Writing Compelling Fight Scenes

by guest author Jenelle Leanne Schmidt

image by Earl35 for morguefile

Let’s face it, one of the best things about reading fantasy fiction is the big, epic battle sequences we get to participate in from the safety of our own homes and imaginations. Unfortunately, these can often also be one of the most difficult aspects of the story to write.

The first time I set out to write a fantasy novel, I was 19 years old. I sailed through the story and came at long last to the final, climactic battle, the crux of the plot I had been building to for over 300 pages. The stage was set, the stakes were high, and ... I had no idea how to go about actually putting this enormous and important ending into the story. It wasn’t something I had covered in any creative writing class I’d ever taken, nor would it ever be included in the curriculum of any writing class I participated in. A friend of mine told me, “Go re-read the chapter on the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers! Tolkien does a fantastic job with this.” So I did. It seemed like helpful advice at the time. And it was a good starting point... unfortunately, the chapter Helm’s Deep is fairly short, and the descriptions of the battle only encompass a handful of paragraphs, interspersed with information on what Aragorn is doing or dialogue between various characters. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for with regards to a formula for writing a compelling and epic battle sequence.

I read battle scenes in other fantasy novels and sort of fumbled my way along. I would later do a lot of editing and rewriting on that particular portion of the book. Several novels later, I was still wrestling with this question: just how does one go about writing a compelling fight scene?

One day, many years later, I was writing a new story with a scene that involved a sword-battle on a ship. My first inclination was to go through it step-by-step. My main character slashed, took a few steps, parried a blow, ducked under his opponent’s swinging sword, which connected with the main mast and got stuck, giving my MC a chance to whirl out of the way and thrust his own sword at his opponent... I stopped. There was plenty of action, but I was bored writing it, how could I expect a reader to enjoy the experience?

I tried acting it out. My husband helped me with the sequence of events. I talked to friends who had taken fencing classes and were in martial arts. I did research. My grasp of the movements was sound, but translating it onto paper turned it into a choppy mess. It sounded like I was writing choreography for a play, not an intense or exciting battle scene. My husband then suggested a different course. Instead of writing a series of movements and recording all the ducks and blows and parries that an actor has to think through when making a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean, I should try to think through what the battle actually looks like to someone in the midst of it. It is chaos. It is loud. Any participant is rarely going to get the luxury of dueling a single opponent at a time. I scrapped the scene and re-wrote it, this time focusing on the feel of the battle, rather than the actual steps. I detailed the overwhelming clash of sounds and colors, the swirling confusion of trying to determine friend versus foe as the MC made his way through the fray while struggling to survive.

And this time, it worked. For me, the answer came not from telling my readers every step of the choreography, but rather from giving them a sense of what it was like to be there next to the character. In other words, writing a compelling fight sequence meant not writing much about the fighting itself! This might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but it goes back to the age-old “show, don’t tell!” rule. Though sometimes overused, because narrative is still an important aspect of most stories, this is one of those times where it is a good rule. This is one of those wondrous places where the reader’s vast imagination is the author’s best friend. A few tantalizing glimpses and a fantastic use of descriptive adjectives in which to immerse the reader’s senses will go a lot further in developing a gloriously epic battle scene in your reader’s mind than ten pages of “character A swung his sword, while character B raised up his dagger, catching the blade just before it passed through his defenses, then character A spun 360 degrees and....” wouldn’t you agree? I guess Tolkien had it right all along.

About the Author

Jenelle Leanne Schmidt grew up the oldest of four children. Every night before bedtime her father read to her and her siblings, and it was during these times that her love for adventure and fantasy were forged. While she adored the stories of the Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Prydain, the Wheel of Time, and the Chronicles of Narnia; it wasn't long before her imagination led her to the creation of a world and story all her own.

Connect with Jenelle: Blog / Facebook / Twitter

About the book

King’s Warrior
Book 1 of The Minstrel's Song

When Dark Warriors invade her country, it is up to Princess Kamarie to seek out the legendary king’s warrior and request his aid. The feisty princess has spent her life dreaming of adventure and is thrilled to be tasked with such a quest. There’s only one thing that can dampen the princess’s excitement: Oraeyn. The squire views his task of protecting the princess on her journey as an inglorious assignment and makes no attempt to hide his disappointment.

Despite a rocky start to their journey – in which Oraeyn throws the obnoxious princess in a river just to get her to call him by name – the travelers soon learn that they must depend upon one another if they are to locate the man they have been sent to find.

The adventure merely begins when they meet Brant: a warrior with a mysterious past. He joins their cause readily, his heart smoldering with a vendetta Kamarie cannot completely understand. But whether she trusts him or not, the hope of their world rests on the steel he wears at his side….

