I used to do a lot more worldbuilding than I do now, too. I think that kind of in-depth fictional culture designing is fun, but it is so time consuming. Some people are also good at designing worlds and settings, but not good at structuring coherent narratives, and vice-versa. I totally agree that it is tricky to translate a well thought-out world into a story easy to digest as a reader.
I am glad you are getting into story writing! I hope my post was not too confusing. I did not mean to use a bunch of loaded terms that require background information
Oh yeah, that is definitely the approach to take I think. Especially if you are writing character-centric dramas or romances, letting the characters' personality and motivations drive the plot instead of the writer is essential.
Rough outlines are usually helpful, but winging it lets you write the kinds of twists and turns you would personally enjoy reading yourself. I agree
That is interesting. So you probably write out bullet points for arcs and then the smaller arcs sort of fit together into a larger narrative? That is an approach I have not tried yet, but I have seen it done successfully in lots of media (comic serials and shonen manga come to mind).
For the story I am posting now, it is exactly the same situation you described. I am editing chapters a bit, but everything was written two years ago.
Slice of life (or just a modern, realistic setting )certainly seems like the easiest way to make a good pantsed story. Maybe it is because the worldbuilding is done for us already? But even with the pansting approach, I think we can carefully construct a narrative that does not just feel like a series of "and then" statements. I am curious how many other authors are pantsing stories they publish here. 
No need to apologize for pantsing stories! It is just as valid of an approach, no judgement here.
I also agree that keeping notes is important, otherwise I would probably forget stuff later.
I like to see it as I made lists for point A, B and C, but space between them I just write however I feel. Imagine a piece of paper with three points drawn on it marked A,B and C and were told to connect them with a single line: most people would just draw straight lines connecting them, in terms of a story that would be a very short, cut and dry 100% plot focused story with nothing else, I like to have some fun in how I draw the line between the points.
Side-stories within the major one evolve and develop as the story progresses, but because you're always on track to that next point, you never hit a spot in the story where it seems dry, drawn-out or boring. You do have to be warry of going off on tangents though.
Less is more is so true. The whole design of this site actually speaks to that. I find that some people judge stories by word count elsewhere, so I appreciate that Tapas designed the platform to promote an episodic, brief, almost screenplay-like feel with the writing. It definitely meshes with my style. Sometimes I will have long chapters or chunks of writing, but I try to avoid long winded tangents (I had to restructure something to publish it in my story for the character count, but I doubt anyone will notice).
Overall, I like the site, but it is kind of hard to find the sorts of things you would be interested in reading. I wish there were more distinct tags, for example. My story is a crime thriller in addition to other genres, but there is no category for that sort of writing.
Yeah, I also like thinking "what would the character do in this situation?" rather than just deciding everything immediately. Outlining is very helpful, I agree.
That "what if i did this instead?" is such a good question, honestly! I went back to an old draft that I wrote years ago and played around with an alternate (more logical to my older self) idea of how things may have worked out. I don't think I could naturally pants an entire story like you though, that is impressive.
Ah, that is true. If only there was a way to architecturally design things that grow themselves, haha. It almost feels like two different parts of the mind battling internally.
Plotting like that is certainly efficient. I always wonder about writer's block, because I have not experienced it. Usually it is everything else in life that gets in the way. time just gets eaten up sometimes. Good to know that plotting prevents it, if I ever run into a stalemate with my own imagination
Ah, so the main quest and sub-quest sort of design. That is a good one and I think it works especially well for interactive stories (D&D, video games, etc). I mean, if you didn't have a main questline, it would be sort of chaotic, but your side quests probably make it more exciting and diverse.
More than writer's block as in "I don't know what to write here or how to write this scene" is more like the opposite. My mind gets overwhelmed by all that is left to write and how do I connect it and oh my god I really want to get to this climax point but I need to create a good build-up for it but X and also Y and Z and... I end up not writing anything.
It's more or less like procrastination is many times caused because we get overwhelmed by the size of the task we have ahead. Plotting is my way of taking that huge task and spliting it into smaller, more manageable chunks that don't scare me as much
PLOT
I need the structure in case I can't think of anything. For example I had plotted out the first half of Demon House extensively, and had an idea of all the major episode arcs. I also plotted out the ending extensively. But I had room in the second half for more mini arcs before the endgame would start. I just thought, "ah, I'll think of something when I get there."
Fast-forward almost 4 years and I only came up with one mini-arc TwT
So I was like "welp" and just went into the endgame after that.
