Distinguish a Future Adjustment from a Draft Rewrite
Once characters develop on the page, the original plan may stop fitting. The task is to connect the new direction to the existing story, not to prove that your first plan was perfect.
- Change an unwritten route: replace a planned letter with an in-person inquiry. Check whether the letter already exists in the prose or its existence still needs explaining, then rearrange future scenes.
- Change a character’s role: a planned culprit becomes a continuing ally. Earlier behavior may receive a different interpretation, but explicit facts cannot disappear. Suspicious details may still need an explanation.
- Change the premise or ending: identify the wider consequences before choosing to continue, revise selected passages, or rebuild. A local change need not overturn the whole novel.
The skill’s expansion workflow bounds the request and protects planning associated with written sections. This page translates that into an editorial method. Protection does not forbid an author from rewriting. Changing the future and changing the past should be explicit, separate choices.
Make a One-Page Change Note
| Question | Change note |
|---|---|
| Why change? | Name the improvement to reader experience or character choice rather than “make it better.” |
| Established facts | Cite who acted, who knows what, and where relevant objects are. |
| Outstanding promises | List affected questions, commitments, or clues; choose payoff, reinterpretation, or explicit abandonment. |
| New future | Identify unwritten scenes to replace, retain, or defer and how they follow the current state. |
| Scope | Name affected chapters and any separate choice involving earlier prose, other volumes, or the ending. |
This is an editorial worksheet, not a native skill file format. Include dependencies touched by this change rather than the entire book. Mark undecided points as choices instead of asking AI to invent established facts to complete a table.
Original Example: Keeping the Friend as an Ally
Suppose “Letters from the Old Station” is drafted through chapter eighteen. Cheng and her friend Ning are investigating missing photographs. In chapter twelve he accompanies her to inspect a box at the disused station. In chapter seventeen he receives a call from the keeper saying that one photograph is separately sealed. Cheng hears the phone ring but not the conversation. Chapter eighteen ends with an appointment to visit the station office together the next day.
The old outline makes Ning the thief in chapter twenty-two and ends their friendship in chapter twenty-five. The author now prefers a cooperative investigation: Ning has stayed silent because he promised the keeper not to circulate the information yet. That promise is a newly chosen future explanation, not a fact already established by chapter seventeen.
| Element | This revision |
|---|---|
| Joint box inspection | Retain the visit; do not make Ning absent from it. |
| Phone call | Retain the call and Cheng’s ignorance; later scenes may reveal its unwritten content. |
| Theft by Ning | Remove an unexecuted plan. If the draft already shows him taking the photograph, separately choose return, explanation, or earlier revision. |
| Chapter nineteen meeting | Keep the appointment; let Ning explain and the keeper actually respond. |
| Chapters twenty-two to twenty-five | Investigate the sealing and obtain limited viewing. Viewing does not prove who lost the entire collection. |
The new direction retains resentment over withheld information and the mystery of the photographs. It removes a planned theft and rupture; it does not make Cheng “always have trusted him.”
Test the Direction in a Candidate Scene
The author chooses that the keeper can answer for his own handling and arrange a viewing. This is a candidate for chapter nineteen, not a report that a real project has reached it:
Outside the office Ning stopped. “The call was about a sealed photograph. I promised to wait until we could ask in person. I still should have told you I was withholding something.”
“You could have said you couldn’t discuss it,” Cheng said. “Don’t leave me guessing what else you’ve found.”
When the keeper opened the door, Ning asked about the call. “I asked you not to circulate it yet,” the keeper said. “I never gave you the photograph. It’s remained in a sealed envelope with me.”
“I’d like to see it and the record from the day it was sealed,” Cheng said.
“I’ll find the record today. Tomorrow afternoon you can see this photograph. Not the other envelopes.”
Cheng wrote down the time. “All right. This one first.” She crossed out the question “Where did you hide it?” and wrote the sealing date instead.
The passage honors the appointment, exposes the concealment, gives the keeper a response, and establishes a next step. His account still needs checking. Tomorrow’s viewing is a plan: they neither possess the photograph nor know the collection’s full destination. An author may instead keep Cheng’s refusal or stronger resentment; reconciliation is not compulsory.
Check the Dependencies and Stop at the Agreed Layer
First check that the new future begins from chapter eighteen’s actual state. Then remove obsolete plans from affected character notes and outlines, without rebuilding unrelated records.
Common failures: Cheng knows the call’s contents too early—return to the scene where she learns them. An outline still says Ning admits theft in chapter twenty-two—remove it or explicitly choose that other route. One added scene expands the volume by twenty chapters—explain the size change before choosing expansion or compression.
Stop at the outline if that is the requested deliverable. Select earlier passages before revising prose, then use the later-chapter dependency check. A planned viewing cannot become a record that a character already saw the photograph.
FAQ
Does changing the outline waste the earlier draft?
Not necessarily. Characters, relationships, and outstanding questions may still work. Retain useful prose and identify actual conflicts instead of treating every passage as wasted because an old plan changes.
Can I ask AI to regenerate the entire outline?
Yes, when you explicitly choose a full rebuild and supply established facts and retained material. For a local adjustment, bound the request first; wholesale regeneration may mix old plans, actual events, and new inventions.
Do it with the skill
Use $story-long-write to revise the outline for chapters nineteen through twenty-five. Include the written state through chapter eighteen, old plan, new direction, outstanding clues, and book style. Identify retained facts, affected plans, and conflicts requiring a choice. Revise the named scope without changing existing prose or marking plans as events. Explain any dependency on the ending or volume length.
Read the method: Mid-draft expansion, requested scope, and planned facts · Planning for written sections and appending units · Author choices and factual boundaries