Weekly Rants: February 13, 2013

Greetings Fellow Readers! Welcome to 02/13/2013. It's a shame there aren't twenty months in a year, it would look like this, 20/13/2013. Any way, I have some Thoughts to share this week, so let's get rolling.

'Thoughts on Writing'

[Fight Scenes

      Today, I am going to talk about Fight Scenes, not Action Scenes or Stunt Scenes, but Fight Scenes specifically. This is the portion on some of my stories where the protagonist and antagonist have their big battles. All of this really stems from a lot film and video games. I feel like this is where I shine in terms of writing. It is not easy to do and it can come off as a laundry list. This is also where Show and Tell can get blurred. It can also be a weakness as I have noticed in a lot of my earlier unpublished works, in that the fighting can last three to five chapters pending on how big a scale I built up on it. You probably may have felt it in 'Arcana Magi' at the end for almost a chapter or two, but in my earlier works they can last long.
       I try my best to make fighting as epic as possible and amazing. I take advantage of the environments around the characters, like objects and walls. I also try to be as close to realism as possible, because let's face, you can't get into a fight and walk away injury free if Die Hard hasn't taught me anything. Fighting also has stunt work and I do my best to detail it without padding it. And it is a fun thing to so.
      The trick to doing fighting without going stale is of course special powers, be magic, supernatural, or robotic. It is very important to have some of these things to help kept the fight scene interesting, but don't force them to drag it out to long. The last I would want is to overwhelm my readers. To really throw a good turn for the better, is tiring out the characters in the fight or have characters throw object at each other. Star Wars The Empire Strike Back did a good job using it's environments during battle. One minute Luke and Vader clash lightsabers, the next Vader is using the force to throw large objects at Luke. Fighting should always be 3 dimensional.
      One of the things I had to be careful with was writing 'John threw a punch. Bob blocked and threw a punch himself.' Not very exciting and it looks like the characters are taking turns rather than actually fighting. Hockey is a good example of a fight. While it may look like the hockey players are taking turns to throw punches, their fighting is in fact is fluid because both player are doing something in their battle outside of punching. Like pulling their shirts over their heads. Spinning in a circle. Sizing up their situation. Falling on the ice. I would encourage those of you wanting to write fight scenes, look at a hockey fight, their are plenty on You Tube and write out in narrative what you see on the video. I think this is a good idea for those of you looking for a climatic battle, to get good feel of how to write it out. Hockey fights have everything you need to get a narrative fight.
       Ultimately, fighting is one of those exciting climatic finishes to a story, if well done, will bring an epic level of awesomeness for readers. BUT, it is a double edged sword that cripple your story and ruin the experience. Fight scenes can be done with practice and repetition, and in the end will be fun to write and share with everyone.]

So that concludes my 'Thoughts on Writing' this week. There will be no more 'Thoughts on Writing' for the month of February, I'll have a new a couple to talk about in March. There will be Weekly Rants, of course, but it might not be much to talk about.

Thanks again for hearing my rants.

Until next time...
See ya.