The Planning Stage

When you plan out a story, if you're into that sort of thing, how do you organize everything and what exactly do you include? Do you make a bullet list with key characters, places, plot points, or things alongside any defining traits they might have? Do you make 'the web'? Or do you have some other better method to keeping your thoughts together? Are there any programs you have on your devices or any websites you go to to store your outlines?

HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Me plan a story? Absolutely not!

I just jump right in to writing a story. Take the basic idea and just run with it. What characters will be involved? Don't know. What happens between beginning and end? Don't know. I've had plot points come up sooner and other ones get dropped. I've had characters wildly change from what I originally thought they would be like...mid-story.

The only organization that I have is where I write down notes. I have one notebook for "official" information: locations where a character lived, general information I need on psychology or culture, and a list of names for a later story, or anything that I need to quickly access. Another notebook is for general notes that encompass either an arching story line or that I may or may not need. And then there are the various sticky notes I have all around my monitor that are scenes I have to edit in or stupidly simple information that needs to be kept in mind while writing (the way that a character speaks, for instance).

This is one reason why it takes me so long to finish a story. Because I'll be writing chapter seven, and suddenly think of something (while, say, driving on the road) that should go into chapter three, and I have to go back and edit that it. Or rewrite any scenes that involve the character that did a complete 180 in his personality.

In short: I'm not organized.

Don't follow my example. It's confusing, takes too long, and leads to frustrations. (Like a chapter taking more than half its time to get to the actual plot point because all the characters were like "Nah, let's fight one another and get some development!") But I really can't write with any sort of organization of the plot. I just don't "get" how to outline a story, so I fly without a plot in mind and see where we all end up.

^What he said. I just jump right in, like what even is planning.

Foul Play I actually did some planning. I have them in Evernote and I have several notes concerning scenes/events, character backstories, info I copied from Nanu and Grimsley's Bulbapedia/TV Tropes pages, and notes concerning stuff from the Sun/Moon and Black/White games.

The funny thing is originally when I first put down some ideas I thought the story was going to be like only three/four parts. I then dived in the writing phase and I got a few chapters in. However I then got more ideas I wanted to put and now it's longer than I thought (not an epic mind you, but I think the story will probably be in eight /nine parts than the four parts I originally thought).

There's one another short chaptered fic I want to do and this one too I did a basic outline for it on Evernote. Not as much notes as Foul Play, lol.

At the start, I just jump in blindly and see where it takes me. Where my planning comes in, is after around 2000-4000 words are down and my mind starts racing through all the eventual possibilities. This leads to me having dozens of short section/chapter summaries throughout my collection of google docs and phone memos. I've got bullet lists, pictures, scribbles on loose papers, basically everything. Sometimes my computer just gets too slow on boot and I have to rush straight into the idea and get it down or it'll disappear. For example, in NWO I have three different google docs that detail various plot points that won't even appear for another 10, 15, or 20 posts. There's one in particular that just came to mind the other night, that likely won't come into play for another 50 or 60 chapters to be honest.

I really like toying with the idea of organizing myself though. I have a pretty decent sized chunk of bare wall right next to my computer screen, that I've thought of filling with sticky notes pertaining to various stories. I already have some stickies on my actual screen, just as reminders of various other things I need to do in the immediate future, so it might work out if I try that. I've wanted to try using Prezi as a way to organize my thoughts and the flow of my story, but I'm afraid that having yet another webpage to keep track of would only cause me to lose interest.

What planning stage?

Cutting the jokes aside, I try to at least establish a start, characters, plot focus or point, some of the world concepts and mechanics and have an idea of how I want to end (even if it is prone to change. Gives me something to head to)

That's the thing... I don't. I mean, the only time I have ever really done any planning is for NaNoWriMo. I suck at actual planning as well, so a lot of my ideas are notes. It's the only way I can figure out what I'm going to do. XD

Planning is sometimes the best part for me--for the Pokemon Anime Remix Project, I actually wrote up very detailed outlines showing which episodes would be cut, which ones could be rewritten to fit my imagined Pokeworld, which ones needed a few minor changes, and which ones could be kept as is, save for a few minor tweaks.