Beyond a few key plot areas I wanted in my novel, I had no outline whatsoever. Every day, I would sit down at the computer with a blank mind. I'd read a page of what I'd written the day before, and then I'd be writing. Is my method odd? I have no idea. All I know is I didn't once have a case of writers block - I had a few days that were hard, sometimes because of what I was writing and other times due to distractions. However, I was always able to put things on the page (about 2500 words a day, in fact). As I wrote, I'd come up with random things and let them go where they went. My characters would go in directions I'd never thought of. Things happened that were shocking. As an example, character is given a quest to protect a magical gem - I had NO idea about the gem when I started that scene. However, that is now going to shape the rest of the novels dramatically. Another, character is creeping about the temple and follows a priest, finds out he is betraying them (news to me!). Then, to add more insult to injury, when confronted on his treachery he creates an orb to a mirrored plane, one which is dangerous and deadly - wow, that's cool, I thought. Other character meets a woman, and I decided 'hey, he's intrigued, time for a romance'. But of course there's a twist to it, one that will probably make you hate me.
Idk, now that I've developed all these cool things, i might have to do a little more planning. Future books won't be able to be quite as all over the place. However, for the first book in the series it was a great period of discovery, and I'm sure my next books will be the same, especially with the small details. At least for me, my muse is uncovering what's under the rock, finding out what my character is going to do next, learning about the history of my world as I write. It's almost like I'm living what I work on.
