Creating a Character's Physical Actions

When I write physical fights like a sword battle, I picture the fight like it's a movie. I see what each character is doing and what is happening around them.

I also get up from the computer and pretend I'm holding a sword, imagine the opponent's move, and block it noting my balance, what I'm leaving open, and the possible return blow. 

To vary the fighting, I use the physical location of the hero. The floor may be bloody from his first opponent so the hero or villain may slip and fail to parry a blow, etc. If more than one good guy is fighting, the fighters may affect each other as an enemy steps into the hero's range, or he falls beside him. 

I rarely write out blow for blow because I think that's boring. Instead, I'll give occasional overviews of what's happening while staying in the character's viewpoint. For example, the hero is thinking about how his body is learning the rhythm of the fight, or he's aware of other fighters around him.

I try to avoid using technical terms to describe the fight because I'm writing as much for those unfamiliar with swordplay as those who are, but I try to be accurate about how to use the weapon, and I use a sprinkling of correct terminology to make it seem more realistic. 

I've never fought with a sword, but I've held a number in my hand, and I've watched others fight with them. I try to remember the weight of the weapon, the sound a fighter makes as he swings the heavy sword, and the sheer weariness of the weight of fighting something or someone above you. 

I also include different senses in the description. What is the character hearing? Feeling? Smelling? Tasting? 

This method also works with fist fights and other man to man combat.

Love in Action Scenes

In a recent blog, I discussed how sexual attraction can detract from an action scene--a person facing an enemy is more likely to die if they are thinking about sex with their romantic and fighting partner so such thoughts in fiction makes the scene unrealistic, and the pace of the action scene is also ruined by the constant interruptions.

Long declarations and discussions of love or long introspective moments when a character is fighting are no more appropriate, but, surprisingly, the emotion of love isn’t such an interruption if used correctly as motivation. Love, particularly a love that makes the lover’s life more important than his own, will make a character do unexpected things in a fight. 

She may be so busy keeping an eye on her lover that she isn’t protecting herself well enough. He may be so concerned about keeping her safe that he doesn’t trust her to fight as she is capable of doing and interferes disastrously in her fight.

Love as a motivation in battle can make the strong weaker, and the weak stronger. It can be the Achilles heel of a powerful fighter if the enemy recognizes it.

A life-threatening moment can also be a revelation for a character. He may not have realized the intensity of his feelings for the woman until her life stands in balance. 

She may know how she feels, but never said anything until the fight is over, and they cling to each other after nearly dying, then she blurts out her feelings without meaning to. 

Love is the most powerful motivation in the world, and using the characters’ feelings for each other can make an action scene even more powerful. 

A Ghost Story

Someone on another blog asked everyone what is the most scary ghost story they’ve ever heard.  This is mine.  It’s a modernized version of a true ghost story set in a nearby city.  It is often called “The Little Gray Man.”

Once, there was a man who was nothing but punctual. He showed up to his work as an accountant and quietly did what he needed to do. He was polite but not chatty. His evening meal was at a local diner, and he had a specific meal on specific days. The waitresses didn’t even need to ask him for his order so there was almost no chatting. He’d then go home to his neat, empty apartment. 

On weekends, he’d clean his neat apartment, wash his clothes, maybe read a book or sit in the park. On Sunday, he’d get the New York Times. His life was as orderly as the columns of numbers in his job. 

One day, he died quietly in his sleep, but he got up the next day and followed his routine, blissfully unaware that he was a ghost. He’d had so little interaction with the living in life that he had no clue that he was dead. He remained trapped in this cycle until he faded away into non-existence because the afterlife and Heaven weren’t in his routine.

Sex and Action Scenes

Recently, I read a paranormal novel about a romantic couple fighting demons. During the action scenes, they were so busy fantasizing about the other’s crotch that I wondered at the brains and survival skills of these people. In the real world, a fighter who is busy thinking about sex before and during a fight is a dead fighter.

The pace was also ruined because the constant sexual elements and sexual introspection distracted from the peril.

Brief bits of body language--a touch, a smile, or caress, as well as brief snippets of romantic dialogue can keep the sexual tension and caring evident without bringing the story to a dead halt.

Wait until a lull in the fighting to put your couple in a safe hiding place where they can repair their wounds and chase each other around the bed.

