Picking back up on Fantasy novel, need some advice

I take a hybrid approach. I'll world build for a while and then switch to writing. I seem to need to go back to world building once and a while if I need to flesh out a character or know some back story.

Ha, I don't plan where the current sentence is going, let alone the next paragraph or how the book resolves. So I fail to see the problem.

I always first draft by the seat of my pants. Worldbuilding turns up as I write.

You can fix any issues in the edit.

I write everything by the seat of my pants. I can never stick to an outline anyway. Your first draft is a skeleton, there to get the basic shape down. You can add your flesh on when all the parts are assembled. Hell, I've even put little notes in my stories: [insert name of town here].

I wrote my first novel SOYP and afterwards had a real problem visualizing the world I had just sent my character's through.

For my current WIP I drew a map, which ended up changing three times, but finally ended in something I was quite satisfied with. I refer to it often as I'm writing and it's helped a great deal in deciding where to send the characters along the way and inspires me think up new obstacles to throw in their path.

I didn't plan my first novel and I despised it, never getting past the first draft.
I've outlined every single scene in Excel for my current WIP, and so far I love it.

Maybe try your hand at a map, or do up a scene list of your first act and see where that takes you and your characters.

A.

I almost always write where I don't know what the ending is going to be. I was actually upset when I figured out the ending to one of my works (at 3 in the morning, of course) because now I had to follow some kind of line to get there! (But it did answer a lot of questions).

I think it's totally fine to not know what the end is as you're writing. Now, if you get 70K in and have no idea where the story is going, it might be time to take a step back and look at the forest. ;-)

I'd worldbuild before I started writing, at least the major things. But then, I'm an outline kind of writer. I've tried writing by the seat of my pants before and met with unpleasant results.

But as has already been said in this thread, there's no one "right" way to write. You have to figure out what works for you. The only way to do that is to give it a try and see what happens, and go from there.

Good luck with it!

I'd try to imagine how the central conflict of the story (whatever it be) needs to be resolved. If there's an evil queen, you dethrone her, and then live happily ever after. If you've set up one of those annoying endless battles between good and evil, you can narrow it down to a particular episode in the conflict; your main character has to defeat the evil/good ringleader of the moment. Kind of like a James Bond movie where he has to deal with a random Spectre agent while Blofeld sits in his office stroking his cat. OR the horrible monster can devour the entire kingdom. The End.

And of course, a conflict doesn't have to be a war or a fight, its just whatever isn't right that drives the story. Your main character can be on a trip of self improvement, and can end when he achieves a certain goal, or decides to do something else with his life, etc.

Once you've identified the central conflict of the story, there becomes a limited number of possible resolutions.

Anne McCaffrey wrote the whole of her Pern series with a minimum of world-building; instead, focusing on character building and interactions. Needless to say, she was eminently successful.

Yes, some world-crafting is necessary, but in the long run, it's your story and characters that will drive your readers to care. Writing "by the seat of your pants" tends to generate better, more believable, characters.

You can always go back and adjust anything that needs it.