Available at Amazon

Which authors do you emulate when writing battles? How might Jenelle's impressionist technique improve your fight scenes? 

Read More

Filtering: why it harms deep POV and how to fix it

Photo by Earl53 at morguefile.com

First person point-of-view is way of narrating as if you were looking through someone else's eyeballs, wearing her skin, moving about the world in her body. It offers tremendous access to another person's psyche.

But only if you remember to let your reader get that close.

A common problem in writing first person POV is what I call "filtering," that is, when the character first labels an experience before experiencing it. While filtering is a staple of third person limited POV, it weakens first person narration.

Here are some examples, (both past and present tense):

1. I feel a chill prickle up the back of my neck.
2. I see eleven elven princesses arrayed in silver sweep into the room.
3. I hear the waves crash against the shore.
4. I smell the pungent odor of old fish and gag.
5. I wondered what my dad would do when he found out.
6. I thought he had the style sense of a colorblind accountant.
7. I turned my head and there to my right I noticed a patch of cheerful daffodils swaying in the breeze.

They don't sound like problem sentences at first blush, do they? But consider that we have access only to the sensations of the protagonist narrator. Is it really necessary to tell us first that he is feeling a sensation or thinking a thought? Of course not. Obviously only the protag/narrator could be having these sensations and opinions, since we are privy to no one else's inner world.

The filter clause further adds a redundant telling to something the rest of the sentence shows. And these filter clauses add a load more iterations of that pesky pronoun "I" that can make even the most selfless protagonist sound like a raging narcissist.

Now let's see those sentences "unfiltered":

1. A chill prickles up the back of my neck.
2. Eleven elven princesses arrayed in silver sweep into the room.
3. Waves crash against the shore.
4. The pungent odor of old fish makes me gag.
5. What would my dad do when he found out?
6. He had the style sense of a colorblind accountant.
7. To my right, a patch of cheerful daffodils swayed in the breeze.

Note how much more immediate and punchy these are. As a reader, you feel as if you are experiencing sensations with the protagonist, rather than being told about them across a table. You're looking through her eyeballs, not sitting on her shoulder.

The thoughts and opinions sound more natural, the way thoughts form inside your own head. You don't think to yourself "I think I want cake." No, that desire will be in your head as "I want cake" or simply "Cake! Must have cake!" (For some, the "I think" filter is a way of expressing uncertainty, so the unfiltered version would be "Should I have cake?" or "Is it bad that I want cake?")

Most of these filters are easy to find and trim away.With "I wondered" some rearranging will likely be necessary, because wondering is a way of contemplating questions.

Example 7 is a way of filtering using excessive "stage business"--narrating movement that could be inferred from context. Obviously a character turns her head to see something to her right. Trust the reader to get it.

A few caveats

When your character is relaying a story to someone else, these filters would be perfectly appropriate. His or her storytelling will not be deep POV, but limited.

Another instance where filtering might be necessary is when the reader knows the protagonist's senses have been interfered with or limited in some way. For example, "Through the blindfold I could see only dark blotches against a field of orange."

What special challenges do you have with writing particular points of view?

Read More

The stirring conclusion: how do you wrap up a story with drama?

Denouement can involve untangling and weaving
(photo by DodgertonSkillhause from morguefile.com)

I'm in currently in the midst of drafting the final chapter of my WIP, that this, the denouement section. I have the scenes roughed out, but my concern is how to handle weaving the threads without the chapter feeling like a series of info. dumps.

I realize that by nature, denouements have an info-dump-ish quality built in. Here are some of the ways the term is defined:

Oxford dictionaries:

The final part of a play, film, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.

Brian Klems at The Writer's Dig

The denouement is the final outcome of the story, generally occurring after the climax of the plot. Often it’s where all the secrets (if there are any) are revealed and loose ends are tied up.

Merriam-Webster Word Central (the online kids' dictionary)

the final solution or untangling of the conflicts or difficulties that make up the plot of a literary work

The word's etymology is from the French, meaning "the untying." That term makes me think especially of mysteries, when the sleuth reveals how all the various plot elements you'd just read actually worked together, and s/he clears away all the false assumptions and red herrings to reveal just "whodunit" or perhaps, why the terrible crime happened. In many of the classic texts, like those of Agatha Christie, the sleuth monologues for pages, with occasional interruptions from his/her captive audience.

My fear is that some of these scenes could end up feeling like that. At the moment, I don't have tips, just questions for you:

How do you avoid info dumps in your final scenes? What books model well how to bring multiple threads to a satisfying conclusion without dragging or feeling too tell-heavy?

