Tuesday Tips: Flexibility

When it comes to writing tips, I am more a consumer than a provider. One thing I encourage in writers that want to actually finish a story, without getting wrapped around the axel, is to outline the hell out of it first. 

So I outline very heavy before I get started.

Every now and then a character is so good that you want to divert from your original outline to include more of the character(s).

I am hitting this now in my next novel, The Sec Chief.

In my writing, I like to have fully developed secondary and even tertiary characters that create a thread to connect to the next novel. In the current project, a character that will become the main character in my NEXT project appears briefly in this book. 

Her role has grown a bit. I allowed it. The outline has been modified downstream to account for the boulder that just dropped in the river.

The lesson is: Be flexible, as long as it makes the story better. 

--Just don't be a dog chasing butterflies...