Over the last few months, while I've been struggling with Family Trust, a new novel idea has been begging for attention. Every now and then I'll give it some of my muse's time and I'm always thrilled and excited by what I get. I had explored my main character, her love interest, her father and her love interet's ex-wife. I have a good handle on all of them. I understand my theme and each of my characters demonstrates a different point of view on that theme. The setting is familiar (Wellington) and every time I revisit the elements it gets twistier and twistier.

So I decided to start working through the Think Sideways lessons for Happiness Matters to get some structure to the preparation with the goal of putting together a query and synopsis. Since I already have the idea the first lesson is about building The Sentence. To build The Sentence sounds easy enough.


Characters who need something, opposed to characters or forces set to keep them from getting it in a fascinating setting with a twist. - Think Sideways.

Holly says to start by defining your protagonist with an adjective and a noun. She gives 'young widow' and 'conscripted warrior-mage' as examples from two of her stories. She also rules out girl, boy, man and woman as possible nouns because they just aren't descriptive enough, they don't have weight or substance.

To complicate matters I think I have two protagonists and two antagonists. When The Sentence is supposed to be no more than 25 words that's a whole lot of character and story to squeeze in there.

Then again... there is a reason The Sentence is so valuable.