WIP Challenge Check-in, Day 2 -- Wednesday

[linaewen]

Hello on Wednesday!  What kind of a writing day has it been today?

•     I thought about my fic once or twice
•     I wrote
•     I did some planning and/or research
•     I edited
•     I've sent my fic off to my beta
•     I posted today!
•     I'm taking a break
•     I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

For Discussion:  Endings -- while in the planning stage of a story, do you plan how it will end or do you let it work itself out?  Do you know clearly when you have reached the end of a chapter or a story?

I have several multi-chapter WIPs that have a "planned" ending -- in that I have an idea of what might work to wrap them up and I've made notes to that effect, but I'm well aware that it could all change by the time I actually get there.  Shorter one-shot fics tend to be less planned in that I don't know how long they will be or what will come at the end, but I usually have a good sense when I have found the end.  I don't know how that works, but I seem to know when a story is finished, or when the chapter is done and I can leave it as it is.

Comments

[graychalk]

I did quite a bit of planning today and minor bit of writing. The writing part wasn't very productive, but the planning helped me figure out a lot of things so I'm pretty happy about that.

I often have a pretty clear image of the ending of my story. Sometimes, I even write out the final scene long before I get there. I wouldn't say that I always know how my stories will end, but I tend to work better when I know where I'm headed. Many of my stories actually came about because I have a vivid picture of the end, and so my process becomes figuring out what the story is about and what led to that moment. I guess you can say I plan backwards more often than forwards from the beginning.

[lea_hazel]

I am constantly brainstorming, trying to properly structure a plot before I start writing, for a change.

Speaking of which... The last few multi-chapter WIPs I had, the ending caught me completely by surprise. I suppose I am a bad planner. For my current WIPs, I'm struggling to figure out a satisfying conclusion for the characters' emotional arc. That's really what's important to me as a reader, and so it's what I focus on as a writer.