I'm BORED with action scenes...

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Yeah, I know she doesn't like to hear it, but our Dragon is still just a baby dragon so coffee and alcohol is perhaps out of the question.... for now.

Haha!

I'm on the level of "that 12 year old on tumblr who gets really offended when you mention the fact that they're 12," am I?

Ima cute widdle baby dwagon. *peep*

 

[Malik]

I'm keeping a revisions document as i write. I write down things I know i need to fix as I'm writing, re-reading, etc... It'll be a map for when I do go back and rewrite. So, it's a little comforting that I can see some of the problems. My plot though. It'll need major surgery most likely.

I do agree about the dog.

Save your original first draft, then copy it and work on that one. Save everything you ever write. Believe me on this. Otherwise, you will write over something that you'll go back to in 15 years and realize is the seed of something amazing. I still have hardcopies of, like, six old versions of my first book. There are some moments in there that are really good; unfinished, but good.

 

[Ronald T.]

Heliotrope hit the nail on the head. Action without the investment of a deep emotional foundation -- a component required to give it that necessary spark of life -- usually leaves the action cold and distant. Strong emotion is key to giving great power to any action scene. And the higher the stakes, the more the emotions can be stimulated.

I was going to go into some heavy detail about this issue, but Heliotrope did such a fine job, all I can say is...well done, Helio!

 

[FifthView]

Sometimes it's the cleverness and oddness of the action that makes it so interesting, rather than emotional investment. But I'm unsure how we are defining emotional investment. I'm perhaps intrinsically more skeptical of using emotional triggers. It's true that I develop attachments to some characters and can have my emotions triggered when they are in danger or when some other aspect of the world or story is in danger. But I do very much love clever and odd elements in action scenes. The magic in Mistborn interested me far more than the characters, at first, and even later remained an important part of the spice.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Coffee sucks.. now whiskey... heh heh.

but I don't liiiiiike coffee. Lol. Yes, I am here, legitimately a writer who does not drink coffee. What about an orange Creamsicle? I'm a sucker for those things.

And smoothies.

And mac and cheese.

The above are basically my comfort foods.

 

[FifthView]

To followup on my last comment:

When looking within, this issue of "emotional attachment" may become muddled for me.

I think that most of the time, I'm attached to characters because they are vehicles for the story. It's not so much that I care about Character X as a person, but that I want to see Character X accomplish A, B, & C, and also I want to see how the story plays out. If Character X should happen to die in this current fight, or fail, and Character X is the MC, then I'm not going to be able to see A, B, & C, nor am I going to be able to see how the story plays out. (A, B, & C may be new use or permutations of an odd and wonderful magic ability or martial ability that I want to see play out...or even some interpersonal, social ability like falling in love or building a business and a fortune.)

If Character X happens to be a side character, then the death or failure is important to me because it will show the danger in that world or the power of the antagonist–and those are things that can stop the MC in her tracks.

The reason the MC's emotional state and personal investments are important is because these will affect the accomplishment of A, B, & C and the completion of the story. The death or failure of a side character X could also affect the MC's emotional state, leading to a similar roadblock.

So am I "attached" to characters? Yes, as vehicles of a story. I'm attached to the story, or a scenario, and because characters are vehicles for these I become attached to them. (This is one reason why I can become attached to vile characters.)

Occasionally, some character will come along who will mysteriously, almost magically, create a personal attachment for me. I love that character for who she is. But if I look closely, I'm nearly certain to find that she represents something important for me, and the representation also comes with an A, B, C that I want to see play out in the story. But this type of character is probably quite peculiar for most people; we each have those hidden triggers and backstories that can lead to this sort of sudden attachment; it may be quite subjective.

So ...

When reading, rather than care about the story because I become attached to the characters, I tend to become attached to the characters because I care about the story (or elements of the story.) In practice, with very good books, these attachments can blend so much as to be almost indistinguishable, at least while in the process of reading.