Your story might have felt less streamlined if you had taken too much time with sub plots, though. So, perhaps the end result was a really cohesive experience?
Oh yeah, from the start I never wanted to focus too much on subplots since it was supposed to be an overall light comedy series akin to a tv sitcom that's more episodic.
But I'm glad I didn't come up with extra stuff because after 5 years I was ready for that series to be dooooone.
I plot the world out, roughly outline the story, and pants the dialogue. So I use all of it, but I keep rough outlines so that if something pops into my head that is better than the rough plan, then I use it.
I like to have room for improvisation.
I meticulously plan everything on word documents, school-outline style (headers, sub-headers, bullets, etc)
I only keep the dialogue vague so I can improvise that as I go, but story-wise, I have it all completely down before a chapter gets written.
Exactly! I am a character driven writer and most of my conflicts are internal/ man vs man. This doesn't mean that I don't plan for the universe around them, but I tend to fill those details in after the characters are stable. I also feel a little strange trying to explain my process to others because I feel like I don't make sense XD
I've done both and continue t do so. I was a staff writer for an professional audio drama company for 12 years. The boss would totally plot everything out, I would do both. Of course writing audio drama is strictly dialog (I never used narration) and then I would let conversations take their natural course and edit.
I don't think either method is better than the other. It's totally up to the author and their muse.
This is called architect vs gardener. In my experience though if you don't have some kind of structure it's very noticeable. Even if you don't have all the details you need to have an idea of the shape you want a story to take. Most authors favor one over the other but most use both to some level
I don't know if I'd call it impressive just because pantsing an entire story does come with it's downsides. I probably have a lot more loose ends and threads to nowhere in my first draft than someone who plots out every little detail before writing a word. I'm sure if a developmental editor ever looked at my work they'd probably cry 
Plotting is probably the better way to go for someone who wants to take their writing seriously. I don't know if I'll ever be more than a hobbiest so I don't really have to worry about that too much. I'll usually keep a list of things I want to fix/change as I'm writing if/when I ever do get to the second draft (which I 100% admit only 2 of my books have officially made it to a second draft out of 10 full length novels) but I'll still otherwise go with what my gut says is good for the story at the time. It really is just what feels natural to me.
I tend to do a mixture of both. As a whole, I know what I want to do with my novel, I have the major arcs and themes planned and I know how the story is going to end, but there’s certain details I make up as I go. I have characters with major impact on the story that haven’t even been named yet. Exactly how I’m going to transition from Point A to Point B isn’t always completely fleshed out, and that sometimes gets me into trouble, but I’m constantly experimenting with things so sticking to a plan has never gone too well for me. I’m sure my ADD plays a factor in all this as well lol
It seems to make sense to me. It also makes me think a discussion thread about conflict types would be useful, because they are so fun to think about. I think my favorite is Man vs. God/gods in terms of structure, but it is hard to do that sort of story in anything other than a fantastical setting... I gotta figure out how to do a man v. god narrative in a sci fi world.
Definitely, I don't think one is superior to the other. I bet writing pure dialog for an audio drama requires a bit more planning than written dialogue though, because it has to SOUND good when read aloud. People underestimate how tricky that is to pull off.
I started writing in theatre so dialogue comes naturally to me (I'm also a talker from a family of talkers lol).
The part that's hard with audio drama, especially if you don't use narration, is creating what's going on around you without saying "on the nose" things like "I see that's a $25.00 ticketyou have for the play" You have to change the dialog to something like "How much do I owe you?" answer "25 bucks" answer "okay, gimme the ticket" and then, of course, have the appropriate sound effects in the back. That's WAAAAAY over simplified but it's doable. One of my plays for my old company was done on a dare and it was a story without narration but only one actor.
I mean the "god" in that sense could be something like in Psycho Pass where there's a "mother computer" that determines good vs. evil for example. Or a govt that acts like a God/god which could be cool. But you're right that trope is definitely steeped in fantasy/supernatural elements. I think that thread would be worthwhile to see what tropes people are aware of and their unique spins on the classical tropes!
That sounds mildly confusing, haha. Audio production has whole other levels of design involved too, yeah. Foley artists are very impressive and editors have to use the audio to help visualize information. I bet it was fun to work on a project like that. I did voice over for an audio story like that once, but I have not tried writing one myself
The computer from Psycho-Pass is probably a perfect example of that, yeah. Although, (SPOILERS for Psycho-Pass) once you see how the computer actually works, you realize as an audience member that the story is more man v. society, and the "god" computer is sort of a manifestation of society's will. That is also an interesting subject, to be fair.
