Battle Plans and Contact with the Enemy

 
Once again, as I write my way through the middle of a novel, the outline evolves in somewhat surprising ways. The spirit of the outlined chapters are intact, but the exact written form of that spirit tends to transform under the accumulation of character, setting and events thus far.
 
I’m cool with it. Of course I am. The evolutionary transformations are (almost) always better than the original outline. In a sense, the story becomes more like itself the further into it I go.
 
Sometimes I even update my outline to reflect the changes.
 
This doesn’t reduce the value of the outline, IMO, or mean I wasted the time spent “discovering” it [1]. My outlines aren’t a rigid structure or a set of rails to push the story down. Mostly, I think of them as short, flexible first drafts to be expanded and improved on the way to a final manuscript.
 
-David
 
[1] Yes, I’ve decided to call what I do “discovery outlining”.
 
Related Posts:
I Can Haz Story?Walking the PathSome Chapters Are Longer Than Others