As for action scenes in particular, I'm more interested when the outcomes will have important effects on the story. The degree to which a character is personally affected by the fight is important to me only because it's important to the forward progress of the story. I won't care whether some action scene inspires the MC to learn to love some other character if the love or lack of love doesn't matter much to the story. I'm not reading the story for all that miscellaneous, unimportant emotional minutiae. I also won't care much about the personal goals of a character when those goals or the pursuit of those goals has no bearing on the story.

So to reiterate something I wrote just above: So am I "attached" to characters? Yes, as vehicles of a story. I'm attached to the story, or a scenario, and because characters are vehicles for these I become attached to them.

What this means for me is that the story and the things happening in it should be the focus when you are trying to make things interesting, including action scenes. Brandon Sanderson says to always go for The Awesome. We care about the try-fail cycles of characters, the try-fail that happens in action scenes, because want to keep reading. We want to keep seeing The Awesome. We want to get to the very end of The Awesome which, cross our fingers!, will be awesome. If the MC dies, we won't get there. If she fails, we are threatened with the possibility of not being able to keep seeing it. We love her because she is taking us there.

These thoughts (although not so formed) were behind my other comment about "the cleverness and oddness of the action." The only Stake that matters is the forward progress of the story; the rest are subsidiary. And the reason that Stake will matter is not because of the characters but because of itself.

How you inject the Awesome into the story...well, that's the hard part. Why would readers want to keep reading? What is awesome about your story?

 

[Chessie]

Coffee sucks.. now whiskey... heh heh.

Whoa -- stop. Hammertime!

Coffee is amazing. Whiskey is asking for trouble (fights, anyone?)

But seriously, I'm glad that Dragon started this thread because it brings up an important point: we should write what excites us. I've been thinking so much about this the past couple of weeks. For years I wrote romantic fantasy without even knowing what the hell I was writing. It was only until one of my writing partners pointed it out to me that I realized what was happening. I kept writing love stories about married couples with children and people fighting to love together forever.

So once I figured that out, I threw out the battle scenes. I don't write for that audience. Malik writes for that audience. Skip writes for that audience. Battle scenes are their strong points. Battle scenes are my greatest weakness.

If Dragon is bored, she has many options place infront of her. She can figure out where that boredom comes from. Does she like writing battle scenes? Then giving them up isn't the answer like it was for me. See where I'm going here?

We should write what speaks to us. Even though I write romance, I don't do sex scenes. They're boring to me. I hate reading that crap. I know how it works don't need to go any further. What I DO love writing though are emotions, people falling in love. I know what audience I'm writing for now and so I work on those strengths and do my best to recognize my weaknesses. Like...instead of battle scenes I'll have characters use poisons or daggers because I can write that well. Then in that way, readers still get the physical violence that is sometimes needed for conflict resolution in fiction.

So I'm glad this came up because it allows us all to really think about our audience and whether we need to force ourselves to write things we hate just because everyone else does it. Maybe your audience doesn't need battle scenes.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Boy, talk about some fun tangents... my quick thoughts... When writing I love a character more for what they can bring to the story more than anything. Particularly POV's, I started writing one for my book 2 (a new POV but readers met her in chapter 1 book 1) and wham! What she allows me to reveal to the reader about the world and the story amazed me. Now, she'll be a primary driver through through the third book. I love her, much the way I'd love a Ferrari for the speed and style she gets me to the destination, LOL.

The Awesome is a good point by Sanderson, but the awesome must always be in context of the story. Too often I think the word awesome leads to things like the spate of super hero and FX drivel coming out of Hollywood, LOL. The awesome could be any part of a story. It can be Viserys Targaryen getting his gold crown (awesome) it could be Sherlock Holmes revealing the killer (awesome) it could be the reveal of Keyser Söze in the Usual Suspects (awesome), or the culmination of a twisting con in The Sting (awesome)... But yes, Sanderson absolutely has a point about awesome, so long as we as writers remember that awesome can (and maybe should even more often) be sneaky and subtle rather than in your face over the top stuff.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Whoa -- stop. Hammertime!

Coffee is amazing. Whiskey is asking for trouble (fights, anyone?)

If you drink alone you can only beat yourself up.


