I voted for "It Depends."
When I wrote my first story, Anybody's Baby, that story completely wrote itself. I wanted to write a story where Lois babysat a baby for the weekend and that brought Lois and Clark together. I hoped they'd have their first kiss in the closing scene. Anyone who's read the story is laughing now. Instead, I've got them in love in the opening scenes, a complicated A-plot, a baby that just won't leave, a revelation, an engagement and an adoption. I tried to take control back at one point, by insisting that I was going to make them give back the baby and get their relationship on a more normal track. But I couldn't do it. I actually called Sarah crying. The conversation went something like, "I just (sob) don't want them to give the baby back." "Annie! It's YOUR story! It doesn't have to end that way! No one is forcing you to keep that ending!" So I just gave in and let the story do what it wanted.
However, that was a horribly stressful way of writing for me. And though I'm glad AB became what it did, I can't imagine ever writing a story like that again - have no idea what was going to happen at the end until I got there.
I'm a big fan of outlines, personally. They keep me on track, but let my muse fill in the blanks. Basically, for a 30-40 pages story, I write a 3-4 page outline. I hammer out what *needs* to happen. And then I let my muse figure out how that's going to happen. I have no problem with tweaking outline and changing things around. The end of Playing for Keeps is very different in tone and setting than I originally intended. But other than some surface difference like that, the story is exactly as I envisioned it when I wrote the outline. I accomplished exactly what I wanted to.Some of my favorite scenes that I've written just kind of happened while I was trying to get them from point A to point B. But they still get to point B.
Annie
