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....

askye: See I think every fic writer secretly (or, you know not so secretly) craves that reaction. :-)

I've had, to my knowledge, five people read my fic. But I crave/am terrified that more will read it. :-)

See that's why I like writing the most. When characters you are writing just wander off on their own, seemingly without any intervention on your part.
deborah grabien: See it's the adding of original characters that I just can't. And yet ... in my latest, no sooner have I started than, bang! there's an original character. *sigh*

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. :-)

Hee. I also tend to be terse (blessing and a curse), and am aware that a lot of writers would use two words where I use one, so my longest piece was only (counting both parts) 35,000 words. But, oddly, while I tend to be spare with my word usage, I'm also not capable of writing a sex-based story without writing about six-to-ten pages of build up to where I could feel that rationally, yes, these two people in this place and at this time, would be willing to bed each other.

a good plot with wooden characters? Not so interesting to me.

Ahh, that's different. Good characteriztion comes before plot or relationship--that's not sacrificable. A story with an interesting plot with bad/wooden characterization would fall into a badfic category, for me. Once there are competent prose and believable characterizations, then I'd pick plotty gen over a relationship story.