The changing of the chapter plan

Writers generally fall into two camps, those who plan out their novels before they start to write, and those who use an organic approach of discovering their story as they go.

I used to be one of the discover as you go type of writer, but as I've focused more on producing work that is commercial and publishable I've become a planner.

For Death Song, I have five viewpoints and the story weaves between them.  I felt I'd never keep track of who knew what without working it our before I started to write.

Now, about ten chapters from the end, I've more or less kept to the plan.  But writers have to stay flexible even when they have a plan, and I've done things like chop chapters in half and switch the second half of the information I was going to put into the previous chapter into a new one with a change of viewpoint.  Most times when I've done that it's because I've realised that I missed an opportunity for a cliffhanger when I was planning.

When the words actually get down on the page you see that there are better places to end chapters, places where the characters are in danger and you can leave the reader wondering whether they'll survive this latest test.  And I have an actual cliffhanger in the end of this novel.  One of my characters is literally dangling over the edge of a cliff.  And yes, I do end the chapter there so you don't get to see whether she survives until later.