The structure of Net Force is vintage Clancy, with events demarcated by dates, times, and locales so that the narrative can give accounts of events happening simultaneously. He has used this structure in his novels beginning with The Hunt for Red October, and its appearance in Net Force suggests that he outlined the plot.

Although it is difficult to assign specific passages to specific writers in a book with corporate authors (meaning written by several authors), Net Force has a divided personality. Most of it is an adult thriller, comparable to Clancy and Pieczenik's Op-Center series (also with corporate authors), but some of it features young adults of about thirteen years of age tracking down the mastermind of the terrorism unleashed on the web. Perhaps these passages were included because Clancy and Pieczenik already planned to follow Net Force with a series of young adult novels...