HE WROTE: Wargaming

I would put everything I do creatively under that title. Sitting with someone and talking out the characters. Researching. Thinking. Reading. Writing an outline. Writing out back-story so I know where the characters and plot come from.
Today I wrote the last scene of Chasing The Ghost. I was lying in bed last night thinking it out, creating lines in my head. I wrote the last scene as per Jenny's suggestion when I was having so much trouble writing the opening scene. The last scene is not the climactic scene, but the resolution. It's the end of my main character's (Horace Chase) emotional arc.
There are five parts to narrative structure: Inciting incident, escalating conflict, crisis, climax and resolution. I'll talk more about each one as I write them.
The resolution is the emotional pay-off to the reader. It's usually the last chapter, right after the climactic scene. In a romance it's normally where the hero and heroine go off into the sunset together. In a thriller it's where the after-effects of defeating the antagonist resonate with the protagonist and we see what has changed.
I think one of the keys to wargaming is to be open to new things. I've never written the end of the book first. It might not be the end of the book by the time I finish writing it. But it gave me a much stronger feel for my character and what he experiences and more importantly, the theme of book. So after writing approximately 38 manuscripts, I was open to doing something completely different.
Yesterday, as part of 'wargaming' I stood in front of one of the many book cases in the house and just pulled random books off and read their first pages.
Yesterday, I also put together outlines for the presentations Jenny and I do together: YEX and Violence; She Wrote, He Wrote: Collaboration; and the day long writing workshop we're doing in a couple of places later this year. We will post these outlines on the web site once they're ready in .pdf format so people can download them prior to attending one of our talks. Probably in about two to three weeks.
One problem with writing two books at once is getting confused. I've just called Shane, Chase like five times in Agnes as I rewrite a scene.