Could you describe to us your writing process for a story, from the very start to the very end?
Sure I?ll give it a shot. I?m the planning type. I can sit down, start writing and just wing it if it?s short, but anything longer than 500 words needs to be planned out, or I get stuck. So for one shots I do a quick outline, and for long stuff I do a synopsis broken down chapter-by-chapter. I always make sure I know how it ends, otherwise I?ll just keep going and going.
Here, have some pictures. Here?s my outline for Lunar Orbit.
Those of you who have read it will notice that there are a few things in there that differ from the fic. It?s pretty normal for stuff to change as you write, because you usually can?t tell how the scene will flow until you?re actually writing it. (And sometimes bad ideas don't make themselves obvious until you're trying to make the characters do them). I really wanted to include the part about Yorihime eating Marisa?s danmaku, but it got cut because I wasn?t entirely sure if spell card rules were enforced in Gensokyo. (I ended up including a line that implied they were anyway, but after ISC and FS17 I?m extremely confident they aren?t. Ah well.)
This is a (censored) screenshot of the chaptered Touhou fic I?m planning out.
What? Anyway, I?m actually a little worried they?re too detailed right now. Originally I wrote these on paper too, but I got fed up of writing everything out by hand over and over. Each arrow is a new ?scene? or plot point.
Once I?m done with the first draft, I leave it alone for at least a day. If I reread it and it?s not crap, I start editing. Sometimes I?ll start editing before I?m done with the first draft though, usually because I don't like the direction it's going in. Editing usually involves deleting lots of unnecessary adverbs, horrible abuse of the text highlighting feature and rewriting several paragraphs. After that, I read it out loud. This is very embarrassing, but it helps me catch errors or awkward lines I wouldn?t notice otherwise. Then I leave it alone again until the next day, where I read it over one more time, then upload it.
Phew, I feel exhausted just thinking about it...