keeping track of chapters in longer works

one of the best pieces of advice i've ever gotten about writing a longer work is to plot out each character separately from beginning to end. along with helping you decide who interacts with who and when, it helps you to figure out each one's motivation and how they see themselves, others, and the conflict at the center of the story. you can even get daring and write sub-conflicts. you don't even need a fancy tool - a simple spreadsheet will do.

each cell represents either one chapter or event:

• column one contains the name of the character that you're focusing on. 
• the second column is for the day of the week on which the event occurs. 
• the third column is for the number of the chapter in which the event occurs. 
• the fourth column is for the events themselves. 

 write out each character's arc from beginning to end in the fourth column, one short paragraph per major event, one major event per cell. when you're done with that for all of your main characters, arrange the order of the cells so that you don't have a bunch of chapters in a row that are just about one character. (it's kind of like shuffling cards.)

use the second column to keep track of which date or day of the week in which each event occurred (you might even have to have a division between days and nights, here, if a lot happens in a relatively short period of time, and for multiple characters).

number the results in column 3 (the chapter number column, remember?), sort everything by that column (something that excel is perfect for), and read your outline out loud.

if it still makes sense and has a logical flow, you have a working outline. if it doesn't, change the numbers around and resort, even if that means you hack things out. better now than after you've written four chapters that no longer belong in the story.