How do you organize ideas for writing?

I usually start out with a notepad and jot down some ideas. They’re usually the bigger picture at first, the concept. This is usually a process that can take months or even years. I can’t just sit down and conjure up the concept and storyline on demand. As things come to me, I’ll jot them down. I might put the notes aside for a while and be working on another project when suddenly it starts to come into focus. That’s happened to me while in flight or on the golf course or over a nice dinner.

So once I have the concept pretty much finalized either on paper or in my mind, I’ll go in and start making some specific notes about major events in the book. At this point I sort of know where everything is going, so I can start filling in the blanks with things that need to happen. The structure at this point really starts taking shape. Once I have the concept, this starts taking shape rather quick, maybe a few weeks. Usually as I’ve been formulating the concept, all the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place in my mind and I have a pretty good idea of the direction it’ll be going.

Oddly enough, I develop the cast of characters next or at least the main characters. I like to know who I’m working with in the book. I’ll start by coming up with names, which is the hardest thing to do for me. I try to make each character’s name consistent with the personae of that character. Then I write a bio for each of the characters. It’s not very extensive but rather just a guide for me as to what I think they look like, what their personality is, what their background is, and so on and so forth. Sometimes I’ll ask myself who would play the role if it were a movie and that will help me come up with the characters, descriptions, etc. I can usually knock this out in a day or so.

Finally, I’ll take everything I have and make an outline, a sequence of events, with the details of each event. At this point it’s just filling in the missing pieces. Everything is pretty well mapped out here in my head but I use this as the written guide so that I can check each item off as I complete it. This usually takes a couple days to finish up.

Do you know what is really amazing for me with this whole process? I still do it all by hand. I write down the entire outline, bios, etc. in one of my notebooks or on a notepad and just go line by line. Each Roman numeral in the outline might be a chapter with each letter or number being a subchapter. And I just follow this roadmap as much as possible. But it never fails that I’ll be working on a manuscript and I’ll do something that wasn’t anticipated in the outline, so then it’s back to the roadmap to see if there’s an alternate route to the end destination. I try not to do this deliberately, but sometimes it happens so I just have to adjust and adapt to the changes that I made to the storyline. Of course, if I do this, I have to go back to the outline and concept to see if it changes anything else.