The important thing to remember is that even in a romantic story, sex shouldn’t be paramount in action scenes, but after the battle is won, all that extra adrenaline is a nice appetizer to sex. 

Character Emotions During Action Scenes

 The viewpoint character's emotions and senses must be as much at play in a fight or action scene as his body and weapons. 

I make a special effort to include all the senses in my descriptions. What does he hear? See? Smell? Taste? Feel?

How do he react to killing someone? The death of a friend?

Adding emotion isn't an either/or situation. It's just as vital to add emotional layers to the physical action as it is to have brief moments of introspection when the battle isn't going on.

Characterization also isn't just introspection. It's characters interacting with each other and revealing themselves in bits and pieces.

Your band of adventurers may not sit around "sharing their feelings" in touchie-feelie moments like a Dr. Phil show, but they've been around each other enough to know that one hates the bad guys because they murdered his wife and kids, and he's liable to attack without thought and ruin their surprise attack.

He may be clutching the sword at his side, his other hand opening and closing in nervous energy, and another adventurer may warn him to relax and may mention the wife and kiddies.

The image of his wife's raped and brutalized body could flash through his mind, and he fights his raw anger and lust to kill. That won't slow the action down like having a long interior flashback of him finding his family's bodies, and his vow of revenge. Instead, it adds to the excitement of the coming action because the reader now questions whether this guy will lose his cool and get everyone killed.

An even better way to present this information is to put it in an earlier scene that isn't action intensive so the reader will know the details and will only need a slight reminder of this character's motivation and tendency to attack without thought.

Remember, though, that a character's emotions are meant to increase the intensity of the scene, not slow it down or mar its pacing.

Pace and Characterization

Action and a fast pace doesn't preclude emotion, and a story can't be all hack and slash.

Years ago, when the INDIANA JONES movies were so wildly popular, a publisher created an action book series with the pace of the opening scene of the original INDIANA JONES where disaster builds upon disaster upon disaster with no real stopping for breath.

I read the first book, and it was bloody awful because the action became boring and silly at such a lunatic pace, and there was so little personality to the main character or any of the other characters I didn't give a damn one way or the other what happened.

EXAMPLE: A bear chases the hero up a tree, he thinks the tree is safe, but it's rotten, and the bear begins to shove it over, the tree lands in the river, but it's infested with alligators, and there are bad guys on the other side of the river, and a bear on this side. He out swims the gators to a bridge and begins to climb up a vine growing up its side, but, ooops, there's a large poisonous snake right above him, and....

Needless to say, that series vanished without a trace after a few books.

Pace isn’t just violent act after violent act, or the characters moving from one place to another. It’s mixing characterization and elements that move the emotional and action plot forward. It’s giving the reader continual questions about the characters and what’s happening and answering a few of those questions as you move along.

It’s having a quiet moment of introspection or a brief comic moment in the heat of a long battle that reminds the reader why they’re reading the story or why they like these characters. 

The Physical Limitations of Power

Movies like THE FANTASTIC FOUR (2005 version) and SPIDER MAN seem to get the emotional cost of power right. For example, Peter Parker and Ben Grimm face emotional difficulties by having that second identity and the need to save the world, one villain at a time. 

Peter has a rough time with relationships and finances because he's always running off to wear that red spider suit, and he has a weird, but not likely tendency, to have friends and professors who have a supervillian within or as a member of the family. 

Poor Ben Grimm gets changed into The Thing who makes the Incredible Hulk look like the Incredible Hunk, and at two tons with massive hands, he finds the simplest task like eating or lifting a coffee cup just about impossible. He also loses his wife who can't deal with his physical change, and he's stared at and shunned.

What these movies and the comics they are based on sometimes don't get right is the physical cost of having a superpower.

Johnny Storm, The Human Torch, of THE FANTASTIC FOUR, is a perfect example. He puts out an incredible amount of heat when he ignites himself and flies. At the end of the movie, he is involved in a long chase scene then becomes a supernova, but he is only winded by the end of the final confrontation with Dr. Doom.

Where does this energy come from, and why isn't he starving or weak after such an expenditure? 

The reality is that he should be since these comics are based on pseudo-science, and energy isn't infinite even in pseudo-science.

By giving a superhero limitations in power, the writer is also making the story more exciting because a certain weakness means possible defeat.

