So here I am happily trotting along with the creative writing workshop I'm attending, happy to plot and create a scene from chapter 5 of my novel but then getting all the plot points mixed up - which character betrayed who and who can read the other's minds and under what circumstances! While I know how the book mostly goes, I now know I have to have the full plot and sub-plot in detail before I start charting out the scenes! It affects what comes before and what comes after. I think writing scenes in isolation can be done, but with a little more plotting.
Let's see how it goes.
I'm excited. This is different from drumming out scenes and plots and even characters, just because X online course is telling me to. I have to develop the idea that I came up with and trust that it makes sense and when I don't where to go or what to do, I either read or only then pick up a how-to do creative writing book. I guess studying creative writing is important from the point of critically analysing one's writing and improving how it's done but not really forcing an idea.
We've been reading books all our lives, and yes that may not make us into writers, but it may make us good readers of our own writing, and together with enough time and space to practise our craft decently enough, it may make us into good writers.