There’s sort of a spectrum on how you go about organizing your ideas for a book. The terms I like best are “pantser” (meaning seat-of-the-pants) and “planner”. As you might infer from the names, the pantsers dive straight into a draft and go. A planner will write up an outline and synopsis before they begin the draft. There are other forms of planning of course, like mind mapping and world building, but for simplicity, I’ll just lump them all together since the intention is mostly the same.
If you read author interviews, that’s almost always going to be a question, and the answers will be all over the place. I fall somewhere right in the middle. When I was young and dumb and working on the original web serial of what would become the Kevin Parker series, I was a complete pantser. I riffed hard on random ideas. There were some heavy sci-fi beats in there (Andreas was a real mad scientist with a pocket dimension, for example). I was even unashamed to lift the concept of The Oracle from The Matrix. I did fumble my way to a messy conclusion. Pantsing finally did end me when I was working on a sequel. I wrote myself into a corner and couldn’t find a way out. The story ended, incomplete. One day I’d like to revisit it because there are some more concepts I want to play with, but I need a few good years away from the setting first.
For the Demon series, I outlined hard. For the first two books, I outlined chapter by chapter, with brief summaries of each major story arc. It worked – the outlines are almost identical to the end product, though it’s been long enough that I don’t remember if I adjusted the outline to match the draft. For the third book, I stripped it down from a by-chapter outline to a plot-point outline and noted minor plots. It was far less organized than the prior two and I believe the final outcome suffered a bit for it.
For the final book, and for all of my current in-progress works, I’ve moved to something I’ve seen called a 4×4 outline. In short, you divide your outline into four major arcs. Under each arc, you outline at least four parts. Under each part, you outline at least four more things. Continue as far down as desired. I’ve always struggled with getting from point A to point B in a clean fashion. While the other two methods were functional, they didn’t click for me. By-chapter was tedious. By-plot was too loose. The 4×4 method has the right amount of flexibility for me. I explicitly structure my stories into four arcs, so this was a natural fit. It leads very naturally from point to point, but it doesn’t have a singular path. I tend to let my characters write themselves once I have the feel for them, so I basically ask them “how do we get there from here?” and away we go.
If you’re struggling with organizing yourself, I do strongly recommend trying the 4×4 outline. I can throw one together in a morning as long as I have a general story concept. It’s far less tedious from writing what is effectively a synopsis before the draft, and it gives enough flexibility to let creativity fill in the gaps. If you can pants a draft all the way from start to end, I just want you to know that I hate you and am completely jealous of your ability. Please teach me your ways.