Do you outline your fanfics?

[Vampiric]

I have problems with this all the time. I never get things finished. Yuck! I always have ideas for fics, AND original fiction, but I can never seem to get my ideas down right. I know that one method used is to plan your entire fiction ahead of time-- and I've tried it before, but it never seemed to work for me.

Are there any tips you guys have? Any methods for outlining that help you a lot? I'd really like to start writing more, but I just haven't found the method that works for me.

[Catwho]

I write one paragraph for each chapter, and when I write the chapter I make sure to cover everything I want to happen in that chapter.

For example, this is the planning for War Games chapter 1:

1. 9 years after Ranma series. Ranma and Akane have gotten married, with much grumbling from all sides of the arena, and have been struggling to build a solid School for years now. Unfortunately, the dojo is in such disrepair that they can't hold more than a few students due to outragious insurance requirements. In order to keep the Anything Goes school alive, Ranma decides to get a day job with Sony . . .

That's it. That's all I *needed* accomplish in chapter one. A lot more stuff happens, of course, but the outline (there are 13 chapters) gives me a solid direction to take the story.

For oneshots, I do summary outlines, which is the same thing only just one paragraph ^_^

[Vampiric]

Hm. I think I've tried to do that. I need to do it more completely though, like getting my intents down for each chapter of a fic before I even start actually writing it. ^_^ I actually did that for a one-shot HP fic, but I never finished it anyway.

Probably because I'm a lazy good-for-nothing. -_-'

[Andrea]

When I start a fic, I always know or plan how it's going to end. Always. It's the key, this way you won't get carried away, and change plots midway through the story. Sometimes I make little notes on specific scenes I want, or things that HAVE to happen in order for the fic to work the way I want, and end the way I want. The rest, I just let it flow. You can't think everything up in advance, or else it will all seem rushed and straight to the point. Get your ideas in order, try to think of specific things you want to write, and then start; write whatever your mind comes up with, just trying to mesh your original ideas with your new ones... That's how it works for me.

[Beer-monster]

Yeah I like to let it flow too. To me the key is to let the story and the characters speak and you write, not the other way around. I usually have a few thinks that and random idea that I want to occur, scene and dialogue I want to write and thinsg that should happen, how those things become connected and how they become a story is up to the characters, and of course the plot bunnies

For example for the last chapter of my fic Honour and Pride I had 4 scenes that I wanted to get down. Genma introspective, Ryu Kumon introspective, Genma training Akane, bad guys talk about Ranma. That was all that I knew when I started writing, the words and the ideas came to my as wrote, as I walked to the stroe, in boring lectures etc.

Though I should write stuuf down more, as it kills me when I know I've forgotten something good

[Morrighan]

For me, I try to outline my stories by chapter, each with a short summary of what I want to happen in it and any crucial plot thingies. It's usually several sentences long and never exceeds a paragraph. The rest of it just flows.

[Weaver Atropos]

I can't outline. Whenever I try to outline (speaking school-wise, in this case) my writing seems constricted and forced. I'm a free-writer. Granted, there are certain scenes that I want to explicitly include, so after i freewrite for a period of 1-3 hours, and I'm ready to sleep, I make two or three little bullets so that I don't forget what I was planning to do. *shrugs* As long as it works, keep doing it, right?

[Omnicat]

I think I'm physically incapable of (proper) outlining. -_-; In school, I have to do it all the time when I get writing exercises, but I always cheat by writing down the outline AFTER I've finished writing. More like summarizing. I just can't do it! It robs me of the capability of writing it out completely. There's one instance in which I did outline an entire story, prologue, plot twists, climax and all, which made for a decent four pages - and I haven't touched it since. I feel like it's already done, when I outline too thouroughly. There's no more need to tell the story.

What I do, is write down the crucial parts of the story in full, and fill in the gaps between these scenes afterwards. Usually, it doesn't take long for the road to clear, so to speak, and even if it doesn't, it will if I start 'force-writing'; just type along and see where it leads me, and keep writing untill the results are satisfactory. If the different scenes turn out not to fit, I simply go back and correct the problematic parts.

So I avoid outlining as much as possible (my weird memory is great that way) unless it involves a really complicated part of a story, or when I run out of time (I resort to script-style in those cases) to write everything down properly without forgetting half of what I wanted to say when I'm only halfway there.

And though this thread hasn't been active for two years, it was nice writing all that down. It helped to finally define something that had been buzzing around in my brain for quite some time now.

[SqueezeMe]

Actually, that's a great idea. I have that same problem! If I write out an outline, the story just seems to die... it's odd. What I do is pretty simple, I write a nice, important chunk for all the crucial parts of the story, then leave room for one or two filler chapters. The filler chapters are what I use to get character relationships across, that way I know when to get down to buissness, and when I can play around with the story. Needless to say, you have to be a little flexible with your outcome for this to work.

[melrose_stormhaven]

I outline. A lot. Characters, plots, setting, scenes, I just jot them down. Heck, I even jot down my dreams.

The idea is, when you outline, you map out what you want to be in your fiction. It's also a great way to organize your thoughts, so when you get down to writing, you have an idea what you're going to write...and let it flow... (although it's not as easy at it sounds. Even if you have an outline, it's not a guarantee that you'll finish your story.)

Here's a link on a previous discussion in BI on writing outlines: http://blissfulignorance.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=6910