"By failing to plan, you are planning to fail" - Ben Franklin

In my latest story, I wanted to impart a simple message and enact a twisted little plan of mine. It's an odd little story about Lyra wanting to adopt a human baby from a nation of independent humans. And you know what? I accomplished my goal, to create a politically and socially debatable idea, aka should a pony be able to legally and morally raise a human child?

I was tickled pink when I saw the comments about people siding with the ponies or siding with the humans, because I had accomplished my goal.

Every story needs a goal; a significant idea, plot point, theme or message that your entire story builds up to. For some, the goal of their story is to evoke a feeling of dread, disgust and fear, such as in the dark story Cupcakes. For others, their goal is to impart a certain message, such as the value of freedom.

You need to have a plan for where your storyline goes, what your overarching theme is, how your characters will turn out in the end, how each one has changed both mentally and emotionally. All of these and far more are meant to be plotted beforehand as a part of your goal! You can deviate from your original goal, but try to limit that to where your original idea is not so far flung from the outcome that you even had to switch genres.

If this lecture made no sense, go ahead and blame me, I have a friggin' horrendous headache today and for some reason today is the company's Christmas Party. We're going to an Italian restaurant....whoopie

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Made sense to me. I think that writing without knowing where you're going to end up is not the best thing in the world. At least knowing how it will end is something that you should really consider.

Also, off topic, but I'm too lazy to find out where this should go, but I think we should have allies of a sort. We have a lot of people who come to us to review their stories, when the Author Support group really tries to do that, so maybe we should list that on the main page and ask them to consider going there instead of putting it in our stories folder (You should change the name of that BTW.)
Also, my friend Dimondium (who's a part of this group as well) made another group that's sort of like another Author Support group, but directed mainly at reviewing stories constructively and then declaring them reviewed by the group, or basically the exact opposite of the TWE. It's called the "Kind, Karing, Crazy Reviewers" (He didn't want to put Crazy as Krazy because of acronym). But yeah. Putting links to them for reviewing purposes I think would be nice.
Kind, Karing, Crazy Reviewers
Author Support

516776 I see, a linked network of groups that support one another and send someone along the proper channels should they need something that one group cannot provide. I shall get to it!

Very Interesting. I hadn't considered the message of my story when I was brainstorming a plot. I recognize it in the story, but haven't really made it a goal to meet once I eventually finish one.

517114 Klondike, I have this idea for a story, but when I go to write it, I feel oafvbowfv iqphvfiqhw. Can you write it for me and let me steal the credit?

521004 ...okay. Just so long as I get some practice in.

521194

516427
Good lecture. I wish I had known enough about writing when I started mine to actually, you know, plot some of that stuff out. Characters change a lot when you actually try to make them more than a simple name/image into a more complex pony.

And holy crap I really don't know much about people, it turns out.

521194 So what if Scootaloo was a dinosaur instead of a chicken?

532942 And where is this idea going to go? Scootaloo is some form of saurian proto-pony and must conceal the fact that she did indeed hatch from an egg and lives in a Jurassic swamp? It explains the wings, her being some kind of evolutionary halfway point.

....and then she eats Jeff Goldblum.

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Checkmate!

533263 Sure.