So you've got an idea for a story from a little scene that you created in your head and you're super excited to get started on writing it because you REALLY want to write the first scene that you thought of. But that one scene is very far into the story and it's going to be several chapters and thousands of words until you get there, not to mention you haven't actually planned out the book at all so you have no idea where to take the story. So you kind of just lose all motivation to write the rest of the story because you can't just start writing a random scene from a book idea in your head with no context whatsoever.

But what if I said that's a great place to start?

Writing out scenes as the ideas are fresh in your mind can be such a good way to actually plan your story. The mental scene that the story idea originally came from is your best reference for writing the rest of the book, and having that written out first can set the tone for the book itself. It's also a good base point for the way you plan the story out, depending on your style of story planning.

Planning-wise, having the original scene idea written out can give you a sort of outline to work with. Within the scene itself, you can reference other events that you want to take place elsewhere in the book and you can give immediate life to characters that you'd otherwise have to build in your mind with the story. As you're planning around the scene, make notes to these references and the personality traits and mannerisms of your characters. You can expand on those in as much detail as you want (the more the better) and it make overall just make the story itself easier to visualise. You can also change things and add or take away depending on how you want the story to go.

Not to mention that it'll kill some of that writer's block you got from just wanting to write that scene, and you'll be able to jump right back into writing the rest of the book.

But that writing scene doesn't have to be how you plan the story. It can be a placeholder oneshot to store the idea and keep it safe so you can go back to it when you're bored and don't know what to write, or when you do have the whole thing planned out elsewhere.