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Yes, there are authors that write such detailed outlines that no mystery need be left unresolved even if the never get around to finishing the first chapter. But it is also possible to work with only the shape of a story in your mind; that shape might involve certain key elements (like Magwitch, for example) while leaving much else hidden in a fog - even to the writer - until it is actually written. But I find it difficult to imagine that Dickens could have written his stories that way because the first parts went out for publication and could not be tweaked later. So, either Dickens kept a quite detailed outline in his mind, or he trusted to his abilities as a writer (that he could write himself out of any corner he had written himself into by the previous chapters).
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