Actually, I love the idea of both coffee and whiskey more than I love the actual things. Coffee is bleh, after a couple of trips to China, give me green or a nice herbal tea if it must be a hot drink. I've grown old and boring, I barely consume alcoholic or caffeinated drinks anymore... there I just depressed myself, LOL.

 

[Chessie]

I don't drink anymore. Got in too many fights. True story. 4'11 me.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I also found that drinking only made me THINK I was writing something great, heh heh.

 

[Heliotrope]

Two cups of coffee in the morning and two glasses of wine at night makes Helio a normally functioning human being...

Moving on...

Yeah, Chessie. True that. I couldn't write sweeping epic fantasy if I wanted to. I just don't care enough about large armies of strange creatures duking it out for whatever reason it is wars are fought in epic fantasy. Just not my thing. I like writing for kids because there is a certain innocence about it, but there are also certain things I can get away with that I can't in adult fantasy. Kids are more ready to believe stuff than adults are. It's a strange audience and I love it.

 

[Tom]

Coffee and Red Bull are the only things that get me through finals season/the average day. If your heart isn't racing like a bullet train, you're doing it wrong!

But anyway, yeah. Action scenes can get old after a while. I try to infuse mine with characterization and keep them relevant to the plot, but even then they can start to feel repetitive and boring. I'm writing a character-driven high fantasy project that incorporates elements of political fantasy. While it does have a lot of action scenes, I try to intersperse them with non-action scenes. Action doesn't always equal excitement. I can recall many fantasy novels I've read whose most gripping scenes were moments of political tension, characters revealing something deeply personal, or dozens of other scenarios that don't involve action. Books that don't rely on action scenes are so much more absorbing for me.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Save your original first draft, then copy it and work on that one. Save everything you ever write. Believe me on this. Otherwise, you will write over something that you'll go back to in 15 years and realize is the seed of something amazing. I still have hardcopies of, like, six old versions of my first book. There are some moments in there that are really good; unfinished, but good.

I never delete anything. I still have almost everything I've ever written, except a bunch of stuff that got vaporized in a computer crash. ( )

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Whoa -- stop. Hammertime!

Coffee is amazing. Whiskey is asking for trouble (fights, anyone?)

But seriously, I'm glad that Dragon started this thread because it brings up an important point: we should write what excites us. I've been thinking so much about this the past couple of weeks. For years I wrote romantic fantasy without even knowing what the hell I was writing. It was only until one of my writing partners pointed it out to me that I realized what was happening. I kept writing love stories about married couples with children and people fighting to love together forever.

So once I figured that out, I threw out the battle scenes. I don't write for that audience. Malik writes for that audience. Skip writes for that audience. Battle scenes are their strong points. Battle scenes are my greatest weakness.

If Dragon is bored, she has many options place infront of her. She can figure out where that boredom comes from. Does she like writing battle scenes? Then giving them up isn't the answer like it was for me. See where I'm going here?

We should write what speaks to us. Even though I write romance, I don't do sex scenes. They're boring to me. I hate reading that crap. I know how it works don't need to go any further. What I DO love writing though are emotions, people falling in love. I know what audience I'm writing for now and so I work on those strengths and do my best to recognize my weaknesses. Like...instead of battle scenes I'll have characters use poisons or daggers because I can write that well. Then in that way, readers still get the physical violence that is sometimes needed for conflict resolution in fiction.

So I'm glad this came up because it allows us all to really think about our audience and whether we need to force ourselves to write things we hate just because everyone else does it. Maybe your audience doesn't need battle scenes.

This!

I say that because this, I think, is a helpful key. I know that my thing has always been emotions and relationships. I love writing about characters and their feelings and their interactions with one another. I like to say that I write love stories, because all my stories in some way involve love...whether it be romantic love, or brotherly/sisterly love, or friendship love...Action scenes are pretty hit or miss for me on the other hand. A lot of things have to come together for me to really connect with and LIKE an action scene, and, well, I haven't figured out entirely what they are. But I don't think they're my thing, necessarily. Hate battlefield scenes. Hate them. I prefer fight scenes to be intensely personal, one-on-one, between two characters we know. As I've said before, I prefer knives as weapons. Don't know why, I just do.

