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I've tried doing it the "right" way. I've read the books, filled out the beat sheets, color-coded the index cards. And then I sat down to actually write and every single time, the story had its own ideas.

So here's what actually works for me — a method that evolved from years of writing across four pen names in four different genres, each with their own structural demands. It's not clean. It's not what you'll see in a masterclass. But it finished novels.

Step 1: The Premise Statement

Before anything else, I write one ugly sentence. Not a tagline. Not a logline. Just the raw premise with all the mess still attached.

For a Kate Seger dark fantasy it might be: "A disgraced mage's apprentice discovers her dead master rigged the academy's succession trials, and now she has to win them or die, except the winner might be the person who killed him."

That sentence doesn't need to be good. It needs to answer: who, what's broken, what's at stake. If I can't write that sentence, I don't have a book yet. I have a vibe. Vibes don't finish.

The premise statement is the skeleton. Everything else is flesh. If the skeleton is wrong, no amount of beautiful prose will save it.

Step 2: The Three Tent Poles

Once I have the premise, I identify three non-negotiable moments. Not plot points in the classical sense — emotional detonations. The moments the whole book is secretly building toward.

For a Lola Dresden dark romance, these tend to be:

I don't outline between these. I just know where I'm going and I write toward the next tent pole. This is the pantser in me. But having the tent poles is the architect.

Step 3: The Messy Middle Map

Here's where I use AI most heavily. Once I have my premise and tent poles, I'll have a brainstorming session — usually with Claude or Antigravity — where I just talk through the story out loud in text. What if she finds out before he's ready to tell her. What if the antagonist isn't who we think. What if chapter 8 is entirely in the hero's POV.

This generates a rough "middle map" — not an outline, more of a trail of breadcrumbs. I might have 8–15 bullet points for a 70,000 word manuscript. That's enough. Each bullet is a scene or a revelation. The connective tissue I write in the moment.

Outlining in Word

I do my middle map entirely in a Word document with collapsible headings. It feels less precious than a dedicated outlining tool — and when the outline needs to be blown up entirely (which it sometimes does), there's no friction in doing that. A plain document you can delete freely is more useful than a beautiful structure you're reluctant to touch.

Step 4: The Chapter-a-Day Rule

Once I'm drafting, I don't go back. No editing previous chapters, no restructuring while I'm in forward motion. The draft is a draft. Imperfect forward movement beats perfect paralysis every time.

I aim for one chapter per session — usually 1,500 to 3,000 words depending on the pen name. Kat Summers chapters are shorter and lighter. Kate Seger chapters tend to be longer and more dense with world-building. I've trained myself to recognize when I'm writing the wrong thing for that voice and stop. That's a separate draft day problem.

Your first draft's only job is to exist. It doesn't have to be good. It has to be finished.

Step 5: The Structural Pass

After the draft is done I don't immediately line edit. I do a structural pass — reading through fast, like a reader, noting where the pacing drags, where scenes could merge, where I've repeated information the reader already has. This is also where I use Antigravity most heavily: feeding in chapters and asking for continuity checks, pacing reads, and callouts of anything that doesn't land.

The structural pass is ruthless. Scenes I loved in draft get cut. Chapters get reordered. Characters who wandered in get escorted back out. This is not sentiment territory.

What Changes Across Pen Names

The bones of this method are the same across all four pen names. What changes is the emotional emphasis of the tent poles and the density of the middle map.

There's no method that works for everyone. The only method that matters is the one that gets you to a finished draft. If yours is working, don't let anyone talk you out of it — including me.

If yours isn't working: steal freely from anything above.