Just think of Superman and Kryptonite. Superman isn't very exciting when he's fighting criminals because we know all the bullets will bounce off the chest but toss in Kryptonite, and he's as mortal as the rest of us. 

In your own writing, remember to include the physical cost as well as the emotional cost for your characters, superheroes or not, and your story will be much more exciting.

Now, "Flame On!" but remember to have your character completely depleted and moving on courage by the end of the final fight and have him stop by the all-you-can-eat buffet to celebrate his victory.

They Say Our Books Are Garbage

There have always been controversies on the Internet about why some kinds of books aren’t included in the “best of” or some other list where a group doesn’t include books by women or popular genre novels.  

Sure, this isn’t fair, but it’s a sad fact of life that popular fiction and women writers never seem to get the respect they deserve.

My question about these controversies is why should we give a rat's ass what they think?

"They" are like the father who will never give his approval because he doesn't have it in him to give it.  "They" have their own agendas.  "They" need someone to look down on, and women writers and popular genres are easy targets.  We also make such a lovely squawk when "they" bully us, and they love that.  

"They" also will not ever read or buy our books so why are we wasting our time seeking their approval?

I can more than take care of myself when someone I meet denigrates popular genre.  I will raise my eyebrow in my best Spock impression and proceed to pound them into dust with my academic credentials and my extensive knowledge of genre theory.  I will wow them with my enthusiasm for the genres I love.

But I don't usually bother when "they" start spouting their usual nonsense because it isn't worth the trouble.  

So You Want to be a Published Author

 When I tell people I am a published novelist, a vast majority tell me they will write a novel when they have the time.  

Most firmly believe that anyone can write a novel since celebrity idiots write bestsellers.  (They are ghostwritten by someone else.)  All they need to do is sit down and write to the finish which should take a few weeks at most.  They believe that grammar, punctuation, and spelling will be taken care of by some editor so they won't need to learn those skills.  The novel will then be sold almost instantly to a big publisher for a huge amount of money, become a bestseller and a major motion picture.

Sadly, these people don't have a clue and are shocked when I explain how many years it takes to learn your craft to be publishable, how many hundreds or thousands of hours you will be sitting on your rear in front of the computer while everyone else is out having a life and fun, and the classes you will probably need to hone that craft.  

Once you have a well-crafted novel, you will spend a few years, if you are lucky—most aren’t, trying to get an agent or editor to actually read some of your work. You will discover that you are not only competing with other new writers for a slot in a publishing schedule, but with writers who have been published multiple times.  

If you finally make that sale, you will most likely be given a pittance as an advance, the book will be thrown into the market with no advertising, no book signings, and absolutely no glamor, and you will be lucky to sell any other book because your book will most likely sink like a stone into oblivion and you won't see another penny from it.  That is the fate of most first books.

Only a very few are able to escape that dismal ending to their dreams by making money and creating a true career as a writer, and the money is rarely enough to make a living so they need a supportive spouse with a lucrative job or a trust fund so they can afford to write full time.  

To be successfully self-published, you must hone your craft to the point that the traditionally published must achieve, then you must also develop the skills and soul of a used car salesman to shamelessly slog your books, and you must learn business skills since you are now your own business.

When I tell these would-be authors the truth of the matter, as I have learned being in and around the publishing business for over thirty years, they decide that they should buy a few more lottery tickets because they have a better chance at making big money doing that, and it's a lot less work.  

Life Experience and Writing

QUESTION:  Do I really need real world experiences to write fiction?  In other words, can I write a fight scene if I’ve never hit anyone or been hit?

Real life experiences can certainly inform your fiction and give it realism, but I don’t think it is absolutely necessary.

I have written space battles without being an astronaut, diving scenes and I can't swim, and fight scenes using swords, fists, and futuristic weapons, and I have never used any of them.  (I am a pretty good shot, though.)

I've never had the first reader tell me that I got any of my fight or action scenes wrong.

I have never been punched, but I used to ride.  I have had a horse smash her head into me. I've been kicked and knocked into a tree.  I’ve also had a six-hundred-pound horse fall on me then step on me when she was getting up.  

All that has given me more than enough visceral information about taking physical abuse to use in my writing.

I got my diving scene right through research, then I ran the scene past friends who do dive to check for accuracy.  

However, the more you write about something in particular, say your main character is a diver who spends much of the novel underwater looking for a treasure, the more important having personal experience is.  This is particularly true for a real-life task that readers may have experienced themselves.

