A chapter outline is a software diagram with ghosts

Every outline I've drawn for Babel Threshold has the same shape: boxes, arrows, a spine running left to right. It looks like architecture. But three drafts in, half the boxes are characters who no longer exist in the manuscript — cut, merged, renamed beyond recognition — and the arrows still point to where they used to be. The diagram is accurate. It's just describing a building that was demolished to make room for the one you're standing in.