What kind of work do you do before you start writing your stories? Do you do intense research or just put pen to paper? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about what your writing? What is the process you go through before you write? Personally, I spend a lot of time thinking about an idea that I come up with. To give an idea of how much time I spend, I spent six months thinking about my work before I even put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). After I am satisfied with thinking or get overexcited, I just start writing. I don't do much research and usually. If I do perform any research, I would research in the middle of writing. Other than thinking, I don't do much in the way of pre-production.
I spend a lot of time thinking of ideas before writing the actual story, although sometimes I'll just jump right into it. If it's going to be a backstory or a big project, I normally plan ahead, but if it's just a random chapter in my just-for-fun-what-am-I-even-doing story, I just start writing. I do research when I really want to get facts right, or if it's a reference or parodying something. I mostly don't worry too much about research because it's all just for fun here in Nova Land.
Considering I have, like, twenty stories simmering in my head right now... (That's not an exaggeration.) I have a tendency to just sit around and let everything develop in my mind, only recently beginning to put pen to paper, or hands to keyboard. So, that's what I do before I begin my writing phase.
I usually just get random bursts of inspiration and dash off thirty pages before editing. My stories are usually 'what happens after' stuff, so I occasionally do research, especially if I haven't played the games/read the manga in a while. #MissingNo
I usually do some research if a topic that I think about is something I don't know. After a brief google search and the help of Bulbapedia, I'm good to go! I haven't had to do it much (I remember looking at the Time Flute from Colosseum once), but it helps a good bit! Plot wise, I don't really have much going for that. I'll think up of some scenes for my fanfics, but other than that, it's basically improvisation. (Role playing by myself almost...) I DO however think about my characters a lot. Sometimes I draw them out and have different scenes with different characters, or I'll just write a little bio about them. I do better thinking about my characters, but I like to just throw them (not literally) into different situations and just kinda see what their reaction is. (I sound like a hallucinating kid now... XD)
Depends on the length of the story. Is it short and just a random idea? I just start writing. Is it longer, more serious? I'll chew on it for a few weeks, deciding what I want to do in a vague way. Once I have my thoughts collected, I'll make a list of everything I want to hit, chapter by chapter. So long as I hit my points, I fill in the rest as I go. Research is done while writing.
Well, it all starts out, when I have nothing else I am doing, and suddenly the inklings start popping up. I brainstorm and brainstorm with those, until I have a base line plot. Then I brainstorm what needs to happen for whatever chapter is next on the to -write list. I jot down all these into notes, and just start writing. Improvisation carries me through the rest of the chapter, as I work best with dialogue spur of the moment. I do as much research as is necessary (like when I checked to see if a tree I wanted to use could actually grow where I wanted it to). So a good number of my stories start with a What if?
Writing is an interesting process, and it's different for everyone. Personally, I have a general idea of the things I want to happen, and Writing is the way I go about figuring out how I want it to flow. Some of the questions are posed to you in the moment that you think about it: you come to writing that section of the story where you realize "Oh, perhaps I want to make that a concrete element of the world I'm creating. I should standardize that." For example, in a story I'm currently writing, I had to redefine how I thought about Pokémon moves and what PP should represent in my story. Things like that come to me while I'm writing, not before. I do a lot of thinking during my writing process. Some do it all before and dash through their story when they have it all figured out. Personally, I can't think like that.
I usually have to think about things that I want to happen, or how I want the story to develop before I write it down. I think a lot about what happens after what, how the story unfolds, what the characters do etc. beforehand.
If it's an original work, I learned the hard way that you have to do a lot of research if you're going to write a about something you've never studied (gene therapy, genetics, for me) or else from then on will just fall apart. If I'm writing about a character who's smarter than me, then I'm probably going to have to research a lot about what they study, or I'll talk to some of my more intelligent friends to find something to base the character's personality off of. For fanfiction, there's less research but there's more brainstorming. After coming up with about five plots, I reworked all of the plots into one by accident and now my OC is an amalgamation of about three or four characters. I created my first plot maybe two, three years ago and my final plot was finished in March (which I'm currently writing now). I'll also usually plan out the entire story before I start writing.
I generally spend so much time working on a writing project, coming up with the plot and characters, what will happen later on, stuff like that; that I completely lose interest in a project before I even start actually writing it.
I usually start writing, then question everything later. It's pretty chaotic when writing and thinking "wait what?"
It usually depends on the kind of story. For a one-shot, I often just start writing and keep writing until I've finished, with little regard for plotting ideas and pace since, well, it's going to be over soon anyway. For most of my fanfictions, I keep an idea in my head for a while as I continue to generate ideas and plot points, and I start writing before I have a fully coherent idea of where the story is going to go. This leaves me flexible to add new ideas as I write, but I also have no idea what's supposed to happen in the short-term in most of my fics and end up making up whatever comes to mind, which leads to quite a bit of filler. Right now, I'm trying to properly outline a novel that I want to write. This has made me realise that I have no idea what most of my scenes are supposed to be. I've basically only got the beginning, climax and a few scenes in between, as well as what's going to happen in later installments mapped out. In regards to research; I usually try and write what I know but if there's something important to the story that I'm not very knowledgeable in, I do some research into it. (I may have concerned some of my classmates who may have seen me looking up the stages of decomposition of human bodies, as well as what they look and smell like after a week. I swear, I was just writing a fanfic...) Though if that subject has anything to do with science or maths, I try and treat it incredibly vaguely despite my research because I still have no idea what I'm talking about and don't want to let it show.
I usually just think a lot about the story I want to write. After I have the basic ideas in mind, I'll either start writing right away or maybe write down a few notes first. After getting more into it with ideas that develop more over time, I tend to start taking more notes and doing research at that point.