Plan For The Best, Then Troubleshoot

I still feel awkward when it comes to the planning stages of writing.  I know that I need to do planning before I start writing a draft, but I also know that a lot of it will either be thrown out or thoroughly changed.  The odds that my prewriting planning end up lasting the long haul are pretty low.  But I think it's all I can do.

Part of me wants to not even bother with planning because I know that so little of it will make it through to the end of a story.  But whenever I do skip my planning, things go worse.  I feel lost and without direction.

So since planning is necessary, I try to plan out my story perfectly and just follow that plan for the end.  The problems with this method are that it is boring as hell writing out a story I already have completely outlined, and that the quality of them is just not quite as high as pieces where I change things as I go along.

The best method I have come up with is to plan for the best, then troubleshoot when you have to.  Do the best darn prewriting work you can, but don't be afraid to start writing.  When you are in the middle of it, change things if they become problems.  You would still be wise to have an external editor, but it would have the best combination of planning and seat-of-your-pants changes as you write.