How I approach writing a novel

I start off with an outline that includes a synopsis of each scene. The synopsis gets more developed as I write. Before tackling a scene, I have a list of everything that must happen in that scene (after that, the characters ab lib and I often have to adjust future synopses accordingly).

Now that I’m in the middle of the thing, I’m having to reanalyze everything based on the different story lines, what each character should know at the time, how each character is spending their time in my timeline, and so on. That was something I really couldn’t do in advance.

For the timeline, I label each scene by date, such as Wk2 Weds, and number each scene by generating an automatic table of contents (TOC). That way, I can take one of the characters and list the scenes and dates that affect him/her to track his or her actions (such as Sc30 Wk2 Tues – Ravi visits George re pirate attack).

I also have at least three windows of the book open on my laptop while I’m writing so I can scroll through the TOC and previous/future scenes that involve the current characters.

This book, being a suspense novel, really demands a TOC and ongoing synopsis of each scene because I can’t let anything fall through the cracks. I also maintain a list of ISSUEs to be resolved, flagging them so they appear in my TOC.

This is my third novel—I need to rewrite the other two after I finish this one. I’ve been generally silent since I’ve been so immersed in it lately, but thought I’d come up for air and share this.