Early in draft.

The bookwriting guide I'm looking at has some very interesting thoughts. It can't write a book for you and it isn't as easy as it sounds, but some neat organizational tools nonetheless.

1. Chapters for anything should be around 10 pages. For a novel 35-40 chapters.
2. For each Chapter find 3 conflicts.
3. For each conflict find 6 thoughts or things you want to say.
4. This should give you 18 things you want to write in your chapter. Elminate your weakest 3.
5. Write 15 questions for your thoughts. Order them. come up with key words for each question.
6. Take the first question and write for 5 minutes. Move on to the next one. In theory you should be able to write a first draft of your chapter in about an hour.

I think there is some food for thought here, but I think the big assumption is that you have all your ideas fully worked out already and you know your thoughts will be interesting enough to carry over into a full novel.

I'm jotting notes and keeping a lot of this in mind and it helps a little with the brainstorming, but it's not quite working for me yet either. I feel like I need to take a start or two-beat the blank page a little before I know if I'm an the place in the story that I want to start. But I'm experimenting with two different chapters. In the morning I've been scribbling for Chapter 1. In the afternnon, I'll move on to Chapter 2.