Outline problems

By Holly Lisle

I was ripping along in the story, going with it where it went, when I suddenly discovered that I had diverged widely (by about eight universes, to be exact) from the planned outline. This wouldn’t be a major problem, except that upworlds work differently for characters than downworlds, and I sent my folks four universes downstream, where they have some of the powers of gods — and in the outline I sent them four universes upstream, where they don’t even have physical form.

Since the ending hangs heavily on what happens in the upworld, this poses a problem … especially since moving the characters downworld (which I did not do in the outline) has actually turned out to be the right thing to do at that point.

I sitting here thinking, rather than just bulling ahead with the writing, because this is important, and I need to get it right.

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