Originally posted by mozartmaid:
VirginiaR, I seriously admire your ability to create literal novels out of the LnC universe. 
That does require some serious memory capacity! But do you write outlines first or just run with the plot thread until it gets tangled again? "Missing Lois" was my attempt to explain where the baby at the end of S4 came from and wasn't outlined. Since Lois basically spent S4 in alt-dimension, there was that timeline to follow, but other than that I just let my characters lead. I knew by May of '97, there had to be a roughly 3 month old baby arrive in canon dimension, so that was the only guideline I gave my characters.
There was no outline at all with "Green-Eyed Monster", which was my attempt at writing a short 10-15 part story. :rolleyes: It was more of a creative writing exercise to see if I could put (most of) the characters in service / blue collar jobs and still have it work. "Nightfall Honeymoon" was the sequel, and only got separated from GEM because I wanted to do an Nfic version.
"Another Lois" basically followed the canon timeline end of S2 and into S3, and I had a very rough outline for it. I knew basically what the ending would be before I got there though.
"Wrong Clark" is outlined with a little more detail, because it deals a little bit with time-travel, but it's also following canon timeline, so the "details" are mostly how it differs from canon. I know the main plot points my characters have to hit and I aim them in that direction and then let them have free rein. Often they come back to me and show me interesting bits of fluff, which we need to explore in more detail.
Unless I am determined to keep a story short, I usually let my character determine the path. Even then, my one-part story usually ends up being 3 parts.
As I mentioned before, if I outline in too much detail then I lose interest in writing it because I already know everything that's going to happen and I feel the creative process hindered.
