Book Review: “How to Write Page Turning Scenes” by Holly Lisle
As some readers here might know, I wrapped up round two of editing my novel in April. I actually just started Round 3 this week, which is going better than expected. (Wish I”d started it sooner!) Round 2 was around January 1, 2009. It took longer than expected, but much of the editing was actually rewriting and reworking things. (Which means that Round 3 should be interesting!)
What you may not know is that before writing this, I purchased a copy of Holly Lisle”s How To Write Page-Turning Scenes. Holly Lisle is a writer who”s made a living at it for 20 years…a put-food-on-the-table type of living. Sure we all dream of getting that Stephanie Meyer phone call, but most of us won”t. Once you come to accept that, you begin to rethink this whole “writing fiction” business. But once you get past that, it”s time to check out Holly”s rock steady advice.
Because I”m a just-do-it writer, I had no notion of scenes (or chapters) while writing a novel. I”ve taken lots of workshops over the years, online and off, and I can remember a single teacher discussing either of those elements. I”d never even considered scenes in a novel, which is odd because back when I wanted to be a filmmaker I took screen writing, which is all scene writiing.
Enter How To Write Page-Turning Scenes. Holly breaks down exactly what a scene is and why it”s a useful to think in terms of scenes when writing or revising your novel. She gives some clear cut exercises that really break down how to determine if a scene forwards your story or not, how to know which scenes to add, delete, or revise, and what to watch out for along the way. She gives clear cut examples of the different kinds of conflict and how and when to use them.
Strictly speaking, How To Write Page-Turning Scenes is really a book that gives you tools for step-by-step scene creation if you haven”t written a word, but only have an idea. However, I found this extremely useful to help me get organized with my first round of revisions. I didn”t do a strict scene-by-scene revision because I had too much story still to create, but this gem of a guide did give me tools I needed to get revising. I highly recommend this book for novices, first-time revisionists, and anyone who need to better structure their scenes.
