I have to admit, I'll choose a well-written and constructed plotty story over the best-written relationship story. But that's just me.

Nope, it's not just you.

It's a matter of taste, as are most things. I love plotty gen. I live for plotty gen. I'm frequently bored by relationship stories where the primary end point is to get two characters together, unless the romance is happening within the context of a larger story. Not that I dislike romance per se--it's just that a writer has to work harder for me to get into a shippy story, with lyrical prose, superlative characterizations, etc. than another writer who already has a rollicking plot to offer. And it takes even *more* work on the writer's part to sell me on a UC pairing, het or slash (with a few exceptions for my particular soft spots, e.g. cough Faith/Wes cough.)

On 'hey, this is just me and my issues' category, I don't like too much explicit sex in my stories. I like the UST and the undercurrents and things left unsaid, and often skim over the smut. This is in contrast to a lot of readers and excellent writers who write fanfic to explore emotional/sexual subtexts suggested on the show. Which is one of the main reasons cited when people are asked why they read/write fic. It just doesn't rank as high on my list of reasons for reading fic.

I can't say, not being a writer, whether it's harder to write plot or sex scenes. What I *can* say is, it's deuced harder for me to find a satisfying plotty gen than a well-written relationship story, at least in the particular fandom I'm reading in right now (Stargate SG-1.)

S'weird for me. When I write a fic, I have an idea of how it ends, then wonder how it starts. When I get that, I start to write. The dialogue just happens, and where that dialogue takes me, I write scenes, until I get to where the story is meant to end. And badaboom, the story ends. Every so often I'll have a couple of scenes I want to be in the story. Other than that, I let my nose lead me.

I write different ways.

Right now I have a story, I know what I want to happen, I know how I want it to end, but I'm not sure how I want it exactly to start. I even have the last line. This isn't how I've written before.

I just get an idea and work with it, sometimes the idea changes into something else...I start out writing one thing and the character leads me somewhere else.

I say this as if I've written a great many stories.

I normally have some idea of where it ends, in the longer pieces. Heck, I write patchwork style, with the ending sometimes coming long before the middle. I hear and see the scenes (or smell them), and then I write them.

Of course, I'm 2600 words into something right now and the path in front of me is clear as mud, which is... odd.

There have been a couple stories, three, actually, where I thought they were dead in the water, and suddenly--POW, they picked up and finished themselves. (For those playing at home, Acceptable Losses, Upside Down, and Dark They Were were all in the compost heap, yet all turned out fairly well, which is why I never throw anything away.)

What about the rest of you? Zombie bunnies come back to bite you?

Yeah me too. I always know how it will end. But the characters have a way of dictating how you get there. Even when you think they're under your control. :-)

PMM: I'm 4,500 words into something, with an absolutely crystal clear knowledge of how I want it to end. Unfortunately I fear it will take about another 100,000 words to get there. Which is vaguely off putting. :-)

Amazing conversation y'all had going here.

Can I raise my hand and say I can't tell one from another, and I just write stuff?

(ducking, but it's on the true side of true)

This is the first time I ever knew how it was going to end before I started.

The end was the idea...which is odd.

Sometimes I get an image in my head or hear a line spoken (not really of dialouge but a character talking).

Once the original idea got written right out of the story.

I wrote Two Ravens as a stand alone. Then Spike started talking to me and I realised that there were somehow a lot of throwaway bits in TR that were essential to the story he wanted to tell. Then people started provoking me and I wrote the entire freaking gang.

I frequently have no idea where things are going.

In terms of what I read (fan and original fic) I'll frequently continue to read a silly plot if there are good characters and relationship - a good plot with wooden characters? Not so interesting to me.

askye: S'weird. I've never been able to write unless I have an absolute steel glad knowledge of how it's going to end. I just feel I'd be totally adrift if I didn't know how a story was to end.

The coolest thing EVER, (I was telling Ple this last night) was when I was writing Dream Forever, my frist BtVS story. I wrote it back when we were on TT and I literarly was writing it while posting in Bitches. I would write some and read and think and write some more.

The coolest thing ever part is when I posted the ending and EVERYONE howled "noooo! noooo!" which was the exact reaction I was hoping for.

By the way UTTAD, Dream Forever is a general story that at the time it was written, fit into canon.