Avoiding Scams and Bad Publishers

 Here’s an excellent article from former agent Nathan Bransford on the various scams and nonsense authors are dealing with right now.  

https://nathanbransford.com/blog/2026/08/know-your-rights-as-an-author 

Viewpoint in Battle.

 QUESTION:  I want to write an overview of what is happening during battle.  How do I do this?

One of the choices an author makes is what kind of viewpoint to use.  In a novel like a fantasy with lots of action, the advantage of using an omniscient viewpoint is that you can give an overview of a big battle.  The disadvantage is that all immediacy is lost because you aren’t in your main character’s head.  Readers today prefer the immediacy of third or first person viewpoint because they want to feel what the character feels, see what he sees, etc.  Omniscient is more cold, and closer to a camera watching the action.

You can’t switch back and forth between types of viewpoint at your convenience because doing this knocks the reader right out of the book, and that’s one thing you want to avoid at all costs.

If you use a single viewpoint in a big fight, you'll miss some of the action because one fighter can't see everything, but you'll have intensity.  If it is a long battle and you have more than one viewpoint character fighting, you can switch to the other viewpoint character in another scene. 

If you want the reader to know about what’s going on in the big battle, you can have your character end up on a hill above the fight so he can see how the battle is going, or he can talk to another character who relays this information.  

Study novels you've enjoyed where the novelist has really drawn you in during scenes like this.  Seeing how he/she did it is a master's class in writing. 

One particular writer who does great fight scenes and battles is Ilona Andrews who wrote the urban fantasy series about Kate Daniels.  It is set in modern times, but the weapons are often swords, etc.  The author is a husband and wife team, and the husband is ex-military, and it really shows in the fight scenes.

Making a Fight Scene Seem Real

QUESTION: I'm writing a fight scene, and I'm having a horrible time making it real. I've never hit anyone or been hit. How do I make it real?

That's a good question. If the scene and actions don't seem real to you, you can't make it real to the reader.

One way to make a fight real for you is to choreograph it by yourself or with the help of a friend or family member.

You play the hero and have the other person be his opponent. Don't just figure out the blows and what the other person will be doing. 

Imagine yourself hitting that person. What are you feeling? Where would your hand hit? How would that feel to you? 

If your hero is a trained fighter, how would his feelings differ?

Imagine how it would sound. To do this, hit your fist hard against your other hand and listen. 

Also ask friends if they have ever hit someone and how did it feel?

You may never have been hit, but you have been hurt. Remember how it felt when you were hit in the face while you were trying to diaper a rowdy toddler who clobbered you with his foot.  Or that baseball that hit you in the face or chest. Increase the sensation, and you've got some idea of what it feels like to be hit in a fight.

Mapping Out a Fight Scene

Once you have figured out what the characters have to lose in a fight scene, you must decide on each character's special abilities, weapons, etc. 

Your viewpoint character/hero's special abilities, weapons, and skills should have been set up long before this fight scene so it won't look like you pulled new abilities or weapons out of the air for your own convenience. 

List the special abilities of the viewpoint character then give his opponent a skill or weapon that is equal to or slightly better than his. Equal powers make interesting contests. Extremely unequal powers make for a dull fight.

Now, you can map out the coming fight. Remember that the hero must barely survive each kind of attack, and he must start running out of options. 

Especially in the final showdown, the hero must be forced to go beyond his abilities and must face some element of his ultimate fear. He must do what he considers unthinkable or impossible to win.

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, too.

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 the 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 will involve fire. The dragon will also use its 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 its taunts until the hero acknowledges his feelings for his lover, and this allows her to bring magical rain.

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

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

After the initial fighting where the dragon uses these methods of attack, it 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 its 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 it can die in this fight, and it's afraid for the first time, but it'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 its long neck, its size, and its speed to stay safe. The hero finally uses a distraction to shift the dragon's attention and stabs him.

Notice how I negated the different weapons of the dragon so that the fight itself changed dramatically, and the hero was forced to use different weapons, both physical and emotional, against each change. 

The battle is also hard fought on both sides, and the hero wins more from sheer cussedness than any skill or weapon.