I am currently attempting to write a story, but I struggle with whether or not I should make it up as I go along, or plan out the entire thing chapter to chapter before even writing the first few words of the story. Should I plan it out, or should I just start writing and see what I end up with? If I should plan it out, what is the right way to go about doing this?

7808070
Decide on the beginning and the ending first. Then plan from there. Have a general layout, and anything you feel doesn't fit, either forget or utizlize elsewhere. You can make it up, but thats a great way to end up writing yourself into a corner or burning yourself out

7808077
Do you think going on a google doc and writing a brief synopsis of both the Beginning and the Ending would be a good way to start?

7808070
So this is something that's going to vary a lot between authors. Some do well with little or no planning. Others do best with meticulous planning. Most are somewhere in-between.

I generally recommend having at least a basic idea of what you're going to be writing. Having an end goal in mind is always a good idea, since you can be sure that you're always working toward this goal instead of sabotaging yourself. It can also be a good idea to make some sort of outline of what you're planning to do, even if it's very simple. When I was writing The Crysalis, I started by making a super-quick outline so simple that it was just five lines and ten words long. From there, I worked out more details, building up the story, until I had an outline of about 30 short items (ranging from a single word to a short sentence); not much for a story that ended up hitting half a million words ( ). And of course, keep in mind that the outline is more of a guideline than hard rules; several of the outline items I had got removed or changed when writing, and several major events in the story weren't in the outline. The outline gives a good basic structure, like a super-early first-draft, that you can then build upon and reshape as needed. It gives a good goal to work toward, which can help keeping a story focused and consistent.

In general, I'd recommend trying with a plan of some sort because working without a plan is hard to do right. I've seen some authors do very well with it, because it fits how they write, but I've seen far more where the lack of plan makes their story meandering, unfocused, and bloated. That last one seems to be a particularly big danger of the method: stories like that tend to have an author just throwing a series of "interesting events" in that don't have any greater payoff beyond the immediate outcome. Those events might be interesting on their own, but it can easily start to become a bland trudging sequence of "cool stuff" that has no bearing on anything. There's some media where this works (non-serialized shows or open-world TTRPGs, for example), but for a large story like most Fallout: Equestria side-stories tend to be, it risks turning it into a drawn-out series of events with no meaningful payoff for the vast majority of it. Even worse, going in without a basic plan can result in writing the story in a way that works against whatever idea you might have, by writing yourself into a corner or introducing inconsistent details that undermine some other part of the story.

7808095
Do you know if while I am planning my main story that I want to work towards, if it might be a good idea to write some short stories unrelated to it in the interim?

7808096
Exercising your writing muscles is always good, and short stories are a great way to do it.

As for planning, I say make a brief outline, at least of your beginning, your character's background and details (job, personality quirks, history, family if applicable, that sort of thing), the ending and ultimate goal of the story, and maybe a description of major locations in your story. Bonus points if you like to draw maps!

7808097
Okedoke, thank you! Does having some short story success affect able to get an audience when you inevitably move to writing a bigger story at all?

Pretty much what everypony else is saying. Get a outline together at the very least. Characters set up, both main and supporting. When I DMed for the first time for DnD our forever DM gave me a good set up. Get a main goal set up, plan your ending, and find a good middle stop for character development. Then fill it in with fluff. You can make it up as you go or set aside some random encounters that you flesh out.

7808096
Yeah, what Sir Mediocre said: more writing means more practice. It's a lot easier to see what does and doesn't work when you've actually tried it. Short stories are also a great place to do some experimentation with different styles of narration, different perspectives, random ideas, and all sorts of things.

7808098
.........

LOL, I dunno.

I've worked on one story in spurts since 2015-ish, and I published it only in 2017. I am not the person to ask about "success" as a result of my writing, but I can say that my story is very important to me, and completing a new chapter after months erratic brainstorming and brief writing sessions is always immensely satisfying.

I recommed at least a minimum amount of planning like what does the protagonist wants.

I recently have attempted to use chatGPT as a tool to assist in planning out a story. It gave some very solid points and it can even give solid examples.

One thing I learned from that language AI is the usage of a theme. Your story may have all the action and drama, but it needs an overarching theme, a specific feeling you want to invoke, of a certain subject.

Lets say your story has plenty of Wasteland action. A theme could be about friends and family are always there for you; friendship is magic. Now you have a focus when writing your action packed story that the protagonist struggles with opening up as a overarching plot.

So, whether or not this is helpful, but for someone like me, I like to think of my plot like a string of pearls. Every "pearl" is a particular plot point I want to go after. This is for where you want everything to build up to or goals and whatnot. Naturally, I try to start with an ending and a beginning. Then, how I want my story to go. If it's important for a character to go somewhere, meet certain people, develop in a direction, and things that will affect them, I consider those "pearls". Here, you can also consider what themes you'd like to pursue, intertwined with the plot itself. Then, I fill in the gaps.

I consider the gaps between the "pearls" as the room I have to expand other things during the plot, things that are secondary or maybe even inconsequential. For example, you have some big adventure planned as the "pearls", but, the in-betweens can be used as space to have characters develop for your plot points, expand the world and to build relationships. It helps me section off areas of plot where the between times are affected directly from events that had occurred earlier in the narrative, if that makes sense. For me, a lot of this will exist in a nebular state, and written down on the side, or in my case, floating somewhere in my head jelly.

I'm a pretty by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of writer, so, something flexible like that helps me put things together and flesh out things as I go along the way. The space between story beats are where I find the more creative aspects of writing to be. Some of my better ideas have occurred while in the gaps between my "pearls", allowing me to create more interesting things I can layer on for when characters encounter the more important parts of the story. I don't know your level of experience, but you can write down things in a notepad about ideas you could possibly toss in during these times, and judge whether or not its relevant or necessary to put in. For that, you're the judge, and you get better deciding what's included with practice.

I hope this gives you an idea, from a dude who hates putting down rigid structures for myself. And, this is what I've learned after not writing for stuff on the site, since, if you check my page, I'm terrible at updating my stuff here. However, what I love about writing is its flexibility, and playing loosey-goosey is my bread and butter.

Tbh, my FOE stuff just came to me. I thought of a place that hadn't been taken and went with my FOE version of Russia. After that came looking at maps of Russia to get a layout and see how easy it'd be to....... ponify. Finding out it was going to be extremely easy I next came up with my plot. It had to fit FOE and the region I had in mind. From there, well I'm on chapter seven...... currently doing editing and going to be adding more chapters shortly; seeing as I haven't touched the story since 2016......... Yeah; i had a severe bout of writers block.