How much do you plan? Or do you prefer to wing it?

[AbiOmmi]

I always find it fascinating to heard about how other writers plan – or don’t plan – their work.
I have friends who meticulously plan every detail of their work before they begin their first draft; they’ll write in-depth character profiles, plan every single chapter and research the locations/time period involved in the work.
I also have friends who don’t plan at all! They’ll start wherever they feel most inspired and see where it takes them.

I usually find myself falling somewhere in the middle. For short stories and certainly anything novel-length, I tend to plan and research a fair bit but I also like being able to change things up as I get know the piece. For poems, I’m much looser with it; I like to write whatever comes to me and then edit later on.

Do you takes lots of time planning what you’re going to write or do you just go for it? Is it different depending on the topic/type of work?

[JimTK]

Yes, an interesting – and moot point. In my case it’s a danger to overplan because I would be just procrastinating about actually starting the writing process. Planning for me is a way of avoiding doing! However, I take your point that we must plan to some extent.
After many hours of thinking about ideas, jotting snippets down, structuring stories etc…I have come to the conclusion that all I need is to know how things start and how things end and what is the main thing I want to convey/say. Is my story thematic or do I just want to create a good, credible character and a describe a scene or two for that character to do its thing? That’s enough to get me started.
I should add that I mainly work on short stories, I would imagine, you need a bit more structural planning for a novel but I’m not brave or ambitious enough to take on the work of such a project.

[Author]

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