Before I start writing my books, I do a small amount of planning. I write a list of all the chapters, and I write what happens in every chapter. I’ve done this for all my books so far, and I find it’s a very good way of helping me to write my books. I then write a list based on that of what the chapters will be called. I usually draw a picture of the main character as well, and then make some other notes. For Fire and Ice and Forever Alone, it was mostly scenes that I’d written out.
There were several scenes in Fire and Ice that were so clear in my head, I just wrote them in the notebook, and copied that out when I was writing the book. I wrote it mostly just as dialogue. There were a lot of scenes in my first book where I did that. Now I tend not to do that as much.
I wrote out a couple of scenes from Heart on Fire before I wrote the book, but I didn’t do that at all for The Kingdom and the Crown. I think I probably will end up doing that for Rosanna, as there are several of the scenes that are very clear in my head. Those scenes usually end up being the most detailed when I write the book, and they are usually my favourite scenes. The scenes I write before I start the book, or while I’m writing it, are also usually the dramatic scenes which are vital to the plot which is why I won’t share any of those scenes with you now – I don’t want to spoil the book! But if you read the book, you would probably take a pretty good guess at which my favourite scenes are, the ones I wrote before I even started the novel.
I think about my characters constantly, and I am constantly imagining new scenes. Even for Fire and Ice, I’ve imagined a thousand alternate ways the book could have ended. But ultimately, I like it the way it is, and I think I’ll keep those scenes in my head. I try to think about the characters from the book I’m writing, but I sometimes find that hard, as I think about Januari from Fire and Ice and Amycus from Forever Alone a lot.
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