Read More

Built for speed: How to use paragraphing to improve flow

A speedy, lean machine (photo by xenia from morguefile.com) 

Over winter break, back in December, I picked up a copy of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea by John Banville. It's a slim little volume about an Irish man coming to terms with the loss of his wife. I like prize-winning literary fiction for the most part. I love Ireland. And I'm always deeply moved by stories about grief. I'd heard good things about Banville. His writing is lovely and wryly funny.

And I just can't seem to get through this darned book.


Nearly every page is one solid block of text. At the end of a long day spent copy editing scholarly lit crit (where literature meets philosophy), I just can't seem to get through more than one dense paragraph a night. By about the twelfth line, my mind starts to wander--and not deeper into the story world.

I can't help thinking that I would have finished this book in a week, if only it had shorter paragraphs.

Maybe too infrequent paragraph breaks aren't your particular vice. Maybe you don't have a clear sense of what things to group together. Both issues stem from a common problem: understanding what a paragraph unit is supposed to be.

Paragraph defined

Our friends at Merriam-Webster define it like this:
paragraph - a subdivision of a written composition that consists of one or more sentences, deals with one point or gives the words of one speaker, and begins on a new usually indented line.

UNC's Writing Center adds this helpful distinction:
[T]he unity and coherence of ideas among sentences is what constitutes a paragraph.

So what a paragraph does for your writing is to put the prose into coherent chunks, make the prose bite-sized so to speak, or at least small enough portions for a reader to fit on her mental plate.

Paragraphing and pacing

This might seem an obvious point, but I suppose it bears saying nonetheless: shorter paragraphs make for a quicker reading experience, and provide a subtle clue that this section of the story is moving along at a fast pace. Action sequences generally have frequent paragraph breaks, while scenes in which a character is regrouping, formulating a plan, or contemplating a decision will generally employ longer paragraphs.

Scenes of suspense, I've found, most often combine short and long paragraphs. This not only keeps the reader a little off-kilter, it also inserts small crescendos of tension. For example, you might have a character being chased who will run, dodge an obstacle, wiggle through a tight spot, and then perhaps stumble or pause to hide or to catch her breath. That pause paragraph might stretch to momentarily release tension, so that you can continue building it, or it can stretch to draw out the inner turmoil the character is experience in order to amp up the tension.

What you don't want in a suspense scene is to insert a long, chatty character monologue about the scenery or her favorite holiday memory or worries about the state of her hairdo. Off-topic tangents, especially lengthy ones, tend to bring a scene to a screeching halt and frustrate the reader.

But what about those contemplative scenes? How do you not get carried away? Audience expectation is one thing to consider--middle grade readers will lose interest after seven or eight sentences, literary fiction readers can persevere longer.

Just keep in mind that the longer you draw out a paragraph, the more mental work you are asking of readers. They may gradually get lost and forget what the paragraph is all about if the topic sentence was six inches up the page. Adding paragraph breaks can be like adding spikes to a mountain face, giving climbers behind you more footholds, easing their ascent.

Paragraphing narration and description

Just because you have one "speaker" in a passage of narrative summary or description--either the narrator or POV character, it doesn't mean that an entire page of this material is necessarily the same kind of stuff.

Narrative summary typically covers hours, days, or even years of story time in a compressed manner. But within that summary, there will likely be shifts of focus or tone. Descriptions will likewise range across a number of different focal points, one after another.

With each shift in focus, subject, or emotional tone, you want a new paragraph

Here's an example from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:

Harry looked nothing like the rest of the family. Uncle Vernon was large and neckless, with an enormous black mustache; Aunt Petunia was horse-faced and bony; Dudley was blond, pink and porky. Harry, on the other hand, was small and skinny, with brilliant green eyes and jet-black hair that was always untidy. He wore round glasses, and on his forehead was a thin, lighting-shaped scar.

 It was the scar that make Harry so particularly unusual, even for a wizard. This scar was only a hint of Harry's very mysterious past, of the reason he had been left on the Durselys' doorstep eleven years before.

At the age of one, Harry had somehow survived a curse from the greatest dark sorcerer of all time....[continues with a brief summary of the attack that killed Harry's parents]. (Rowling, Chamber 9)

Notice how Rowling gradually shifts the attention from general description to a particular feature. That feature is discussed alone, making way for a segue into the backstory of that feature. Each of these separate paragraphs relate to what came before and after, but each has a different focus.