As a non-swimmer who has never dived, I would never choose a main character who spends important parts of the book underwater because no amount of research will keep those scenes as authentic as they need to be.

Dissed Writers Fight Back

 QUESTION: I am so tired of being sneered at when I tell people I write. How should I handle this?

Artists have always been met with idiocy and blank looks. It's our lot. We ARE different, after all, but different is good! Without the artists and other creative people, the world would be a bleak place.

For some reason, especially in America, writers and other people with brains are treated with contempt. It's the dumb jocks who are the norm. Painting yourself blue in midwinter and rooting for your football team in an open stadium is normal, but you are weird if you write or read books, or go to sf conventions, or belong to the SCA. Personally, I beg to differ. 

I've discovered that my enthusiasm can win over those blank stares. The trick is to believe in what you are doing and who you are. If you give those people with sneers or blank stares the power to define who you are, then you've lost, and you are nothing. 

Instead, believe in yourself and what you are doing. Writing is one of the hardest jobs in the world, and if you succeed only a little, be that success a finished short story or a few chapters of a novel, then you are a success. Glow with it, and no one can belittle you. 

Writing the Same When We are Different

QUESTION: Why don't authors keep writing the same kind of book? Some of my favorite romance authors have switched to different genres, and I HATE it.

There isn't a simple answer. Here are a few possibilities.

* Failing markets. The writer's genre starts losing readers so publishers want fewer books, and fewer books are sold. An example is historical romances.  Its established authors branched out into contemporaries, paranormals, and suspense novels to continue making a profit at their writing. 

* Respect. Romance authors, in particular, get no respect from their non-romance peers, and this gets really old. Non-romances also have more professional cache. 

* Authorial control. Romance editors exert more control over the final product than in any other genre so the final product is often more of a collaborative effort. At a certain point in a writer's career, this can get really old, particularly when some kid in their first editorial job decides she knows better than an established writer.

* Boredom. An author spends months writing a book that takes you an evening to read, and she then starts another book. If every book is exactly like the last as some readers want, this process can become boring. The creative juices dry up. If the author doesn't change gears, the readers will be the next to be bored.

* Innovations. Genre, as a whole, doesn't stay the same. Romances have changed dramatically over the last twenty years, and woe unto the writer who doesn't change with it. 

* Bandwagon Syndrome. Some authors see a trend become popular, and they absolutely must write to this trend. 

* Changes in an author's life. Writing is an emotional process, and sometimes, things happening in an author's life make them change the direction of their writing. I have had friends going through an ugly divorce who could no longer write about everlasting love when their true love proved to be a cruel, manipulative jerk. One writer lost her young son to a sudden illness. When she started writing again, she turned to novels that expressed her faith in God. 

As much as writers want to please their readers, sometimes, they simply must change direction with their writing. 

Career Paths

Author career paths aren’t always the same.  Over the years, I've watched too many friends and authors I enjoy have their career, through no fault of their own, crash and burn over the idiocies within Big Publishing. (Dirty Big Publishing secret:  Everything is the author's fault even if the author had nothing to do with it.  A bad cover, a literal train wreck which wipes out most of the West Coast book deliveries for that month so sale numbers tank, a failed within-house promotion--all the author's fault.  Toss that author out.)

Most authors get back up, reinvent themselves with a new name, and start a new series, a new genre, or a new publisher.  I traded updates with a best-selling, award-winning friend at Christmas.  She's reinvented herself or started a new mystery series four times, and her newest very successful series has been cancelled because her publisher has decided to stop publishing fiction.  She's got her rights back so the next book will be self-published because she’s tired of publishers who can't get their own sh*t together.  

Other friends sold that first book that was their first book and blazed ahead like the golden children they were to finally hit a minor roadblock.  They got pissy and promptly quit writing.  

Sometimes, authors stagger up after yet another career hit because of bad luck or a publisher's ineptitude and walk away.  After over 30 years of being hit and yet another publisher destroying any chance for my new book’s success through their ineptitude, I walked away, and I'm okay with that. I decided I was too burned out to bother with self-publishing so I'm watching my publishers die, two in the last few years, and my books have disappeared off the virtual shelves. I'm fine with that, too.  

Publishing isn't for sissies, and it's okay to whine or walk away for your own sanity.