ONE DRAFT MANUSCRIPT DOCUMENT IS EASY!
When writing your book, especially if you are writing in a management system like Scrivener, it's easy enough to keep track of your manuscript.
However, once you compile the manuscript and pass it onto a beta reader, or an advance copy reader, or even an editor, suddenly, there are now 'multiple copies' of the same manuscript.
PRE-MARKETING DOCUMENTS AND GRAPHICS:
Then once your manuscript leaves, you should shift over into marketing mode. You will start creating graphics to use in marketing your book, or you will be working on the ebook cover or even the paperback cover.
You'll have original royalty free pictures, and then you'll have various copies of those oncoe you remove a background or two -- you get the picture.
Pretty soon, you have 25 files, some graphics, some blurb files, etc.
Below is a list of the documents you may accumulate just starting after you pass your manuscript on:
- royalty free graphics (for cover)
- templates from kdp (for cover)
- descriptions (written by you)
- blurbs for different websites (written by you)
- graphics or documents by Fiverr
- newsletter graphics
- ebook sale graphics
- ebook release notices
- ebook promotions at bookfunnel
This is just a sampling of how many documents you will begin to accumulate.
The only document that is precious and that needs to be tracked like a hawk is your "present final manuscript".
WHAT IS A PRESENT FINAL MANUSCRIPT?
A present final manuscript is just that. It's the last true final manuscript as of today. You will make changes after you hear back from advance readers and you may make other changes after you hear back from your editor.
My biggest tip is to use a date on final manuscripts. So if you are fearful of throwing out previous final manuscripts -- as most writers are -- you can be sure that a new final with a later date is a more recent final.
GIVE THE FINAL MANUSCRIPT ITS OWN FOLDER
I also put the actual final manuscript that I upload to KDP in it's own folder called FINAL MANUSCRIPT UPLOADED TO KDP. Then I also date the final manuscript inside that folder.
This is an added safeguard so you don't wind up making new changes to an already older manuscript. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience unfortunately.
USE A CONSISTENT FILE NAMING CONVENTION:
I'll share below my naming conventions with a few explanations below:
Most of the above files are self-explanatory with the exception of two or three. The reference to Bookfunnel and SiteOrigin are two websites that I use as a self-published author to market my books. I give away free copies of my new book the six to 8 weeks before publication. I often have a giveaway in them for taking the time to fill out a questionnaire about how they enjoyed it. So that's a different "final manuscript".
The other file that may need some explanation is "TOBEDeleted". I am paranoid about deleting anything before publication. So the old final manuscripts or anything else that I know I don't want or need, I put into the TOBEDeleted file. Once my book is safely published, I then delete everything at that time.
At some point your manuscript will get closer to publication. At that time, you will need to start thinking about dressing it up for publication. The book cover. You can find any number of places, including KDP itself where you can create your own cover for free. Not recommended, but it's possible.
With 
Now another paid but affordable route to making your own book cover is to work alongside someone at Fiverr.com. There are lots of people who will create a nice book cover for $25 or $50. This may be worth it for some of you who are busy and don't have the time to learn Gimp. It always comes down to money vs. time.
Join 
If you can, reduce what you need to have done down to a single task. For example: If you ask them to create an entire book cover, they will own and control the entire design. You will have no idea what they did to create it, how many components they used, what font they chose, etc. If you want to tweak it down the road, it's impossible to do on your own.
When I wrote my first novel, I worried about grammar, spelling, sentence structure in the first draft. I didn't even know what a draft was. I sat down and started writing 'a manuscript'.
First there's the mystery outline of a novel. It's important to know where the mystery begins, the names of all suspects, everyone's motivation for murder or kidnapping, theft, etc. But once you have your crime and mystery outline, what then?
The subplots should not detract from the main plot, but should instead enhance it. They should add depth and complexity to the story, and they should help to drive the main plot forward. In a mystery, it's easy to mirror a main character's personality trait in a witness and create some inner dialogue. This ties it in nicely.
If you're writing a first-person novel, try using a different POV for your subplots. This can help to add variety to your story and to give readers a different perspective on the events. This is not a technique that I would suggest to beginner novelists, but for authors who are more seasoned, yes, this is a way to shake things up a bit.
Subplots can be used to ramp up the tension in your story. It's a great way to add a little more pressure onto your main character or characters! Not only do they have to catch the bad guy, but their landlord is threatening them, or their wife is threatening to leave them, etc. If the main mystery plot is getting a little slow as you drip in clues, you can spice up the subplot that will add some excitement and suspense.
