I make an outline for every book that I write. The kicker is that most of it gets filled in after I write.

I base the outline on the idea that my chapters usually average around 2,000 words each. My goal is to have my first draft be around 80,000 words. I am the rare breed of writer who adds content when I edit more than I cut content. In other words, my final version will usually come in around 85,000-88,000 words. This is what I have determined to be the sweet spot for mysteries and thrillers.

The math calculation determines that the first draft of my book will be forty chapters long. Through many a year of analyzing the writing process, I have decided a system that works for me. This most likely does not hold true for most writers, as we are unique, like snowflakes, and that is why AI will never replace us.

My personal system dictates that something important must go down every 12.5% of the book. This creates a landing atop each set of stairs for me to climb. It is an eight-story building and I knock it off one story at a time.  Some of these checkpoints are standard in the industry. At the midpoint of the novel, at 50% or 40,000 words, the protagonist gains a better understanding of what is really going on. Other important events are my own creation but made from others as I process processes to create what works for me.

Now my book is broken into eight parts and the math indicates that those parts will be five chapters long each. Often, what goes into the outline first is what is going to happen in chapter five, which, for me, is the revelation of what the novel is all about. Then I start writing, building chapter by chapter to reach that important event in the book. After I write each of those chapters, I then fill in what occurred, usually three things, date, word count, location, and chapter number.

Then? I fill out what is going to happen in chapter ten and begin building to that important event. Word by word. Chapter by chapter. Important event by important event. Brick by brick. Bird by bird.

The moral of the tip? Writing is a unique and solitary exercise. Take advice with a grain of salt and mold what you like to work for you and discard what you don’t like. Write on.

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About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published six books in the Mainely Mystery series, starting with Mainely Power. He has also published six books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, starting with Wolfe Trap. There are two books in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series, starting with Velma Gone Awry. For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed began a new series this past April. Glow Trap is his eighteenth published book.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. They have been replaced in the home with four dogs. Cost now spends his days at the computer, writing.