I wrote an outline, a rough brief for each chapter. I know where I’m going. Then, as the words start to flow, my characters lift off and take shape. The journey begins and there’s the first deviation, then another, my heroine wants me to change her name, the lead male wants a bigger role.
I shuffle and re-arrange my scenes. They, those actors on the page, call me back to re-edit. I’m on an odyssey and not a simple route from A to B. I’m zig-zagging to unexpected highs and unfortunate lows, trying not to lose the plot along the way.
It’s not how my outline looked, this half written manuscript, it’s morphed and shifted, I’ve re-defined the plot and sketched out new characters who weren’t in my original cast list.
That’s fine. I’ll cope. This odyssey is what writing is all about, isn’t it?
Today’s book
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder
The Quiet Writer 
That’s how it seems to me, too. What starts out as a definite plan morphs, via an outline, into a set of approximate guideposts.
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I don’t plot, but yeah, that’s how writing goes for me. Sometimes I have scenes in mind, but then my characters take a different direction on the page.
~Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
Member of C. Lee’s Muffin Commando Squad
Story Dam
Patricia Lynne, Indie Author
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It’s pretty exciting. You start out knowing how it will all go and in the end you often times have something quite different. It’s as if you’re the first reader of the story. That’s how I see it anyway.
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