It depends. Some fix I plan super heavily and others not so much. This one has been going a bit off vibes and I plan the next chapter ahead before writing it. But here is what my process was slash is for congratulations.

First I made an outline: took like 40 min and was about 2k words. It had the general things I planned (the backstory, Jisung’s miscarriage, Minho being mean). It’s usually a bunch of scenes I’m interested in having and key plot points, then I fluff up stuff in between being vague where I need to be.

However I went so far off script (usually I’m not this bad at sticking to it) that I kinda abandoned the outline (which also usually doesn’t happen). If you want I can share the original/attempted revision of the outline which I am no longer using. Like Minho was supposed to be mean a lot longer and then guilty for a while. Felix wasn’t a relevant character. Chan was more prevalent stuff like that. It sounded good in my head and on the outline but no longer fit the vibes.

The second reason I’m not really using the outline in the way I usually do is because I have a bad writer habit of rushing my endings and it’s because I usually stick too much to my outline and my outlines usually get more vague the closer to the end I get to allow room for change. Unfortunately that means my endings are rushed. So now I’m really focusing on not doing that so we’re letting it flow naturally.

So usually with or without a proper outline I plan out the scenes of the chapter I’m about to write…so to be super vague the next chapter has

[ ] talk in the kitchen
[ ] closet
[ ] Jeongin/choclates/album

Each of those would usually have a sentence or two (I just don’t want to spoil) and then depending how actually writing goes I may delve into more depth as I write or skip over scenes entirely.

In my head I have a rough outline of the last 4 chapters of this fic but I don’t have it concretely written anywhere. What I usually do is edit the outline as I write but that hasn’t been happening lol.

When I write to publish a real book I do everything way differently. I actually use plot structure, make sure my outline hits the seven points, make sure my characters have a want, need, and a problem. Stuff like that. The closest fic of mine that has something like that is sweet n sour, but most of my fics are no plot just vibes (aka angst) which ya know we’re not reading fics for the literary structure of a book. So I didn’t include my more complex book planning outline process in this write up, but if anyone’s interested I can talk about it and explain how sweet n’ sour follows it.