Monday, June 4, 2007

What makes a "Scene"?

So all day I've been pondering the thoughts from Holly Lisle's ideas of editing a novel. The thing that really struck me is her idea that EVERY scene in the book must have a purpose. Every scene must move the story forward in an interesting fashion (paraphrasing here). She gives this definition of a scene: "A scene has a start and a finish, characters and dialogue, engages at least one and sometimes all five senses, and offers conflict and change." Then she says to go through the novel and make sure every single scene follows this definition. Wow! That is an amazing little piece of advice.

Where was she two years ago?

I know I've got some scenes that don't fit this definition. Now it is a matter of finding, and then cutting or modifying them. Be brutal man! Nothing is sacred.

1 comment:

Rebbi said...

thanks this was helpful!