Creating the Final Battle

In my last post, I talked about creating the epic confrontation between the main character/s and the bad guy/s.  Here’s two I did.    

In an unpublished novel, I had a hero who must face a were-dragon. This was the climatic fight between the two characters, winner take everything. The hero, who wants to die because his life will be a living hell, must survive for the sake of the woman he loves because her life is at stake as well.  So, I’ve got physical and emotional stakes.

I wanted him to face his weakness and fear of living as well as his own tendency to care more about himself than anyone else.

Since this is the climax of the novel, I wanted the fight to extend over several chapters, and I didn't want it to be boring and repetitive.

First, I thought about the weapons of a dragon — claws, teeth, fire, size, and wings. Considering a dragon's many weapons and ways to fight, I realized that I could divide the fight into three acts.

The first act is ground-fought and involves fire. The dragon will also use his human intelligence and voice as an emotional weapon.

The hero is tentative in his skill, and he's distanced himself from fights before so his weapon is a lance. He has a magical shield and armor which will help against the flame, but he can't survive the flame for long, and the dragon is creating a conflagration with the vegetation. The hero's uncertainty is also used against him by the dragon with his taunts until the hero acknowledges his feelings for his magic-using lover, and this allows her to bring magical rain to save him.

In the second act, the dragon has lost his fire because of the heavy downpour which has soaked the terrain as well as dousing his internal flame so he takes flight, and the two battle.

I thought about real-world flying warfare and the different ways a dragon can use his weapons in flight. I decided that the dragon would strafe the hero by using his claws to attack, and his wind in flight would be so strong the hero could barely stand to face it. The dragon would also use his weight to knock the hero down. 

After the initial fighting where the dragon uses these methods of attack, he manages to get the hero's shield which he's used against the claws and proceeds to shred him at each pass and exhaust him because of the heavy wind created by his wings. Barely staying on his feet because of exhaustion and blood loss, the hero finally retaliates by using the lance like a spear and throws it into the dragon's underbelly.

In the third act, the dragon can no longer fly because of damaged wings from the lance so he and the hero are forced to face each other in close quarters with no retreat. The hero uses a sword.

The hero now knows his own heart and has discovered his courage. He will no longer give up the fight. The dragon has discovered that he can die in this fight, and he's afraid for the first time, but he's forced to stay because the two are locked in a mythic pattern which neither can escape.

Since the battle is in close quarters, I thought about the dragon's different weapons, and the hero's battle plan. The hero must get close enough to stab into the dragon's heart, but the dragon uses his long neck, his size, and his speed to stay safe. The hero finally uses a distraction to shift the dragon's attention and stabs him.  The dragon dies.

So, the hero has won against the dragon and his own weaknesses to save the heroine and himself because of his love and courage.  An epic fight with a happy ending attached.  

Despite all the fighting, this final meeting between the hero and the dragon is more about what is inside the hero.  He fights on despite a stronger opponent as both keep running out of options, and the hero is forced to go beyond his abilities to win.  He proves he is a true hero inside and out as he faces his ultimate fear.  

And, yes, a dang dragon is one heck of a bad guy for an epic confrontation, but I’ve used a dilapidated warehouse full of old hay with the kidnapped heroine drugged, and the hero with one gun against half a dozen professional killers.  

I did some thinking about what was there— birds to spook to misdirect the goons, sodden hay to shove off a loft on top of one, a hay hook suitable for gutting a bad guy, and common debris like soft drink bottles that the groggy heroine can toss to confuse the bad guys.  So, an interesting and frightening fight to the possible death in the real world.   

NOTE:  The heroines were never damsels in distress with the brave hero saving them.  Both had an equal part in the conclusion.  To simplify the explanation, I focused on the hero.  I hate wimpy heroines.  

 

Defeating the Bad Guy

In a novel I read recently, the heroine faces a human villain and a major supernatural villain.  She spends the novel avoiding being killed by the human villain’s minions while the supernatural villain lurks in the background waiting to destroy the world.  

Toward the end of the novel, the surviving minions show up for a final showdown with the heroine and her supporters.  A huge battle ensues, and the heroine is trapped.  The human villain reveals himself, and he’s killed within a few paragraphs by one of the heroine’s friends in an offhand manner.  That’s it.

The heroine had a longer scene with a sales clerk selling her a magical weapon than the final confrontation with the human villain, and she didn’t even take a shot at the bad guy.  He’s killed by a secondary character.

Meanwhile, the supernatural villain, a god no less, who has been the lurking big bad for the whole series, finally decides to show up to kill the heroine then wipe out life on Earth.  

He rates half a chapter, most of it a chase scene, before he’s killed in a mildly clever manner.  

If you have a villain, you have to give him a major confrontation with the main character, and it has to be long enough to give the reader a sense of anticipation, a sense of fear that the bad guy may win, and an awareness the hero is worthy of being the hero by having him fight with everything he has and then some to defeat this monster.  

