Thinking of writing a fan fiction that’s been on my mind for a while. I know some people dive right in and write in a very linear fashion, but I generally feel that I’m better at the overarching stuff and worse at maintaining character voice.
Idek if I’d post it anywhere, this is mostly to get a pile of ideas out of my head.
(I guess when I say “start writing”, I mean putting down sentences that would plausibly wind up as part of the prose, but it’s all writing really)
i like to do a lot of research (moodboards, excerpts from other books, historical or scientific articles) for creative writing, so it takes me months or even years before i have anything more than notes.
All that is locked up in my head. I think I wrote a proto-brief for the principle character as an RPG character a while ago, but I’ll probably change a lot of detail
I do all my planning after writing the manuscript. Somewhere a few chapters in I’ll make a 2 page outline for another few chapters, but never at the start.
One time I had to do a logistical analysis concurrent with a chapter to decide how much someone is getting paid and how long they’d be stuck on a boat.
Very little. I don’t write in chronological order, I write in order of interest - the discovery along the way is the most fun for me.
I’m ADHD and can only really write when I’m off my meds, so my method may not work for everyone lol
If the goal is to get it out of my system like you describe, I don’t do anything I’d describe as prep, rather I set it up like a special occasion. “Writing time” then becomes mixed up with some kind of lil treat, to separate my satisfaction with the writing done from the time spent. This way, even if the writing itself fell flat and I’m disappointed, maybe I still had a a nice time.
Since writing is often a matter of habit once the initial enthusiasm wears off (for longer stuff at least, not like poetry), my best success came from writing being the gravitic center of my day. It needed to be easy to start, and hard to quit early.
I started writing fanfiction about 2 (ish?) years ago. My writing process hasn’t really changed from my usual get an idea and vomit it onto paper. I do tend to do a refresher on my memory if I haven’t watch the show in a bit, or if I just want to be painfully accurate.
I find myself to be repetitive in certain bits, usually pronouns, but that’s neither here nor there.
I do have a tendency to get ideas for certain parts of the story which I’ll stick into my notes to be inserted whenever I need to.
I say go for it, if you need pointers or encouragement try duck.ai or similar. I tend to use it sometimes to motivate me, and give me a dopamine boost. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure…