Subplots need to be interesting, yes, but it's easy to go overboard with them too. So the arc needs to be short but concise. They should be short and sweet, so to speak. They should be short enough to keep the reader's interest, but not so short that they feel underdeveloped.
I'm assuming all writers have doubts as they are writing the first draft. I know I do. Something happens between the feeling of knowing I have a good plotline and writing out the first draft.
So the antidote to self-doubt is to keep writing. Trust your plotline. Know too that you can always add clues, rearrange some scenes, add a bit more intrigue into your subplots. Eight layers of writing leaves a lot of room for beefing up a story, deepening a story and polishing a story.
For anyone who is new here, I use a Four Act Structure as opposed to the more-popular three-act structure. I find that middle section in the three-act structure too confusing. Over the writing of 12 novels, I gravitated to a four-part structure as it is more symmetrical and makes more sense to me. I also believe, for whatever it's worth to anyone, that this three-act structure is responsible for the 'lagging' that often occurs in the middle of a story.
The inciting incident. In a murder, crime or police procedural story, this will be the crime itself and how the detectives show up in it. When the detectives are pushed into going on a quest to solve it, that's the inciting incident. This begins the journey of the story.
Part Two is where I introduce all the suspects and their possible motivations -- as the detectives are quite often guessing at this early stage of an investigation. The motivation of each of the suspects will be uncovered in some way later in Part two or even in Part 3.
The end of Part Two usually marks the midpoint of the book. I like to end this section with a .big reveal of some kind. Or maybe a clue that turns the investigation into another direction. There could even be a new murder, or the surfacing of an unusual suspect, or someone gets caught in a big lie that changes the direction of the investigation.
Now the investigation gets a little stressful. The detectives may not agree on who the guilty party is, or maybe they know who it is but can't find the legal evidence to prove it. Maybe they are operating only on gut feeling and speculation at this point. They are rushing against the clock or against other forces working against them to solve it, catch the guilty party or find compelling and irrefutable evidence.
Part four is broken down into two parts. In the first half of Section 4, the crime or mystery is solved. There will be whatever drama you want to add about the solving of this crime. Whether your detectives are battling physically with someone, bullets are being fired back and forth, or entrapping the guilty party, or just uncovering that last piece of evidence that will legally prove guilt, this is where this is revealed.
The second half of Part 4 is the 'wrap up'. This is where you will show the new normal, everyone's life 'in resolution'. This is where you will also explain the full growth of your characters. Many author's don't do this, but I don't like to read books where things end where the reader is left to decide what it all means. I may have my own opinions, but I like to know what the author meant by the story. So I make sure I explain, again very quickly, how things are ending in a narrator voice.
Most new writers want to get to the writing already. But in this layer of writing, all plot holes or inconsistencies will show up. Any clues that won't work when adding more suspects and motivations will show up in this layer.
My template is short but it keeps me on track. I'll break it down below. This small template I use keeps my writing on point and tight. It prevents me from meandering, dawdling, going off on an irrelevant tangent or writing myself into a corner.
n order to prevent head-hopping, which is very common among new writers, you need to be constantly reminded that each scene is in one perspective. Some writers write in first person and that's easy.
I don't know whether I am an author who is obsessed with time, or whether I use time as an element to put pressure to solve on my characters, but I have always tracked time. I find this helps me balance the story and make the story more realistic.
Location is important for two reasons. One reason is casts the scene in cement. You have chosen a stage for the scene to take place. I don't write any scene or location descriptions in this layer of writing. But I can write the action of the scene in context of a location.
Write forward only. Don't look back.
This is the second step in writing a new fiction novel. In the first step, I start out with writing four potential storylines in FreeMind, which is a mind mapping software. 
Most new writers want to start writing scenes and dialogue. They want to just get on with it. But the dark side of working this way is that when you find out your clues won't work when you need to add a new suspect, you will have written two chapters already. My process will save you from writing for the trashcan.
Gimp is a free graphics program and it's fairly easy to use. But a lot of the program is not self-explanatory. So you can get lost really easily. A graphics designer needs to know how the entire program works. For authors, writers and other self-publishers, you only need to know a few of the tools to do pretty much everything you need to do.
The graphic to the left is a closeup of the tools panel. Each tool is represented by an icon. Below the tools is a graphic representation of your foreground color (the color on top) and the background color (the color in the back).
However, if you just open the document and try to add something that needs a transparency, it will cause a lot of frustration because the transparency won't work. If you do this, open with a white or black background, then go over to the layers panel, right click on the layer and select "add alpha channel". When you do this, nothing will happen, no noise is heard. It feels like nothing happened. But it did.