Now that I'm working on the sequel to MANDARIN YELLOW, I appreciate how useful and important using a beat sheet is. For the first time I truly have an overview of my book and am able to shift around chapters at will within the context of my view (literally and figuratively) of the whole. This has been immeasurably useful to me.

I also was able to place the Pinch Points and Plot Points/Mid-Point Milestone in their rough, approximate locations before I started writing so I had a framework to work within. This made my life much simpler than before and gave both order and structure to my first draft.

This is probably the most useful tool I have come across yet in my brief career as a writer of mysteries. And it's all thanks to STORY ENGINEERING, an extraordinary writing book by Larry Brooks.