Specifically, I want to know if anyone else ever has a moment while writing where even after having a full outline that describes everything that is supposed to happen
I found your problem.
Okay. You want to be a good writer? I can tell you how to be a good writer. Not a great one, but a good one. A one who will write passable and consistently entertaining stories. You wanna be a great one? Can't help you. That takes something special. But good? A GRUNT writer? Someone who gets the job done? Easy.
Step Zero: Unlearn everything English taught you in school about writing papers. Don't unlearn english, unlearn PAPERS. You wrote tyhat paper to sell to a teacher. You are now selling to a different audience. Write for them.
Start with your core idea. What is it? Dunno,. but the best core ideas are simple and don't change much. The more you change, the harder it is to suspend disbelief, the harder it is for the reader to enjoy. When Harry Met Sally. A war in the stars. Robot travels back in time.
Next, establish the payoff. Usually how it ends and the payoff are the same thing, but not always. Stick to keeping them in the same spot for now.
Work your way backwards from the end. What has to happen to get your pay off? Then before that. Then before that. Then before that.
Then you will have a plot for a short story.
Then make a B-plot. Maybe a C-plot. They should tie into the core idea somehow. Maybe a foreshadowing. Maybe a road less traveled. Maybe the side plot is your background for other characters to explain their motivation.
Daydream. Think about it, then sleep on it. If you forget the idea in the morning, it sucked. Day dream about specific scenes. Repeat process. Then if an idea sticks, write it out. Then write out the important story beats before. Only vaguely stick to the outline. Write a number of branching ideas. Yoou should have at the end, about 3 times what you need.
Put half the ideas away in a folder to use later for a different story.
Take the half remaining, then, go to the beginning. Write very quickly. Just the highlights. If a part actually is of interest, write it out in detail, but if it's only boring connecting material, outline that thing.
You should have a patchwork of ideas where you have exciting well written scenes, and connecting threads of only a few lines of paragraphs.
Now the grind begins.
Go to the beginning again. READ IT ALL AS YOU HAVE IT. Re-reading what you wrote is important. You need to do this over and over and over. IF YOU DO NOT ENJOY WHAT YOU ARE READING, IT SUCKS. Start over. If you are not having fun, your reader is not having fun.
Slowly, from the start, write it better. Fill in the details. Put in foreshadowing. Make sure to introduce people you need to introduce. Demonstrate powers and changes in a way that is off-handed so the reader accepts it later in the big pay off. Don't write dramatically. Simple stage directions at this point. You want the information and general knowledge. Getting fancy comes later.
Then, when you have a basic, simple, story, with the big scenes here and there, check your pacing. Make sure you don't have too much of one plot all at once. Switch up and go to B-plot, then C-plot, then filler. Then a breather. Make sure the reader can rest when he needs to rest.
Then, when you have it in the right order, break it up by chapters. Make sure each chapter starts with something to hook the reader, then ends with something to make them keep reading.
THEN... put the whole thing in a text to speech program and listen to it.
VOMIT.
Rewrite it until you don't vomit.
Then give it to someone else. Someone who does not care about you. Someone who is an asshole. You want to write a good story, not get head pats.
Then at this point, start over. Take 2 weeks off. That's usually long enough for me,.
What I mean is, start from the beginning as if you were rewriting the whole thing. NOW you put in the flourish. Now you put in the purple prose. Now you put in the filler and fancy thesaurus bubake.
At that point, with a basic story to work with, you are now IMPROVING what you wrote. It helps if you forgot what you wrote so you can get to parts with a fresh eye and go, "Oh YEAH. I like that!" And you will remember the best parts and go, "Ooo! Wait!" Trim away that which serves no purpose. Combine characters to conserve plot. As you add flourish, REMOVE that which has no purpose.
Do not write an outline to start.
DO NOT HAVE A WELL WRITTEN PLAN.
Nothing will kill a story more than a PLAN.
The story, a good story, writes itself. It grows organically. It just flows. If you are sticking to a plan, you will do... well... you'll do what you are doing now. Thinking you suck because you have to rewrite shit.
PLAN to rewrite shit. Start with multiple paths then by the process of evolution, pick the BEST path.
I wrote HKN thinking it was the bomb. I wrote FTS as a joke. Guess which story works best? Funny thing is, they are, on a level, the same story. They are two diverging paths from the same core concept. One is successful, one is not.
Doesn't mean they are good stories, but there is a difference between a good story and a popular one. Don't conflate the two.
My advice?
WRITE BOTH VERSIONS. You can never write too much. Anything you don't use will be kept for later and can be recycled. Do this long enough, you can slap together entire books in a week, if hard pressed. I have.
