Personally, I’m becoming more and more of a planner as I go on. With this last WIP, the idea for the first chapter sprang into my mind. Then as I contemplated Methods, I came up with the major twist (asking those “What if?” questions). I wrote out chapter 1 that day, and then sat down and just figured out a way to get from there to the twist and then to solve the crime and save the day. The plot outline was about 3p single spaced.

I’m so excited to be excited about a story again!

From here–with the last two, I pulled out a spreadsheet to use as a calendar and plugged in the events (sometimes using different columns for different storylines, or for things that happen off screen), and to make sure I spaced out events and had enough happening, and added word count goals. Each of these has progressively spanned less time—the first covered three months, the second covered 29 days, and this one will cover less than 24 hours. I found (and/or had to come up with) a few new twists and turns in making the calendars.

But I love discovering new twists and turns as I’m writing!

The answer to the plotting question is that when I start, I only have a very broad outline for the story. I need SOMETHING to work with–I can’t just start writing–and I need to know where the story is going. But I won’t know all the individual twists and turns until I actually write the book–and rewrite, and rewrite. My first drafts are messy and inconsistent, because I’ll change things along the way. For instance in my current work-in-progress, I realized when I was nearing the end of the first draft that I needed another character, so I just threw him in. If anyone read that draft, they’d be boggled–where did HE come from? Then in the second draft, I’m weaving him into the story, along with a new character that I decided I needed. It takes me multiple drafts to get all the twists and clues and connections and layers into a story.