much free flow and I see where the story takes me and what makes the most sense for the characters to do, how they react etc. I've only completed one novel but I did get to a point about 15k before the end where I suddenly knew how every chapter was going to pan out until the end, in fact, I scribbled the outlines down right there and then. It was a weird feeling and it somehow made the rest of the writing both easier and harder, more functional and less imaginative, but still enjoyable. Then I read this article yesterday about how Hilary Mantel describes this moment and she obviously does it with much more panache than me: The moment, at about the three-quarter point, where you see your way right through to the end: as if lights had flooded an unlit road. But the pleasure is double-edged, because from this point you’re going to work inhuman hours, not caring about your health or your human relationships; you’re just going to head down that road like a charging bull.
It honestly depends on the story whether or not I have the ending planned. Short stories I tend to let the story flow and lead to and ending, whereas the few novels I've attempted I've mostly had the ending in mind. For longer stories it helps me develop the plot to a certain degree because I know where I need to end up.
