I wrote a ten thousand word outline for the novel I’m working on. The benefits of such thorough planning cannot be exaggerated. Relative to the first book in the series which had no outline, I’m sailing through the story. Of course, knowing the situation and the characters well at the start of the second book has made writing an outline relatively easy.

Now, I’ve come to a spot where I need to alter the plan. One character talks another into doing something that seems out of character, and I have to find a motivation.Vanity was my first thought, since it is the universal motivator. The next step is to backfill the situations with the motivation.

It actually only took three small inserts to make the action believable. I snuck them into the outline for documentation purposes and am now massaging the changes into the text.

Voila.