When you write, especially for stories, would you plan it out after coming up with ideas, or would you make it up as you go?

For me, it's kind of a bit of both. For example, I'd plan out major events that would occur in a story, but getting there is kind of hard, so I'd sort of improvise what happens in between these events.
For poems though, it's mostly just improvisation. I don't really spend more than a day on a poem.

Usually a little bit of both.

I come up with the major characters, and then generally what happens in the story. All of the other details I improvise on the spot. That way, it never gets boring while I'm writing.

I love writing. I write all the time. Creation from nothingness is the ultimate power.

My stories start with an idea from a specific scene. One event, something small, takes place in my mind. I see it happen and I wonder, "How did they get there? Who got there? What kind of people are involved in this?"

And I build.

I figure out what happened that led to that event. I see it in my mind. I create what the event leads to. Does anyone die? Is everything okay? What happens?

From there, I get names, I think of personalities, actions, how people would act and what their lives looked like. I plan, but not every detail. Characters come alive in in the process. I discover the things they do and see real, living/breathing people come alive on the sheet of paper. It's incredible to discover the personalities of the folks I come up with.

I plan, but not too much. I discover the story the way scientists discover fossils or dinosaur skeletons. I uncover and continue as I find more and more.

warmaker : I like the way you described it . It's very true and I can really relate to that.
Sometimes I get inspiration at the strangest times from the most random things. It's really fun to build up something from something as simple as stuff that goes on in our everyday lives.

the reason my friends like my stories is because they are hilarious i usually improvis and come up with the most randomness of things it's awesome

I usually give them some thought, but sometimes I will think of stuff on the spot, for me its more like written stories, short or long. I mostly plan it out though. I don't really tell stories orally.

It is a bit of both for me, really.

I have a tendency to write a lot of my material on the spot with absolutely no pre-planning except maybe a prompt word or something. I use a technique an English teacher suggested: just write the next word without thinking of what you wrote the word before. This method generally works well for getting through descriptive paragraphs because I am not constantly criticizing what I write, and it allows me to push forward. That is what I do for actually writing a lot of my work, especially poetry. I don't mess around with establishing an exact structure or rhyme scheme for poetry because I feel that it greatly limits me. I will later edit my material to a limited degree of necessary but it is largely raw.

The preplanning and critical thinking I usually does for plays and novel-length material, and it is usually only a general overview and possibly character ideas. That way, when the time comes to write the actual scene, I can just use the plot overview as my prompt, and just "feel" what has to come next and lets my hands do the work.

Pretty much make it up as I go. Im good like that lol.