When you decide to write something, what's your process before you put pen to paper?

I go through a kind of iterative process, expanding the detail on each "round" through the fic. I'll use an example: Undo the Breach.

Step one: Come up with the story concept:"Harry Potter x Buffy fusion fic".

Step two: Come up with the core elements of the fic:

• POV: Harry Potter, third person.
• Buffy universe dominant, but HP characters exist there
• Tom Riddle was a warlock who tried to take over the Watcher's Council, killing Harry's parents
• The Watcher's Council has a school (codename Hogwarts) for the kids of Watchers, and Harry went there. Magic isn't part of the curriculum, but many students dabble in it
• Fic set in 1999/2000, when Buffy is at college (season 4) and Harry is in his second year at Cambridge university
• Harry is a warlock, tutored personally by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore
• A piece of Tom Riddle survived in Harry's scar and talks to him
• Fic to focus on Harry coming to Sunnydale to assist with a problem
• Big bad is a Grindelwald resurrected by a necromancer
• No Adam, much smaller Initiative.

Step three: Come up with an ending:

• Grindelwald tries to use a ritual to ascend to godhood and is stopped by Harry and Buffy. Harry has to open himself up to his scar and its damaging influence to win, using Tom Riddle's extensive magical knowledge against Grindelwald.

Step four: Break the plot into arcs, dividing up how to reach the ending from the opening:

• Arc 1: England. Introduction to Harry and the world, set in England. Introduce the idea of necromancers searching for Grindelwald's body. Ends with Harry (with a team of Watchers) being sent to Sunnydale, where Grindelwald's body was sent to be under the protection of the Slayer... the Slayer who no longer works for the Council.
• Arc 2: Sunnydale. Arrival in Sunnydale post-Hush (on day of earthquake) and attempt to find Grindelwald’s body. Ends with Grindelwald’s resurrection.
• Arc 3: The Hunt. Buffy and co trying to stop Grindelwald’s plan to ascend. Race to find the resurrection stone. Faith’s escape. Ends with Grindelwald getting the stone.
• Arc 4: Climax. The last ditch fight to stop the ritual.

Step five: Break down each arc into separate chapters. E.g. for Arc 1:

• Ch1: Introduction to Harry via a Norse ritual he's leading at Cambridge university. Establish the magic system, and the Watcher’s Council. Sirius (Watcher) arrives and tells Harry he's needed in London.
• Interlude 1: Interludes look at Harry's past. Dumbledore takes Harry on as an apprentice following Harry successfully casting his first spell, which attracted Dumbledore's attention for both its power and danger. (Tom Riddle's voice had been guiding Harry, but this is not mentioned).
• Ch2: Harry and Sirius look around the burgled Potter home in London. They conclude the thief was looking for something in particular. Invisibility Cloak is gone. A hair left behind - enough to track them.
• Interlude 2: Harry gets into a row with a fellow student, itches to use magic to strike.
• Ch3: Tracking spell… leads to a Watcher’s Council building. Loads of protection, but someone has attacked recently. Bodies everywhere. The thief is still there! Brief fight, red haired woman, but they get away - Harry shielding from bullets mostly.
• Interlude 3: Harry does something bad with magic. Hint at possession: glazed look, confusion at his surroundings when “waking” etc.
• Ch4: At the Watcher’s Council HQ, briefing on Grindelwald. They want Harry to go to Sunnydale with Sirius’ team to brief the Slayer and protect Grindelwald's body. He has the day to decide. He visits Hermione in Oxford, who tells him to go. Tom Riddle’s voice surfaces.
• Interlude 4: Harry going to Dumbledore about Riddle’s voice.

Step six: before writing each chapter, break the chapter down scene by scene, describing in some detail the contents of each scene.

Step seven: write.

In addition to this "plot construction" there may also be "world construction" going on in parallel.

 

Well, I any creative process starts with an idea. So, let's say I get an idea. What follows varies depending on how developed that initial idea is. It may just be a scene I imagined, or even a single image. I built one of my finished fics around an image of Harry and Voldemort meeting in an empty field during a rainstorm.

Then I start thinking "how do I make that stuff happen". If I can, I like to sit outside somewhere, with a pen and a notebook and I write down what comes to mind. Nothing concrete, mostly it's more random ideas, possible plot progression and other loose change.

Then, if I feel I have enough starting material, I organize the handwritten notes into something coherent and just start typing, scene by scene. I rarely plan the ending right away. It may sound strange, but I like to be surprised even by my own stuff. When I begin, things further down the line change a dozen times before I choose this or that over something else.

I'm sure it must look horribly disjointed, but I do, for example, write a short list of things I definitely want to include. I also write down the scenes and settings I think would work to illustrate certain things. It's sort of a skeleton of the story. Some scenes I write on paper and then just copy that when I sit down in front of the computer, sometimes a scene is described as a single sentence indicating if I want it to further develop the character or introduce some new element.

