At 09:17 AM 2/24/98 -0500, Doug Murphy wrote:

I've been thinking about my plans for my fanfic works-in-progress, and it

led me

to ponder a simple but valid question: How do you plan out a good fanfic?

Do you make an outline of the whole fic and stick to it like crazy glue?

Do you

just come up with an enemy that the characters from the anime have to face

and

work out the plot as you go?  How do *you* decide how the plot unravels in

your

storylines.

Hmmm.  

Writing is part intellect and part intuition.  There almost always has to
be some sort of rough plan from which to go by, whether it be written down
or stuck in the mind.  Such a plan should *never* be written in stone, and
should be ready to change if the story seems to be leaning in a different
direction.

The reason I'm interested is because once I finish chapter 3 of CCWD and
re-write ADD I'm moving on to part two of CCWD for which I have a lot of
'events' planned but I'm not sure how everything is going to be worked out. 
Should I sit down before I even start and make an outline or have you all

found

that letting a story 'write itself' is better?

The story will write itself anyway, even with a plan.  If what you plan
looks contrived, you'll know once you're writing it.

As for the outline... only you can ask that question.  Do you think that
your own writing processes would be helped by writing down an outline?  

For the record, CCWD is (currently) very much writing itself.  I'm finding

that

sitting down with a basic idea and a few characters works nicely for short
chapters but will it still work when I start working on longer plot lines?

That depends on how long and how intricate those plotlines zre.  

-- 
Draxon-X@Bellsouth.Net

-- Nick