No, I’ve never worked out any precise plan, where I know that, say, by chapter three I need to have a dead body and by chapter six, a dedicated police official… But, I think, as one goes through their career, the only way to keep their prose fresh is to actively seek to avoid formula. The key moment in the creation of any novel is not when one imagines the story they want to tell – it comes when the writer tries to figure out the best way to tell the story. That really goes a long ways to defining how the book will be paced.