It's half-organized, half all over the place.

 

I just start writing.

 

I have an idea. I outline a few points in the scene I want to write. I write the scene. Rinse and repeat until story is finished.

 

Yeah this is me, too.

I start writing and, for a novel, when I hit about 20k I pull on the brakes and assess the damage. Usually at this point I know if it's good to proceed and I keep a parallel document (dual monitors), with dot pointed ideas and where we're heading, bumps in the road, and character descriptions.

One of my flaws is maintaining consistency with character eye/clothing colour. Seriously, I changed the dress colour one of my characters was wearing three times over three pages. So I work with that in mind. Character bios/Series bible, keep everything in order.

I'm currently writing LOST GRACE, RE#4, and some of the points for the entire arse-end of the story are as simple as:

• Adanor not the villain but still a bastard
• Forge is broken into pods
• Ship launched Void attack
• Declan and Tanha get fucked over by Nemin (dies?)

From there, I'll build the story over about 25k words (my formula has three arcs, of roughly 25k each), and then tie it all together. With any luck, the story will stand at the point, on a crutch. Edits will make it stand a little straighter, then off to betas to make it stand tall.

 

I'm actually not even joking when I say that. I start writing, because if I just sit around waiting for inspiration I'll never get off my ass. Maybe it means most of what I start with won't be usable, but I'll find my way towards something that is. I truly don't believe that inspiration is a thing that strikes, but instead is a thing coaxed out through hours and effort.

 

I have a rough outline for how the story goes, points that I can orient myself toward but which leave me enough room to play on the way to my destination.

Then, for the single scenes, I usually take five minutes beforehand, trying to envision what needs to happen, what do I want to happen, and how do I get what's in my head on the screen.

Also, before I start with the actual writing, I choose the pov for the person who stands to lose the most in the scene. After that it's writing and hoping that my characters forge their path on their own, which is awesome because it sometimes leads to several thousand words a day. Most of the time I can probably trash half of what I wrote, but that's what editing is for.

 

I never make notes. I simply get an idea, let it stew in my head for a while (I daydream about it, shaping and adding and subtracting until it's something a bit over a misshapen construct of a plot), then I begin writing. I set out with a very skeletal framework and work out the meat of each chapter as I write.

 

I've met a lot of writers, and it is very rare I come across a meticulous planner. When writing a story, some planning is inevitable and indespensable, but I'm reminded of the quote:

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

Relying on plans can lead to failure, so can lack of planning. Whatever strategy you employ when writing has to be fluid enough that you can abandon lost plot threads, or solider on with what you've got - even though, quite often, what you end up with on the page rarely matches the initial idea in your head.

In writing, I'd even hesitate limiting any strays from the plan. Sometimes the best words come from following the story, and not trying to make the story follow you. In my experience, fiction writing is one of the few fields where "Ready, fire, aim", can actually be useful.

Write first, edit later.

 

Usually I start with the idea that sprung into my head. An example would be like, what if Ron was a loyal badass sidekick, Helped stopped quirrell, helped saved his sister from the diary, helped Harry train for the GoF. That's the idea that sprung into my head, so then I think of the end game. This case, it's the generic and overused batman phrase "you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain". So the end plot is that Ron starts to take matters into his own hands. To many people he knows have been killed by Death Eaters, and after Voldemort is defeated by Harry, he grows frustrated that so many of them are escaping justice so he takes it into his own hands. But it's done in such a way that it can never lead back to him, and the only person who would be able to figure it out is Harry. At first he looks the other way, trying to pretend as if it's not happening, but eventually Ron goes to far and Harry is forced to stop his best friend.

That's the type of blurb that usually get's me to writing. So once I have that basic idea sketched out, I attempt to make a general outline. I decide where I want the story to start, and in this case, I figure like any good story, it should start at the beginning, so that would be during Harry's first year.

Figuring out the important characters isn't too hard. This is a piece centering around Ron and Harry, with other characters just being in the background, that means less Hermione, and the urge to not stick Harry with Daphne when the age is appropriate.

I then decide how long I want the fic, and what parts are truly important. I decide the early years aren't as important as the later years, so I pick a few key scenes to cover. For year one, it would be the duel with Malfoy, saving Hermione from the Troll, Norbert's rescue, and finally through the trap door. The same happens for each year, with the important scenes being mapped out. There shouldn't be more than 10k words per year, covering Ron's rise, and then eventually, his fall.

Then, once all is said in done, I toss the idea back into the depths of my mind, never write a word of it, and then work on the next idea.

 

Consider it; write down a ton of scattered notes that come to mind about development, and what's going to happen; write snippets and blurbs in the setting that might make it into the final story; ???; profit.