It may be partly because this book is geared to middle grade readers, but one can see "topic sentences" opening two of the three paragraphs ("Harry looked nothing like the rest of the family"; "It was the scar that made Harry so particularly unusual"). If in your writing you find a statement that is then followed by supporting details, that's a good indication that statement should begin a new paragraph.

Paragraphing interior monologue

Interior monologue will usually entail a character working through his or her thoughts and feelings about events or interactions or relationships, bit by bit. Most often a character will cycle through a range of responses, moving from a negative emotional state to a positive one (or vice versa), from confusion to clarity, or from indecision to decision.

Paragraphing for interiority can be tricky, because at times you are trying to show gradual changes in emotional states. It takes a little finesse to know when the emotion has shifted.

As a guiding principle, your interiority should follow a feeling through its exploration to a change. Pick up the new feeling, created in the change, in the next paragraph. Think of it as a kind of relay race, with each new emotion a baton moved forward.

When it's a mixture of emotion and thought, watch for topic shifts--those are a good indication that your character is perhaps processing a different aspect of the emotion, and each new angle or facet will call for a new paragraph.

Here is an example from Sara Zarr's How to Save a Life:

Despite all the love lectures and even though I just said it to Dylan, sometimes I'm not sure I know what it really means to say "I love you." These days with Dylan -- when we're together -- it's more friendly and cozy than romantic and exciting, but it still soothes me. Isn't that more caring about myself, though, than loving him? Shouldn't love have at least a little to do with the other person, separate from yourself? But how can you see anything or anyone in the world apart from yourself? I mean, everything we experience is subjective, since we have no way of experiencing it other than through our eyes. And I get to thinking that love is just a word we use to describe what boils down to a selfish and temporary state of happiness.

I'm not trying to be a cynic. I seriously wonder about this. Because after my dad died, I thought a lot about what a pathetic job I did loving him, and I couldn't figure out why I was so bad at it or what made it so hard. Then I thought maybe I didn't really love him until he was gone. And that made me wonder whether love is impossible until it is too late. 

Except I know that love is possible, because I know my dad loved me and loved my mom. What I don't understand is how he learned to do that so well and what I'm going to do now that he's not here to show me. Maybe I can't do it. Maybe I don't have whatever it takes. (Zarr, How to Save 91-92)

In a few paragraphs, Zarr takes us through mental and emotional processing of a pretty big topic: What does "I love you" mean, and how does one love? Interestingly, in each paragraph, the character begins at a somewhat more positive state and cycles back to a negative state: from realizing love should be selfless to realizing how impossibly selfish we can all be; from desiring the ability to love well to feeling hopeless that it's even possible; from grasping hope in the example of others to once again feeling defeated and irredeemably flawed.

Each paragraph takes a slightly different angle on the topic as well. It begins with romantic love, moves to familial love, and finally examines the teachable nature of love. In her longer paragraph of the three, she uses questions (asking the reader to engage) and transition phrases ("I mean," "I get to thinking") to keep the forward motion of the thought.

More next time...
Paragraphing dialogue is another animal that deserves its own post to be explained effectively, I plan to do that next week, Stay tuned!

Do you find it easy or difficult to separate material into cogent paragraphs? Why?

Read More

No stamp required: epistle brainstorming

“Epistle” is a fancy word for letter or correspondence; coming from the Greek, it means “send news.”

Epistle brainstorming is a method in which you write imagined correspondence by a character or even between characters. Since it’s imagined, you can conceive of exchanges happening slowly, as with postal-service mail or rapid-fire, as with texting or instant messaging.

Photo: SRCHEN from morguefile.com

The goal is to get characters speaking in their own voices. It’s a great warm up for dialogue. It can also help you figure out how your protagonist would think through and interpret an event so you can narrate it in your protagonist’s voice.

Epistolary exercises might also help you brainstorm back stories. Sometimes the act of telling a story to someone else can help clarify which details are most important.

You can also use epistolary brainstorming to interact directly with your characters to develop plots that feel organic and emerge from who the characters are. Imagine you, the author, are instant messaging with your character in order to ask deeper questions.

Epistolary exercises

• Write a letter describing a pivotal experience that changed a character’s life.
• Write a text exchange between the protagonist and best friend explaining a major plot turn.
• Write a text exchange in which one character tries to pump information from another.
• Write a love letter that lists the beloved’s most loved characteristics and describes the time s/he knew that affection and admiration had become something more.
• Write a text exchange in which one character tries to hide information.
• Write a letter in which a character summarizes his/her entire childhood.
• Write a letter in which a character summarizes the events that led him/her to make an important decision or life change.
• Write a letter in which a character describes his/her family to another character who has never met them.
• Write a text exchange in which you ask your character his/her reasons for taking a particular action or his/her feelings about events or other characters.
• Write a text exchange in which you ask the protagonist what s/he thinks should happen in the story—how s/he would prefer to tackle the story problem.
• Write a text exchange in which you discuss your revision ideas with the protagonist.

