#CS still has a few chapts i need to plot...

[elytrafemme]

obsessed w/ me having so many scenes i want to shove into my modern AUs but i have to carefully filter btwn what would work best as a young adult in an urban or rural setting (origins fic), what works best for like 16-20 y.a. in metropolis setting exclusively (superpowers), teens in suburban setting given plot contraints already existent (cs), nd what works for kids pre teens or late teens in the middle of fucking nowhere (horror fic). like im just sat here agonizing over how much i miss swimming pools so im like Ok which one of u has that . 

[elytrafemme]

Hello! I just wrote my first ever plan for a story - before now, my writing has been mostly improvised. I’ve outlined it chapter by chapter with key details and points that I want to connect.

How did you plan out Cough Syrup? What structure did you use? Would you be comfortable showing?

Very curious and I’m HAVING FUN!

WOOHOO!!! SUPER HAPPY TO HEAR UR HAVING FUN :D

okay i would actually LOVE to talk about this but bear with me because this is kind of a lot.

so DSMP is not the first fandom i've written for, but it's the first fandom i've successfully had ongoing multichapters for. so i was pretty well versed in the whole multichapter planning gig but i was not... Good. at it. what i had done then was plan things out pretty meticulously, not every detail or anything but i had the whole plot settled before i even started drafting. and what would happen for me back then is that i would write a fic outline for a fic i didn't want to write. so it would just be an outline.

when i started cough syrup, i decided the plan (will be identified as Plan A for this) was just to Go For It. i had characterizations sorted out, vague plots, but not a ton of details hammered out. i'd go with it where i wanted to go with it, and that got me pretty far.

now the problem that arose from THAT is that i have a shitty memory. so i didn't want to retcon a lot of shit.

at around chapter 7 i think, i started assembling Planning Doc #1. Planning Doc #1 consists of: locations in the town of the fic; titles from song lyrics for chapts; fanart links; vague descriptions of cast i used a lot more earlier on than i do now; link to some character reference sheets; common misconceptions (AKA where a lot of the specific plot details i fuck up on go to die); plot points and scene ideas (i never use this anymore really); chapter summaries (no longer use post chapter 15); and where i keep the next chapter draft until it's completed.

now, something you can REALLY tell if you look at the first few chapters of CS to now is that my earlier plan of just Winging It caused a lot of weird inconsistencies. these fix themselves by like chapter 3-5 but they're still sort of odd. so this is when i started to think that i should give myself gentle suggestions for each chapter (Plan B) but still largely go with the flow

by the time i hit the draft of chapter 16, i hit ANOTHER problem, being that CS has several subplots that are really fucking hard to keep up with if you don't have chapters planned out, because i was writing things with no clear idea on where and when they would be going. Plan C involved the creation of Planning Doc #2, which i'll spare you from the details of but essentially includes numerous revamped (a fresh one as of yesterday has been added!) chapter outlines plus other random shit

so all this to say, as of right now, the way that I'm approaching the planning for CS is to have at least one scene planned per chapter-- some chapters have a LOT of details sorted out and it's more a matter of executing it + throwing extra scenes in there, some are really undetailed and i just fucking wing it. through this i can keep general track of how the plot lines are progressing and where each event falls so i know where to fix pacing errors or where things are progressing normally

i also leave a lot of room in my planning for, once again, random scenes. what used to stop me from writing fics with similarly detailed structures to CS at the moment was the fact that i didn't allow for scenes that i wanted to write for the sake of it. CS has the perk of me wanting to write 90% of the scenes i come up with, but i always allow for some space in case i want to tweak something (and remake my entire outline i digress), or just write something fun. also helps keep chapters balanced and not way too heavy or light when they need to be both at the same time

this is super super rambly but yeah ^-^ each fic has slightly different frameworks so i just stuck to CS bc it went through the most revamping, and also cos ive been talking for a while. super excited to potentially see this fic :O