I actually don't know how this applies to the mind-numbingly boring scene I'm on, though. I honestly don't want to bother continuing. I care that little about what happens in this scene. That's a problem, right? I don't know where the not-caring is coming from. I think perhaps I need to outline the stakes a bit better. Something...

 

[Nimue]

These might make you feel better.

Just so you know, nobody sits down and writes a perfect novel from first page to last in a single shot. Nobody.

103 Bracing Quotes to Propel You Through Your First Draft? ? Writingeekery

I'm gonna pull way back and say thanks to Helio for this link. Reading dozens and dozens of authors agreeing that first drafts are going to suck finally seemed to get through to my pessimistic "logic" brain. Hammer and chisel'd a chink in my skull for some light to get through. I wrote 2200 words today, and if that doesn't sound like much, I can't even remember the last day where I broke 2000... Even had some lines I liked. "Every detail was drawn through her senses like needle and thread through flesh." Nice. (?)

I wish I had real advice for you, Dragon, but I think I've become a lot more anxious about my writing at 25 than I was 15. (Mostly, I think, because I was under a lot more illusions about its quality back then.) I think we need to let go of the "perfect", the "great", and even the "good", and embrace the goddamn rough draft.

I'm trying very hard to put that into practice with this story. I'll let you know if the lesson ever sticks.

 

[FifthView]

The awesome could be any part of a story.

That's a great point.

I often find that the culture and society of a fantasy world are big draws for me. I keep reading because I want to see more of it and I want to see how the conflict will play out in such a setting.

Unusual, clever, and well-conceived magic systems also keep me turning the pages, particularly these in context with other aspects of the story.

When I'm reading stories with strong romantic elements, I'm drawn forward by more than the romance itself. Again, the confluence of factors as they affect the romantic development (world/society, personality types, conflicts) can turn the common story type into one that is awesome. An awesome romance-adventure.

The common theme above seems to be context, or the combination of factors (Edit: awesome factors?) turning something ordinary or mundane into something awesome.

Having an idea of "The Awesome" for a particular story, with sub-elements that may be awesome, can help when deciding how to approach action scenes by clarifying the stakes.

 

[Heliotrope]

Agreed, but at what point does "awesome" become "gimmick" ?

I feel like there needs to be more than just awesome... But maybe I just don't understand the concept?

I think you can have an awesome idea for magic or world building but that is not all a story needs to be a story. Story comes from characters and personal growth, or at least change or discovery?

 

[FifthView]

Story comes from characters and personal growth, or at least change or discovery?

Helio, I'm not sure that character growth will be very interesting if the context of that growth is not awesome.

Awesome conflicts, obstacles, and opponents, the promise of awesome rewards and the threat of awesome punishments, an awesome environment, awesome events...an awesome situation.

What provokes a sense of awe may be up for debate–and whether anything can provoke awe if written well. With movies, I personally sometimes enjoy the psychological drama or thriller. A movie like Ordinary People tells an otherwise mundane story; but I think it can be said that the landscape of the psyche can be as awesome as any exterior landscape. (We also have the conceptual conundrum: Any given person is an external factor for any other person, just as any fantastical beast or landscape is an external factor.)

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I'm not sure these two go together, but I get what you're saying. Gimmick doesn't necessarily bring a negative connotation in story telling, but... I'l take a shot at this.

Awesome becomes (bad) gimmicky when it is no longer organic to the story... or a better definition of when awesome becomes bad, is when it severs the suspension of disbelief? It wouldn't matter how genius Holmes's solution to a crime was if the reader calls bullshit. That's when awesome! fails. The degree to calling bullshit also matters. As readers viewers, we can greet some of this with a nudge and a wink, while others leave our heads shaking, or worse, our eyes bulging, or worse, laughing.

Agreed, but at what point does "awesome" become "gimmick" ?

I feel like there needs to be more than just awesome... But maybe I just don't understand the concept?

I think you can have an awesome idea for magic or world building but that is not all a story needs to be a story. Story comes from characters and personal growth, or at least change or discovery?