How might you use epistles to explore your characters and their opinions, attitudes, beliefs and voices?

Read More

Why so tense?

Why yes, this is an old post I'm reincarnating. You see, it's my birthday tomorrow, and I'm treating myself to a little slothfulness this weekend. But don't worry. While I'm growing moss on my fur, you get useful pointers about an issue that repeatedly comes up in my critique group--how to maintain verb tense, and perhaps more importantly, what benefits each tense offers. Win-win, right?

Oh, and if you have any grammar or punctuation question that drives you batty, drop me a note in the comments and I'll cover it in a future post.

Dear Editor-on-Call:

Any advice on staying in one tense while writing? I struggle with slipping between present and past tenses (first person). Is this issue something that improves with experience?

Tense about tense



Dear Tense,

Using a consistent verb tense does become easier with practice, but there are some simple things you can do now to help yourself.

Verb tense is a reflection of the when of your narrator sharing his/her story. You might find it useful to create some visuals to take you there (or "then") whenever you sit down to write.

Past tense narrationFor most writers, past tense flows most naturally because it is the usual mode for discussing events. Every day, we tell others about the events of our lives after the fact. For example, you might arrive at the office and tell a co-worker, "You wouldn't believe what this bozo on the bus just did!" Or you might write in a journal, "In fifth period, a student got up during the exam and puked in my trash can."

Aside from the naturalness benefit, past tense narration give your characters psychological distance from the events and the lovely gift of hindsight. From a looking-back vantage point, your character can clue the reader in about which events are pivotal and can express attitudes about how well or badly s/he behaved in story events. Many of the typical tension-building phrases like "little did I know, my life was about to change forever" express hindsight and require past tense narration as well.

To create a visual, it's helpful to decide how long after the story events this storytelling is occurring. A week later? Six months? Three years? Go search for photos that represent the older, narrator version of the character, and the younger, active protagonist version of the character. Combine the two images. Show the narrator thinking about her past self with the words, "years ago, I..." or "last year, I..." or however you can best express the passage of time between the story actions and the storytelling. This visual can also help you develop voice.

Here's an example (please pardon my lame Photoshop skillz):

If you can't find photos and don't feel confident drawing, it may be enough to post a note on your computer screen: "Yesterday, I ...". This should remind you to have a think-back approach to your story.

You might also find it helpful to keep a short list of common verbs attached to your screen: was, had, saw, felt, thought, went, ran, talked, said, told.

Present tense narration
Present tense is more difficult to maintain, because it is not how we naturally tell stories. Seriously, do you go about your daily routine with a running commentary in your head describing what you're doing? Probably not.

So why write in present? Some writers say they like the immediacy. I don't feel that's reason enough, because this tense is so psychologically weird when you really think about it. What you do gain from present tense is lack of hindsight. You remove a character's ability to have any perspective on what's happening. He or she has to deal with story events as they come.

When might you want to remove hindsight and perspective? When you're presenting an unreliable narrator and/or when your story situation is most plausible and compelling if the character has no idea what the outcome will be.

Your visual reminders can be far simpler. Stick a note to your computer monitor that says, "Right now, I ..." You may also find it helpful to post a list of common verbs in present tense: am, is, talk, say, tell, go, feel, think, see, run.

Flashback caveatKeep in mind that when you deal with flashback material--events occurring prior to the main story time frame--you should change tenses.

If your main story time frame is narrated in present tense, you would switch to past tense for flashbacks.

Example: As I sit in the windowsill and watch traffic flowing below, I remember [here's your time shift marker--everything after "I remember" is in past] the day ambulances swarmed on Columbus when some dude threatened to jump off the roof of April's building. She gave me a blow-by-blow of the whole freaky event as it went on above her.

If the main story is narrated in past tense, flashbacks should be in past perfect tense.

Example: As I sat in the windowsill and watched traffic flowing below, I remembered the day ambulances had swarmed on Columbus when some dude had threatened to jump off the roof of April's building. She'd given me a blow-by-blow of the whole freaky event as it had gone on above her.

Sorry I can't offer a foolproof method to ensure you never switch tenses. This is a discipline that takes time to develop.

If anyone has helpful tech tools to assist with verb tense issues, I'd love to hear about them!

What helps you maintain your story's verb tense? Which tense comes more naturally to you? Why do you think so?

Read More