Do you do a lot of prep work before you start your next great epic?  Do you write out an outline of your story, take time to flesh out your characters, and jot down great plot twists and interesting ideas?  For new writers, these are big questions.  I didn't for a long time.  I used to write straight out.  I would dance from idea to idea.  I would write out a scene until I was no longer interested, then jump ahead.  I still do this a lot, mainly because I have to maintain my interest level in my piece to make sure that I can stay on course.  However, once I started to outline my work and do a lot of thinking before the main event, the entire process would go a lot smoother.  I don't want to sound like your fifth grade teacher here...wait...maybe I do. 

In fifth grade I had an excellent English teacher who fostered the idea that I should write.  Her name was Ms. Elliot.  She was the quintessential school teacher.  She always dressed conservatively in long dresses, had her hair held back, and had a great love for the children she taught.  We had an English class where she discussed how to prepare to write a long piece of prose.  I usually looked forward to those assignments.  I already wrote for fun at home on my mother's word processor.  That thing had soul.  You would type out everything, and then you would instruct the machine to print.  It would start typing everything out, and I used to love the sound of the keys hitting the paper.  I would write short stories that were 5-10 pages long, so Ms. Elliot's assignments were cake walks.  I'd easily do three or four times what she asked for because it was enjoyable.  One day, she showed us how to write a short outline, then asked us to come back to class the next day with an outline.  I came back with the story already done, but no outline.  Ms. Elliot then showed me how an outline can strengthen one's story, even if you can just pop one out of your head.

An outline can help you catch problems in the plot or story before they come up.  Nothing is worse than writing fifty some odd pages of prose, only to have a great idea for a plot point, but nowhere to put it that makes sense or doesn't disturb the flow of the story.  This way, you avoid plot holes and outright contradictions.  Working that out beforehand will keep you from running into those snags.  If you think that it'd be great if the protagonist were to go turncoat, and betray his friends to switch sides and strike it out on his own, then that's a great twist.  However, if doing that stops the story, you might want to have that twist already planned out, as well as the subsequent story.  Plots that run out of gas will leave your reader confused or bored. 

Flesh out your characters.  Your characters should be treated like real flesh and blood characters. They should almost have a life of their own.  They should have dreams, aspirations, likes, dislikes, and back stories.  I'm not saying write a documentary fit for the Biography channel, but at least think about it.  I usually do a half page writeup on any characters I am going to work with.  If I get the inspiration for a new character during the course of writing out the story, I take a break to work him/her/it out.  What does your main character like?  Is he/her a jazz fan?  If they're a jazz fan, maybe they have a favorite spot to hang out to hear their favorite singer.  Maybe they go there to see their favorite singer to be seduced, only to have their advances slapped away.  The secondary effect of fleshing your characters out this way is that it can help you with developing the plot of the story.  If your character is especially paranoid and distrustful, then you can easily add some flavor to the stories by painting other characters in a paranoid light.  Whenever your main character meets someone new, he can scrutinize them.  You can paint even the most innocuous acts as sinister in some way.  It can really flavor your writing and set it apart from others in your genre.

An outline is also key to speeding up the process of producing your first draft.  A good outline is the best cure for writer's block.  If the action slows down, and the scene seems to just drag on and on, refer back to your outline and see where the next plot point is.  You know the goal, so just keep writing until you can logically connect the two.  For example, if one point is that  the main character steals the Jade Statue of Emperor Zhang, and the next point is meeting a potential buyer in a dark alleyway, a lot can happen in between those two events!  If you start to lose focus after he steals the statue, you can invent all sorts of great difficulties for him to overcome.  Maybe there is someone else after the same statue?  Maybe the local crime boss is waiting outside of the cave to spring a trap, taking the statue after the main character has done all of the hard work?  Maybe the main character receives a phone call, warning him of the shadowy buyer he will be meeting to pawn the statue off on.  The sky is the limit, and knowing that you will eventually go from point B to point C, will help you develop interesting ideas while you're building that bridge.