Preperations before writing

So I am preparing to write a rather lengthy story about Kalos (writing character profiles, thinking of events, etc.). It got me thinking what else can I do before I start writing so the writing process itself would as as smooth as possible?

What do you usually do before you start writing? And what do you think a writer should before he starts writing?

I typically don't start out with a plan, rather I just go at the initial idea and see what it grows into. Once I start going though, I'll end up having sticky notes and google docs with paragraphs upon paragraphs of summaries for various points in the story that I don't want to forget to include that I've randomly thought up.

I'm similar to Bardothren, but I do try and get the overall concept, endgame and beginning down first. Course when I do write it I try to see any other stuff I can put in there to add more to the story and in a way "Make it more quality than just a story about A going to B". World-building is something I like to do, so while I start writing it, I think about what where they would be and other stuff.

I will say I have a little of a battle plan, but most of my arcs I wouldn't have thought up if I hadn't already started on the story itself.

I'm pretty terrible with planning things before I write. Usually I'll just sit down when an idea grabs me and start on chapter one, structure be damned. I find that that initial burst of creativity is the most genuine representation of what I really want to write, because it comes directly from my imagination without being diluted through a filter. After I've written a few chapters, I start to lay out a loose plan, often just a chronological one in very sketchy detail to make sure the plot stays on track (on Monday Ren does this, on Tuesday he goes here, Wednesday is the tag battle tournament, Thursday is a day off and on Friday he flies to Fortree etc). Other than keeping a second document with Pokemon teams and other minor organisational stuff, that's pretty much all the planning I do.

I used to just jump into writing a story without any preparation. If something came up that I needed to take a deeper look at, I'd do it right in the middle of writing the chapter. This did start to create issues when I would spend an hour pouring through screenshots trying to find out how a character's room looks.

That's why now I'm starting to get more organized before writing. The main step that we've taken now is plotting out the chapter before we start writing it. So we'll discuss what happens in the chapter, and I write down a general summary of each scene. Each scene also gets a colored line in front of it, where each color is different for whichever POV we'll be working in for that scene. This way, we know where the chapter is going to begin and end, and who will be the main characters for that particular chapter.

Everything else is still unplanned. Needed screenshots and research happen as we're writing. Fortunately, there's an idea of where the story's going, so the planned chapters don't change (often). Like aeternum, we make use of sticky notes as reminders for changes to edit in or ideas to use in the future.

But I'm going to say that every writer is different. Some writers have everything planned out before they write. Other writers just jump in with only the most basic plot details and nothing else. There's really no clear-cut advice to give that will make the writing process as smooth as possible because writing is art, and art is different things to different people. Also, your story might suddenly change on its own as you're writing it, and the plans that you came up with at the beginning don't hold true anymore.

Usually I would plan out a few beginning and ending scenes and get some notes on characterization and places ready before I start writing. During the writing stage I might sometimes wing it on some middle scenes and/or change the direction of a story's plot. Right now with Foul Play I have an idea of the last several scenes I want to happen but I'm mulling over which direction I want to take in the middle stage.