Hidden Ideas Thingy!!

[Syn]

Okay, ignore the title of this thread, I didn't know what to call it.
I'm gonna explain what I mean on my example and then ask you if you've ever had similar experiences. You can also, naturally, start a discussion about it and whatnot.

Usually when I write something, I have a general idea of what needs to happen, but I'm missing some (most) of the smaller in-between parts. And then I just start writing and fill them in as I go along. And often I'd write something seemingly from out of nowhere, just some small part, usually just to fill in a scene, and then when I think about what should happen next, it turns out that the part I just wrote gives me an amazing idea to fill the next part, and sometimes even to change and better connect some major story plots.

Do you have similar experiences and if so, what do you do to increase them? :D

[Majyk]

I had one of those experiences yesterday--it was totally awesome--and it transferred over to today, though slightly less so. Everything in my story is fitting together perfectly right now, and I actually wrote about 3,500 words yesterday (to the displeasure of my eyes, which wanted me to stop staring at the computer screen--and still do, ugh).

To me, when that happens it feels more like I'm reading a book than writing one. Or it's like the characters are writing the story themselves. (Ooh, I think I wrote something about this for my writing class. Hmm.) As you said, I don't plan my stories much either. I start with a basic plot, usually no more than the first chapter, but sometimes nothing besides a random point in the middle, and work from there.

I find that most of the time when this happens, it's towards the beginning of the story. Usually the first 20,000 words, because at that point there aren't too many plot-lines to tie together. It's at about that word count that I tend to suddenly stop, because I realize that I don't know what happens next. For the story I'm currently writing, I paused for an entire month while I rewrote an old novel, and last week I came back to my unfinished story. (This is an odd story, though--not how I generally write.)

I think sometimes taking a break helps, at least for me (though not usually for an entire month) because then I think about the story before writing it, and let some ideas build up (if I wait too long, this can work against me, though, as I get too many ideas). Sometimes reading over what I already wrote helps, too.

I think I'm starting to ramble. *goes back to writing her novel*