Warning: my old writing method was killing my story before page 5
I used to just sit down and write from the very first sentence, no outline, no notes. I thought it was more "organic" or whatever. But I kept hitting a wall around page 10 where I had no idea where the plot was going. Characters would just stand around talking because I didn't know what they wanted. Last month I tried something different for a prompt about a haunted laundromat. I spent 20 minutes writing down three bullet points for the beginning, middle, and end before typing a single word. That story wrote itself in two days and actually finished. Now I do a tiny outline for every prompt, even short ones. Has anyone else struggled with just diving in and getting stuck?