Questions for those experienced in creative writing.

Stephentlig

When writing a book, do you plan your chapters and then write? or do you just dive right in?

which do you find is more to the creative writers palate?

Thanks
Stephen

pickarooney

Personally, and I've only written one, I sketch out a very rough draft and then horse into writing it for real, fleshing out everything. When finished the first draft I just sort of made chapter breaks wherever they seemed logical.

EileenG

I think it depends a lot on what you are writing. If you want romantic fiction, then you start with strong characters, and find an interesting plot for them later. If you write thrillers, you start with the plot, and then see which characters will work best.

Stephentlig

thank you for your posts, at the moment I was gonna just make notes and plan each chapter, but the quick draft sounds good. I was just afraid that if I dive in I'd find myself getting stuck for direction on where to take it from chapter five.

my book is character driven, with a strong plot, thematic and religous ideas as its religious fiction, so both your posts were helpful.
Thanks so much for your posts. further tips would be welcomed.

Stephen

desolate sun

I've written 2 books (neither published yet!) and the first book I knew my beginning, some of the middle and the end. I started writing and other chapters were created and others stayed the same.

The second book I wrote I had a main character and an idea but didn't know where it was going. So I wrote and wrote and thankfully a plot emerged.

It was an experiment really to see which type of writing I preferred and TBH the second method wins hand down for me. I was able to tap into my imagination and really let the characters inhabit their world. I came up with little plot twists that I'm sure I wouldn't have come up with if I had planned.

But it doesnt work for everybody. Try both methods and see what works for you.