Scenes, Sentences, and Series 📚
The Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series, part 3
Latest News from the Desk of Sooz
I’m rewriting my debut novel. From scratch. And let me tell you, gang: it has been an absolutely delightful experience.
For one, it’s been just sheer joy because whenever I am in the “writing zone” I’m at my happiest.
For two, seeing the growth in my writing from when I was a total beginner—I wrote Something Strange & Deadly in 2009!—to today is a real comfort. Like, Oh, wow! Look at that! I guess I have learned something from all this writing I do!
I have a True Sooz Voice now with a cadence and style that uniquely my own. I have a writing process that taps into how I work best. And my craft—wow! The quality of how I build character and world, magic systems and relationships is just exponentially better.
Does that mean people like my books more now? Not necessarily.
But I’ve reached a point in my life where I also don’t really care.
I have a profound certainty in my own writing—something that also took me seventeen years to hone.
You can take my words or you can leave them. It won’t really change what I’m going to do.
Which is to keep writing, keep learning, keep trusting my intuition, and keep waking up everyday utterly delighted that I get to do this as a job.
Does that mean every day is easy? Hell no. But the good stuff makes all the frustrations, challenges, tedious moments, exhausting deadlines, and terrifying pressures worth it.
I love telling stories. I just do.
So stay tuned for news on the Something Strange & Deadly reboot, coming direct to readers later this year.
QUESTION: I’m considering doing a first draft to finished draft Substack series for paid members. I’d show my first draft of SS&D—truly, a first draft with rough edges and all—then I’d share the next draft (and next draft after that) along with an explanation for why I made the choices I made.
If that’s of interest to anyone, please leave a comment and let me know! It would obviously be a lot of work to pull together, so I’d only want to do it if you all would find value in it.
🥰
The Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series
In case you’ve missed out so far, I have an organized primer series going that covers the many topics I’ve explored over my years on Substack. This is a planned 7-part series, and the topics are:
Following the “Right” Story — Shared Feb. 16, 2026.
Building Characters & Worlds — Shared Mar. 9, 2026
Scenes, Sentences, & Series — We are here!
Revisions & Editing
Finding Your Unique Process
When Things Get Hard
Publishing: the Honest Truth
Today we’re diving into the nittier, grittier pieces of craft. The scenes, the sentences, the show vs. tell trick that took me years (YEARS) to really understand.
Initially, that’s all I was going to cover, but then I decided we needed just a bit more meat on this bone…
So today, we’re also zooming out to look at series and complex plotting. Onward!
Remember: this is a separate series from my much more robust Susan Dennard Writing Academy! If you want truly deep dives on all these topics spanning back to the early aughts of my writing advice, then the Academy is the place to explore.
3. Scenes, Sentences, & Series
Today’s stuff covers things that, while drafting, I simply intuit.
I’ve written so many books by now, I don’t have to think about “accessing interiority” so I can show instead of tell.
Nor do I have to think about the shape of a scene. I dive in, sometimes with a scene screenplay (more on that below), and the words simply come.1
BUT. Big BUT. That doesn’t mean I get everything “right in one.” Far from it. I lean on filter words constantly. I use way, way too many action tags when I only need one. My action scenes aren’t crisp or clear…
So I fix a lot of the below topics in revisions, using the tools I share in each post.
And then complex plots and series…
Sigh.
I love you so, Complexity and Earned Payoffs, but boy do you make life difficult…
Sentences
An Easy Trick for Showing Instead of Telling: What makes for actual showing instead of telling? Read on to see. This one trick alone is what takes a flat scene (for me) into a breathing one.
Filter Words: This is SUCH an old post for me, updated and shared many times over the years. Because filter words creep in for everyone, often when we want them least. Sometimes I do want to build in distance, but it’s like salt. Every recipe needs a different amount, but too much will always make a meal inedible.
Tightening Your Prose: Part 1: I am an impatient reader. Get to the point. Move me along.2 And when it comes to my own writing, I am ruthless. Any beat that feels redundant or sentence that doesn’t add to the narrative in some way gets slashed. Period.
Tightening Your Prose: Part 2: This is a continuation of my approach to tightening, trimming, and generally improving your sentence-level prose and scene-level construction. Just say no to excess!3
Scenes
Assembling a Story Scene by Scene: I like to imagine that writing a book is like stacking LEGO bricks. Scenes are discreet units that can be moved, removed, rearranged, reoriented, cut apart, glued together…Whatever I need to create a castle at the end.
How to Structure a Scene : There’s no one right ring to rule them all for scene construction, but there are useful ways that I like to think about it. (And here’s where I link to my old scene screenplay method!)
How to Build Tension in Your Fight Scenes: Personal stakes! Interiority! Fight scenes can be shockingly dull if they don’t have the right pieces to connect to the reader.
Series
Writing Big Complicated Stories: I naturally lean toward complexity. I don’t mean to, it’s just the kind of reading I built my inner algorithm on growing up. So me and “complicated” have…well, a complicated history. But to resolve that, I have a very simple “promise index card” method.
Keeping Track of Subplots: When you have 14,578 plot threads and character arcs (as I tend to do), it’s easy to lose track of them all. I came up with a very straightforward way to make sure I can “see” at any given time what the balance and flow of my story is.
As always, there are probably more posts I’ve written on these subjects, but as mentioned in the past primers, a lot of my posts straddle the 7 topic lines. These felt like the best for today’s theme.
And don’t forget: there are so so many more craft-focused posts on the Susan Dennard Writing Academy. Even just on the free resources page! So head there if you want more!
Now stay tuned for part 4: Revisions & Editing. And thanks for reading Part 3 in the Misfits & Daydreamers Primer Series!
💚 - Sooz
I mean, some days are better than others. Let’s be real.
I’ve learned to recognize AI writing because it does not do this. It will tell you the same thing three different ways, seemingly more enamored by its own voice with each sentence. CUT, CLAUDE. CUT.
Especially because paper is so expensive. It’s dramatically raising the cost of books, which in turn dramatically reduces how many books readers, libraries, schools, etc can afford.
Hi!! I would absolutely LOVE to see the first draft to the finished draft of SS&D. This would be incredibly valuable! Thank you for even considering!!!
Hi 👋 I would love to see the SS&D process! I know I would learn a lot!