Authors... How Do You Write?

I would like to know from the authors if you please... How do you write? Do you plan your stories in advance? Or do you "wing it" and make them up as you go? If you have done both, which plan produces better results in terms of comments/favorites? Thank you kindly for your help.

Regards,
Christian

I may be a little unusual, but I can keep stuff in my head from the time I get the idea and order it that way. I generally have about 3 or 4 backed up at any one time. I then work on it mentally and have it outlined by the time I start to write. I don't really think in terms of comments or favourites. I just write what I like, if someone else likes it enough to comment or favourite it then that's a bonus.

I'm like Seegee. I seldom start writing until I have everything worked out in my head. Sometimes the characters seem to have a mind of their own, though, and take the story in a different direction. And I don't write with an eye on comments and favorites (as much as I like to get them). The first person I have to please is me, and thinking of that other stuff would be a distraction.

Check out the author interviews in Wellred Weekly. This question is one asked, along with others.

For me, it is a combination of the two. Sometimes I have a story completely planned out in my head and just have to write it down. Sometimes I have a story in my head, and I begin the process of writing it, but for one reason or another, I have take a break from writing it, and during that non-writing time, I get the idea for another direction and go with that. That is the case for a story I am currently writing and hope to have finished soon. I never just sit down at the keyboard and start creating, hoping to come up with something. I always have some sort of idea of a plot line and where it will probably go. That may be one reason why there can be lengthy gaps between my submissions.

Like Rick and Seegee, I'm not all that focused on how many comments or favorites a story might receive, although I do admit to liking to receive both. Sometimes I think a story will generate a lot of comments and it only gets one or two. Other stories I write mainly to please myself and they may get quite a few comments or maybe only a couple. I think one thing that effects how many reads and comments a story will get is how long it appears on the latest additions list or latest comments list. I think a lot of us tend to look there first and then maybe go hunting for a favorite author to see if he/she has anything new.

Most of what I write is the kind of story I enjoy reading. That's why almost all of my stories are either M/f or F/f, usually involving parents spanking their teenage daughters for a justifiable reason. Every once in a while, I will stretch myself out of my comfort zone, but mostly, I stick with what I like to read. It shouldn't be too surprising to find that those are the stories that seem to write themselves.

I'm not sure my ramblings help any, but I hope it helps some.

For me, I put myself in all my characters. I do and say what I would say and do in every situation. That's the way I keep the story moving. Yes, I have a rough scenario figured out, but I move along by being all the characters. Like Rick says, sometimes my character takes me somewhere I never planned on going. I write in the horror genre outside of the LSF, and I sometimes look at a paragraph and say, "Where the hell did that come from?"

It's a subconscious thought that simply comes forward and out of nowhere. We tend to type so fast that we forget ourselves, and we end up putting that thought in the story. All of a sudden I'm going in a totally different direction. A fictional road map if you will.

If anyone were to notice, they would see that I use dialogue and dialect just like people actually speak. I try not to embellish the grammar with twenty-five cent words to often.


B

All the above sounds familiar. I plan before I start writing, but I do occasionally either get surprised by my characters or get a new idea along the way. I am not very plot-oriented, and I usually start with the characters and perhaps a setting, and develop the story from there. As I usually want my stories to be as psychologically convincing as a spanking story can be, I often have a hard time working the spanking into the story, and I spend a lot of time (this may mean months or a year) to find the "right" reason....

I tend to get a vague idea and then just write... Some work and end up on the library and some don't and get put to one side for another time.

I tend to find the story just takes me where it wants to go...

For example my 'Doing the Right Thing' just started out as a woman who was unable to ask for what she really wanted and needed, even I was surprised where it ended up...

Beth's and Alef's answers express it pretty well for me. I get an indea, which often sloshes around in my mind for a long time until for some reason - getting a new idea that adds to the original, having no other story to write, gaining confidence in the idea - I start to write. Some kind of plot outline is always there: for example, I wouldn't start a story about a race without knowing who would win and why - but as I write, I get new ideas for twists to the plot. To take the race example again, I might or might not decide on all the characters taking part before I started writing.

For a story like East Meets West, the basic idea was: PC Sally West is called to suspected break-in at house of mad professor; mad professor has some sort of gallery of traps and weird machines in his house; Sally goes into it; gets trapped; gets spanked. I think in the original idea the professor played a more active role, pursuing her into the gallery and I'm not sure originally she was pursuing the burglar there. I then got the idea that she went in after the burglar and then that she got trapped in the mouth of an automaton. I decided the profesor should have a cool, dominatrix-type wife and Sally, a lazy male colleague. That was enough to start writing and I added items in the gallery and events as I went along, including the twist that as Sally never saw the burglar, he could rescue her pretending to be someone else and she could fall for him.

I also tend to write quite short bits and return several times, rather than lowering my head and charging at the story.

I like to have the beginning middle and ending well planned out in advance and also my main characters have to come to life in my mind before I put finger to keyboard. I wish at times I was brave enough to just wing it with a sketchy idea but that is not possible for me.... At the moment anyway... And I am very judgmental on myself which deters me from the latter option.

It is true that all sorts of things can provide inspiration. The Spank Shop series was born out of my interest in someone asking to be spanked. It was meant to be a one off, but the response was so positive and so many people wanted more that I just kept coming up with ideas, these days some of the ideas could fit into other scenarios, but I like tweaking them so that I can spend time with Andrea and Co. Case in point about characters you never originally thought of popping into something, Andrea's assistant Kimberley almost didn't make the cut, and she was included as a bit of an afterthought, since those humble beginnings she's starred in a couple of episodes which have hardly featured Andrea.