How a writer reconciles the two schools of thought on planning his story is a personal decision. Some writers insist on a tight outline. Others prefer to just start writing and let the characters show them the way.

I think I have a method that is the best of both approaches. You can have a fluid first draft to give those characters a chance to have their say, but then you take control of all that wandering around to craft a cohesive, yet organic, end product.

Here’s my method of what to do after you have a first draft, written to the end of the story.

1. Write a two- to 4-sentence summary of what happens in each scene or chapter. Keep this succinct enough to fit on some sort of small label. I use Avery which are 2 x 2. You can print these all at once.
2. Attach these labels to a poster or white board or your wall. I used a project board from Wal-Mart that was tri-fold. After I finished I cut the excess from the bottom. You should leave space between the lines of your labels for two more lines of labels or post-it notes.
3. Keep those same scene summaries in a Word Doc(x).
4. On the second line, put the scenes of backstory. It’s always helpful to see your backstory altogether. Are these just snapshots of moments or does the backstory have its own arc? Do you want it to? If so, what do you need to add, take away.
5. Do whatever you need to do to open your mind. (Deep breathing, prayer, smoking something.)
6. Read through every scene, thinking about what the book is about. This is the theme–yes, you have one. You can also have subordinate themes, but you should see clearly what you major theme is. This is the time to find it. Maybe you began with an idea of a theme, but those characters took you in another direction or, more likely, just gave you a little different slant on the theme you thought you had.
7. In that read through, or in a second read through, and still with your mind wide open, look for opportunities to enhance or sharpen the focus on that theme. Not that anyone, you or a character, is going to preach or state the theme, but we are wanting to see characters react in ways that show us the theme consistently.
8. Note those places in your scene summary in the Word doc(x). Use a different color for your thoughts. Note anything that comes to you in that scene that needs to be changed, deleted, expanded.
9. Now take a clean piece of paper and write down the major decisions that you’ve made. For example, I decided I had one backstory scene that didn’t contribute enough to stay in there, that I needed more of the parents in the backstory and a scene of resolution with them at the end. I decided I needed to amp up one of my secondary characters, make more of my main character’s need to control his circumstances at all times, etc.
10. Now, take that sheet of paper and your list of scenes with notes and decide what you need to add or delete. Write these on post-it notes and stick them beneath the appropriate chapter on your board. Now you are ready to start at the beginning at work your way through them.
11. Stand back and look at your whole novel. It’s a beautiful thing.

If you’ve ever begun to change things in a manuscript only to find that you then had a snarly mess, you can see the advantage of this plan. It helps you decide which of those things you allowed your characters the freedom to do and say really should be in the book.