Got eleven Line-for-Scene Sentences — nineteen to go

By Holly Lisle

Okay. Today was not the best Monday I have ever had. 

I had a revelation this morning about the very strict limits I must maintain on the world… limits I’ve been maintaining subconsciously since I started writing the series without considering why.

Today, I got why.

It helped me a lot in keeping the series from drifting into Evil Series Sprawl, which is when the writer decides that anything can happen.

“If anything can happen, nothing matters,” to quote Jim Baen.

This morning I spent about forty-five minutes writing out exactly the limitations that exist in the series, and why they matter…

AND THEN I started building scene Sentences — 30-word structural plot sentences that let me keep the book on target.

I wrote some that I had to dump, had a big rethink about what cannot happen in book four if book five is going to give a strong, clean ending to the series (while still leaving room for me to continue if the world proves popular enough for me to keep writing in it).

So — tossed out the existing Sentences, started over from scratch, and at least for today, I really like what I got.

The question is, will I like it tomorrow when I come back in and read it cold?

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