Writing By The Seat Of Your Pants / Fan Works

• The first few chapters of But Doctor, I Am Pagliacci were written in a few days for a writing prompt (that the Joker is sane, but no one except him remembers Batman), only being expanded afterwards due to its good reception. The author is on record as saying that while he has some idea of where the story's going, it's useless to pretend he's got actual plans when everyone knows the above fact.
• The author of Garfield in: "Along Came a Splut" apparently said that while the general idea of the story sat in his head for a while, the actual story was written in half an hour—and it shows.
• Nimbus Llewelyn, author of The Wizard in the Shadows (a The Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter crossover) and Child of the Storm (a Harry Potter/The Avengers (2012) crossover) ^note  Well, it started that way. It has since evolved into a Mega Crossover incorporating The Dresden Files, The Sandman, lots of Marvel Comics and elements of DC Comics) , has cheerfully noted a proclivity for doing this, particularly in Child of the Storm. This is despite numerous mentions in the A/N's of Child of the Storm of a grand plan and a well-earned reputation for both grand scale Worldbuilding which invariably involves putting his own unique spin on various characters ranging from the familiar to the deeply obscure, a Jigsaw Puzzle Plot and a Chekhov's Armoury fit to challenge J. K. Rowling herself. The general gist is that the grand plan, the framework, is intact, while the details are subject to change. These 'details' have included several major characters, with fan favourite Diana being thrown in on a whim at quite literally the last minute and other popular characters, such as Harry Dresden and Carol Danvers being added at similarly short notice.
  • And even the grand plan is admitted to be subject to change: the original intention was for a much more Hogwarts focused tale and it to ship Harry/Ginny, then the author noted that he didn't like this idea and was having difficulty writing his way out of it, before having a eureka moment and succeeding, maintaining Harry/Ginny as a first relationship, before finally discarding it entirely. So far, he's managed to avoid overt plot holes, mostly thanks to Exact Words, a talent for repurposing previous plot points and a habit of writing a very long way ahead in the series, meaning that any scene that's posted has a reasonable chance of having been written and rewritten a dozen times until it is considered satisfactory. On the other hand, it can just as easily be a more literal reading of this trope and written at the last minute, just before the fic goes up.
    • The original plan was for a much more conventional crossover fic covering up to the 7th HP book, approximately 100-150,000 words long, shipping Harry/Sif of all things. When this was revealed, the first book, covering 3rd Year, was approximately 600,000 words long. This was, needless to say, considered Hilarious in Hindsight.
• The writer of Strike Witches Quest, Planefag, has admitted a few times to doing this quite a bit and that it has gotten him into trouble of the plot hole sort.
• The Good Hunter: The SpaceBattles.com snippets are written because Word of God, in his own words, "got too much stuck in his head" or "felt like writing them down". Given that these snippets take place after the main storyline (the ongoing one with 21 chapters), it appears that Word of God does have some vague plan for the storyline, though it has not been fully realised yet.
• This backfired on the writer of the Kingdom Hearts/My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic crossover Heart of Equestria, who was promptly overwhelmed by the various plots they introduced and ultimately cancelled the fic.
• Rainbow Factory as it went on. The author even stated that he was inspired by a song with the same name and thought to himself it would make a good Dark Fic.
• How the first Yognapped was written. It was first set as though Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley of the Yogscast's real-life counterparts were playing Minecraft and commentating, but moved on to an actual post-Shadow of Israphel universe with the characters of Simon and Lewis' Minecraft avatars, alternating in-between for several chapters before settling on the latter. This led to some plot holes that the writer has attempted to Retcon, with varying degrees of success.
  • To a lesser extent, the primary arc revolving around Notch and Herobrine came about entirely by accident. Herobrine's utterance of " I care as much about your citizens as our late sister cared about your temper" was changed at the last minute from a lame Your Mom joke.
• The creator of Origin Story admits that, while he began with a carefully plotted outline, the story left the outline in the dust in the middle of Chapter Four and that these days, he's writing whatever comes to him to write, as it occurs to him to write it. That said, he's still managed to put together an intricately constructed and emotionally engaging story, and it absolutely does not look like he's been improvising for the majority of the story.
• The writer of Gimme Shelter admitted he came up with the idea for the story after seeing a picture of the protagonist, Fleur de Lis, standing in the rain with no raincoat or umbrella then wrote the story in full within a few hours of having the idea.
• According to Amoridere for Kill la Kill AU, some of the stories are typically thought out, at least to some degree, whereas others are ideas that "just show up" and she runs with them, which is to say, partially improvised, especially with the dialogue. Likewise, she does the same for the Gensokyo 20XX series.
• This has become more or less par for the course for Lady Norbert's stories, particularly the ones in series form. She never intentionally writes a series; she writes what is supposed to be a stand-alone story, and then the sequels announce themselves within days of its completion - often connecting back to details in the earlier story/stories which were not intended to have later repercussions. In her own words, "My stories tend to be smarter than I am. I'm honestly not this clever."