Think of all the great confrontations in the movies.  Luke Skywalker against Darth Vader.  Jake Sully and the Na’vi against the human forces and the Marine commander in AVATAR.  The sheriff’s confrontation with the outlaws in HIGH NOON.  All involved struggles against the bad guy’s forces then a final confrontation between the main character and the bad guy.  All involved enough screen time to make that final confrontation epic.  

Make your own final confrontation epic.

NOTE:  Even if your novel doesn’t involve violence and the main antagonist is your character’s bitchy, controlling mother, you still need that final confrontation—that moment when the main character stands her own ground and says, “I’m not your little girl anymore.  I’m my own woman,”  and walks away to live her own life.  

How Not to Plot a Series

I read over a dozen fantasy series.

I’m currently reading the fourth book in an urban fantasy series I’ve enjoyed so far, but this book just hasn’t grabbed me as a reader, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.  Some of my answers will help you as a writer, whatever kind of genre fiction you write.

THE BOUNCE-BACK BAD GUY

This bad guy is the super villain of a series or part of a series.  Whenever the main character kills him or stops him, he comes back in the next book.  

Sometimes, this works as in the case of Voldemort in the Harry Potter series.  One of the reasons Voldemort works is because in the first part of the series he’s not really there.  Instead, bits of him are there in the person of one of his loyal followers who is trying to bring him back from the dead or as the avatar from a diary.  Harry and friends succeed in stopping him and his followers each time.  By the time Voldemort finally comes back, the reader is invested in the good characters and their goals.  Voldemort’s power keeps increasing in the following books and the good characters have goals to reach to stop him.

Sometimes, the super bad guy doesn’t work.  In the book series I’m reading now, the bad guy has died several times, yet he keeps hopping back as the same powerful bad guy in each book.  He just died again, and I’m not a quarter of the way through the fourth book, and his means of hopping back has already been stated.  This bad guy who will not die makes me less invested emotionally in him than if he were a whack-a-mole in the arcade game.  Same-old same-old doesn’t cut it for a bad guy.

APOCALYPSE DEJA VU

You can’t have some form of apocalypse looming at the end of each novel.  The end of the world is so big that it carries very little emotional investment in the reader who knows that the world won’t end in this novel because the series will end.  Instead, make stopping the apocalypse the final goal of the series and let each book work toward that major goal, one minor but important goal at a time.  

Make the goal personal or specific for the main character.  A loved one or an innocent child to be saved carries much more emotion for both the main character and the reader than some vague object as part of a treasure hunt of apocalypse-ending talismans.  

STUPIDITY FOR THE SAKE OF THE PLOT

If there is a desperate situation and one choice to save the day is mind-numbingly stupid or suicidal, don’t let the hero choose that choice immediately.  Instead, let him try some of the obvious safer solutions first until he either runs out of time and must try the suicidal solution.  Most of us don’t want our main character suicidal, stupid, or a stick puppet for author plot laziness.

Media Reality and Writing

On a recent blog, the writer complained that the heroine in a novel didn't react as she thought she should. The heroine had a chance to shoot one of the villains but took cover when an unknown shooter shot the gun out of the bad guy's hand. Instead, she took cover.

Obviously, according to this blogger, whoever had shot the gun out of the bad guy's hand was on the heroine's side, and she finally had a chance at getting the bad guy.

I argued that in the real world, unlike the movies and TV, a trained marksman would never shoot the gun out of the hand because it is a near impossible shot. As my dad who was an expert marksman with a military background told me, "The Lone Ranger can shoot the gun out of a bad guy's hand. The rest of us mere mortals should aim for the center of the man's body."

In the real world with bullets flying, a smart person with even a little training would get the heck out of the way because it's likely that bullet that took out the bad guy's gun was a miss, not deliberate, and she would be betting her life by not getting out of the way of someone who may be after her.

In the real world, most people are bad shots with no training. Even in the Old West, very few people died in a gunfight and then only after an incredible amount of ammo was used.

I've always believed it's wiser to go with fact, not media nonsense, because I'd rather not have readers snort and toss the book down because they caught me in a stupid error. There's nothing I can do about people who don't know any better so I don't worry about them.

The Death of a Minor Character

 Every once and a while, a minor character must die. Often, they give their lives so you can show the reader the danger the main characters face.

A good point to remember is one Stephen King recommends. First you create a real person and make the reader care, then you massacre him. Two examples.

STORY A: A man is walking through the darkness, and the monster eats him.

OR

STORY B: Fred is walking to the 7-11 at midnight because his beloved pregnant wife is craving pickles and ice cream, and she ate the last gherkin at supper. A monster jumps out and kills poor Fred.

Story B makes the act and the monster more horrific.