Quote:
Originally Posted by BookCat
While I agree that it's up to each writer to discover their method and the majority in this thread are pantsers, I prefer to outline using Word's Outline view. This gives me a skeleton of the elements of the plot, which can be easily changed, or new ideas incorporated, along the way. I can only "pants" flash fiction, even with that, I find myself running out of inspiration after about 500 words. I need direction from a pre-worked out plot and characters.
If you don't outline, how do you cope with things like research? ...
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I'm probably a bit strange on research. I start writing a draft, and if there's something I don't know (the name of something, for instance) I write "TK" in the manuscript and keep writing. I got this idea from Cory Doctorow. Later, after finishing the chapter, I can go back and look those things up. In Word, it's easy to search for "TK" and not get a bunch of false positives.
I've expanded this idea out to how I handle research as well. Since I don't outline, I don't always know what I'll need to research--I've got a good idea of where I'm headed, so I can do some research before writing, but mostly I make a note to research things after I'm done with the first draft of a chapter.
Sure, this gives me fits sometimes--I think a series of events could take place, and I write them that way, and research means I have to rework things, but it's very rare that it effects the major plot points. It's almost always very minimal stuff. Usually, I know the major plot points well before I get there, and I've researched enough before hand to handle those.
TL;DR - I do a little research beforehand on major plot points before the first draft, a lot on details (like colors of substances, names for architectural features, etc) after writing the first draft, and then I write the next draft.