• The Legend of Total Drama Island:
  • Although this story generally has a good deal of planning by fanfic standards, the author will sometimes run with spur-of-the-moment ideas, especially in ancillary scenes. Bridgette’s dream sequence ^note based on a reviewer’s comment, the makeover scene before the camping challenge, and the dancing at the boot camp party are acknowledged examples of elaborate scenes with little or no planning.
  • Scenes added for the purpose of error correction have little planning, due to the time constraints which necessitate such scenes in the first place. The author has acknowledged two notable examples:
    • In the first Boney Island challenge, Chris was meant to warn the contestants during the challenge briefing (as per canon) that a curse would befall anyone who took anything from the Indian Burial Ground located there. For whatever reason, the author forgot to include that bit and didn't discover the oversight until well after posting the chapter. Rather than go back and quietly revise the scene, the author wrote a scene for the following chapter wherein one contestant who happens to know the legend warns another who has innocently picked up an artifact from the area. This approach gave the reader the same information as the intended scene and had the benefit of giving the resident Motor Mouth another “mind dump” monologue.
    • The dancing at the boot camp party was an elaborate scene added at the 11th hour, so naturally, at the 59th minute, the author discovered a serious problem with it, namely what the scene made Tyler do behind his new girlfriend's back. A hasty repair job ensued, resulting in the "damage control" discussion the next day and the scene on the Boat of Losers with the eliminated player and the interns engaged to implement the damage control plan.
• There was a fanfic called Ghost of a Chance, a Teen Titans & Danny Phantom AU fic. Written by the writers of the Assassin's Creed Novelizations, the fic was originally started with an intent to practice being creative after all the restrictions they placed on themselves in writing "truly historically accurate" adaptations of the first five Assassin's Creed games. In fact, part of the reason they stopped novelizing was that they felt their extensive research into society, events and character development outside the gameplay was sapping their writer's energy. So, they started this crossover with an idea for a scene: Jazz is telling Robin to, "Tell Danny I'm alive" and they planned to just run with what happens from there. However, when they reached chapter 10, they came to a horrible realization. When they brought in the Justice League into their story, they realized they were going to have to start referencing the wider DC universe much more heavily instead of just the Titans universe. This proved problematic as they were casual fans of both shows, but were utterly under-practiced when it came to all the intricacies of the wider DC universe. And after coming down from the Assassin's Creed stories, they chickened out and instead began trying to wrap the fic up as fast as they could. Thus several potential plot threads were rushed through or expositioned to death in order to reach an ending where they could take a deep breath and relax again.
• The writer of Intercom has stated that when they first started the fic, she was just interested in getting down on paper a fic where Riley could hear her emotions before anyone else so she wouldn't feel overshadowed in the process. Inside Out hadn't even been released when she started it! Thankfully, by the time chapter 3 was released, the author had seen Inside Out, and thus began "fine tuning" her universe so as to better match up with the movie, and to eventually have a planned ending in mind (or so she claims). Funny enough, one WMG on her tvtropes page accuses her of not actually being in control of the story, but instead relying on fans to do the work for her, which is what this trope is almost about. Then again, since every 3rd WMG, reviewer comment, and headscratcher ends up used or addressed in-story, it's quite possible that this trope is still in effect, and we just have a case of a Lying Creator.
  • On another note, the author admitted that some of the experiences in Imagination Land were taken from fan suggestions and that the term for Riley's Unique white tinged memories that she creates was taken from a fan's musings on their meaning.
• At first the actual reason for Citadel of the Heart having this trope apply at times was more so the fact the ending of the story is given much more priority and thought out plans as to how it'll happen rather than everything that happens between then and the beginning, and the continuity aspects also take priority next after that. The author has more or less stated it isn't incredibly hard for him to more or less completely rewrite stuff that happens in the middle of the story from the original intent and yet keep things as close the end result for the end of a given fic regardless, but the success of this he isn't certain about, and for good reason; once Truth and Ideals was finished as the first completed fic he's ever worked on, the author had suffered a Creator Breakdown which ended up influencing his remaining fics up all the way to July 2018 due to the sheer fatigue of finishing a story as big as Truth and Ideals, which only made the Origins Episode Crazy Carousal all the more delayed because the author openly states due to only barely beginning to recover from the fatigue of writing Truth and Ideals, he just doesn't have the energy to work on Crazy Carousal any time soon, and highly doubts he'll get to work on it until perhaps as late as 2020.
  • Minerva's importance in Sword Art Online: Special Edition got amplified when she made her debut as her original protoform EVE, who had been otherwise retconned out of lore until Chapter 26 was uploaded and she appeared anyways, albeit in a heavily decrepit form. Her involvement wound up heavily changing the intended plan of progression for the story, meaning Takato and Nobuyuki have significantly more time to develop, Hydriska's location is no longer on Earth, and Darigus is currently accounted for, with this chapter also marking the first outright mention of the Greater-Scope Villain that is Ultimorian Deity Zaalim.
• Crossoverpairinglover stated that while he has the ending of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines in mind, as well as a rough draft of the stuff in between, he's making up most of the stuff as he goes.

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