Angengland on twitter asked me this question, and I didn't have enough space for the answer (140 characters can be a lil too few lol). It was easy to decide to make today's Nablo post about plotting my current novel.

I started out with an idea for a paranormal romance. The idea was born walking through the streets of a neighbourhood I have grown to really like.

From that I started to freewrite, about characters, about events happening. I opened a file and just began a brain dump, basically.

As the image of what the story should be like began to grow, I opened various files, one for plot ideas and one for characters, and just sorted out the brain dump notes in those files.

Then I began to snowflake the plot, but stranded at the first page. It just felt too restrictive for me. What did help was a really good talk about the book, telling about my ideas and how I felt the plot would progress.

I sat down and began to write the backstory in general, wrote what brought my characters to the start of the book, and then used those notes for my character work sheets (which are very basic. If this works out I might share them :) )

After that I started writing out the plot per chapter, and then dividing up the chapter in scenes, all using my notes. As I began to plot I cut out some of the ideas I had, added others (the most significant discovery in this part of the process, that my MC liked another girl better lol), and from there grew the outline I am now going to write the novel from. All the while I was writing my plot out, I wrote down new thoughts and ideas about my characters, and the motivation for all my characters became abundantly clear by the time I was at chapter 7 in the outline.

It was a very exciting process, and I got to discover parts of my novel that I probably would not have discovered if I had just started writing from that one idea I had at the beginning of this blog post.

I recognize this process is very haphazard and chaotic, and I have no doubt it will change, but it works for me, and that's what counts :)