My Writing Techniques - Novel Planning

For most of my novels I've done a lot of planning before I write.  I've found that planning helps the quality of writing and the speed of it.  I've heard that some people write without it, I'm definitely not one of them.  Recently I changed my technique with planning my novels and I thought I'd share it with you.

My old novel planning technique:

I used to write a few pages describing the novel and then I'd convert it to a list of scenes.  When I had a list of basic scenes I would write three sentences for each one.  Usually a chapter per scene.

My new novel planning technique:

I start off much the same with a few pages of writing notes of what the novel is going to be.  These days these few pages are more structured and I have a list of questions I ask myself before getting to the next step.  Then I create how many chapters I roughly expect to have and write the list of scenes.  Now this is where it's different.  Instead of just writing three sentences for each scene I write three to five paragraphs.  Then I print a chapter per page so it is more portable and I can write notes on it if I wish.

My new method is a lot more detailed and time consuming.  The time consuming part is the only downfall.  With this method I'm able to complete a decent rough draft in two months or less and it isn't rushed.  There just isn't any sitting around wondering what to write anymore because it's already thought of, so it pretty much eliminates writer's block.