Plot as you go

This seems to be my fallback position. I pants my way through a few chapter then start to write a chapter by chapter outline. Pretty soon I start making notes for future chapters, as well as add revision notes for what I've already written, usually things I thought of or my CPs suggested and often in purple. For example, after writing chapter one, this was my original summary of it:

Ch. 1 – p. 1 On the day before she leaves for the Academy, Camille’s Grandfather takes her to meet the peddler from whom she receives the watch.

Now that same entry looks like this:

Ch. 1 – p. 1 On the day before she leaves for the Academy, Camille’s Grandfather takes her to meet the peddler from whom she receives the watch.   This would be a good place to insert a bit of back story. Start with Cam’s worry over leaving Grandfather alone, even tho he has friends, thinking about his warnings about CGE, which she doesn’t believe, putting it down to fear that he’ll lose her, too, like he did her mother.

     Don’t get me wrong. I love my grandfather, more than anyone. More than the father I never knew but heard so much about, and more than my mother who thought nothing of leaving me. But he is old fashioned like a lot of old people. Always thinking things were better when he was a kid, that ‘the worlds have devolved and all that was good is slowly leaking away.’ I think he’s being a little dramatic, or maybe just remembering wrong. “You forget, Cammi, I’ve been around a long time,” Which is true; he has. He was around when Cedar made first contact (although he always says they made contact first).  I try to tell him it’s change and inevitable but he just shakes his head.

      "Then why are you letting me go?” I asked him the last time he went on about CGE.

     “Because I don’t want to lose you,” he answered.

    “You can’t lose me, Grandfather,” I said, hugging, him. “No matter what.”

As for the watch Cam receives, I imagine it looks something like this: