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.

But what if you're writing and the character takes a turn and wants to do something else? I mean, I know they aren't alive and writers control them and all that but sometimes what I wanted to write doesn't fit where the character is going, even if I did know the general vicinity where I wanted to end up.

I think I write fic best when I can do long elegant plotlines and add oiginal characters.

In fact, I seem incapable of not adding original characters, now that I consider it....