The Harry Potter series was pretty intricate in terms of plot and character development for a young adult series, and that means J.K. Rowling spent a lot of time preparing to write the story to make sure everything lines up properly.
In order to help her speed this process up a bit Rowling created a plot spreadsheet to help her keep the story on track:
A spreadsheet plot written out by J.K. Rowling. Her approach to spreadsheet plotting is to divide the columns by chapter number, story timeline, chapter title, main plots and subplots.
The Harry Potter spreadsheet first made the rounds about six years ago, but since it's such a fascinating look at the process involved in writing the iconic series I figured it would still make for an interesting read...that is, if you can read really scribbly handwriting.
-Via mental_floss
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lol
Of course a good PR person has always known how to manipulate the system. Send your release to the news desk so late that they don't have time to do any work on it, but not so late that it won't make it out. With printed news and old fashioned TV this was pretty easy to do. Which is why a story would change between the early and later editions or the 6pm and 10pm news.
When rolling news came along what should have happened is that the story would go out almost per press release the first time and then get worked on through the day. This does not seem to happen.
Their used to be a saying that a good news story almost writes itself. It would seem that modern "journalists" have misunderstood this maxim.