Hmm... It's probably also worth adding that I tend to think of key visual images or emotional high points in the fic first, and then come up with a fic to go around them. The longest fic I ever wrote basically exists for the sake of four scenes -- 1. one female character bathes by candlelight and a second female character watches her, 2. main character A and main character B have one night of stolen time together in the middle of a war before A has to return to the front and probably death, 3. main character B kills the main villain in a specific, extremely badass way, and 4. main character A is tortured by the bad guys and main character B finds him in his cell and thinks for a second that A's dead and he was too late, but (yay!) he isn't. The Id-vortex stuff comes first, and then comes the work of making a framework to hang the Id-pr0n on and then trying to make the result actually good.