I’ve watched way too many movies and television in my lifetime so everything starts visually (I’ve also always been a daydreamer – pacing around imaging things as long as I can remember). The scene with Marcus staring at his new bride was what I stated with (it’s the main reason I kept a scene in the very middle of the book as the first thing you read), I then placed Marcus and Septimus as teenagers in the Orphanage (Timolen came later), and then I started on what was to become Part III of the story. This is what I recall anyway. After I have it all worked out from start to finish, I start writing, and it all goes sideways. 

I think I have it down pat, write a chapter, and realize it’s all wrong. Re-write the chapter at least once, pass it to my reviewer (my wife Lisa) who tells me what’s really wrong. Supposedly I am terrible at starting paragraphs (let alone a chapter), but pretty good at finishing. I also need to read a book on the correct use of punctuation (this was confirmed by my publisher’s proofreaders). Then I re-write the chapter (I learned to pass more than a single chapter at a time to the critical one) and continue. As you write you realize you need to add passages or even entire chapters – you can’t have someone urging her husband to murder children and then jump to having the wife overcome by guilt (I will always maintain that the Bard messed up in that play). At the end I passed it to my development editor that also points out what I am missing – so back to adding things. My fast paced (I hope it still reads as fast paced) stripped down adventure story ends up being over 130,000 words – but it is a complete story in a single book!