Looks like I won't be able to write my martial arts story afterall :(

[WonderingSword5]

No, I only mentioned the part to them about creating a martial art tournament that was held back in the 90's based on existing tournaments and styles but mixing it's own style in that karate, taekwondo, kung fu practitioners, etc, could all follow the same set of rules. And it was an open martial arts forum, not a dojo I spoke to.

I mentioned to them what tournaments were like in the 90's. They didnt like that I don't have the experience competing at a martial arts tournament and that I need experience in martial art tournaments before I start writing about them.

The drug idea wouldn't be necessarily an actual drug. It would be some form of herbs like incense, like a smell used for meditation. It would be one of the reasons the students would keep winning the fights. I explained this another writing forum abdbrhey told me number 1, they dont likebthe idea of me making up a fictional tournament and mixing the styles together. And number 2, the incense idea that makes the students feel stronger before their matches is too disturbing and violent because they are minors.

Tell me how bad it is and what needs to be fixed so I don't look like a monster for writing this

 

[FifthView]

You always want to be careful when referencing an actual institution, business, etc.

Legal repercussions are possible, especially if you represent them in a bad light.

So I’d create an entirely fictitious tournament, dojo, etc. if there’s any chance of a negative portrayal.

 

[WonderingSword5]

You always want to be careful when referencing an actual institution, business, etc.

Legal repercussions are possible, especially if you represent them in a bad light.

So I’d create an entirely fictitious tournament, dojo, etc. if there’s any chance of a negative portrayal.

But I'm not basing it on any existing dojo. I'm not sure how I gave that impression I am

This is a fictional tournament, with a fictional instructor, fictional bad guys, a fictional dojo school, etc. Everything is completely made up

All I asked on a forums that talks about general martial arts if it was ok I made up a fake tournament set in the 90's and create my own rules for the tournament that are similar to kumite rules, that is all. They said I could not and need competition experience.

 

[WonderingSword5]

If you explained any of this to the real life dojo you were proposing to use, I'm beginning to see why they were so upset.

I think you misunderstood me. I never proposed any of this to a real dojo. I went on a martial arts forums that talks about all different martial arts, anything related to talk about martial arts. Not an actual real school's website. And on this general open martial arts forum, I simply asked them about creating my own fake, fictional, martial arts tournament with a made up fictional school the MC attended with a made up hybrid style that was back in the 90's and asked what tournaments were like back in the 90's. They all told me I can't write any of this unless I had the experience of fighting in a tournament myself.

I asked the same questions on another writing site forum and I added in this fictional dojo that used this fictional drug-like affect on their fictional students to lake them undefeatable, winning the matches. On the writing website they told me I cant mix styles and create my own cause that goes against rules and I would have to create a fantasy3mase up world for it to work and they told me having the teen students on this drug-like secret thing from the fictional made up sensei is too disturbing to write about.

I'm not sure why I'm getting such a hard time with feedback over this. I'm not sure what is confusing about it

 

[WonderingSword5]

I'm not saying don't do it - far from it.

I was just wondering if you'd told the dojo you were planning to refer to their tournaments back in the 90s and add to that a major drug scandal. I could see how that would make them twitchy.

I think this part was also a misunderstanding. There is no real dojo I spoke to. I went on a site where you can freely talk about martial art styles, which allows you to discuss anything related to martial arts, it's not an actual dojo school forum. I was asking about what it was like in tournaments during the 90's, which this part of my story takes place. I wasn't given much feedback, other than look it up myself and told that I need to compete in some matches before I write about a fictional one.

The drug idea I mentioned here and another site for writers. Someone please tell me what's going on here and why is everyone misunderstanding me

I mentioned numerous times this a fictional made up school with a fictional made up tournament

 

[MisaMai]

Perhaps consider using a specific form of martial arts as a base and making an "underground" version of the art form? That would leave you room to add or subtract elements as you see fit to incorporate them into your story but would also leave room incorporate real elements of martial arts into the canon of the world. By creating a fictional style of fighting you might be able to avoid offence but by incorporating scoring methods that are common throughout many different martial arts practices you would be able to draw in a wider audience of those familiar with general martial arts practices. I hope this helps!

 

[WonderingSword5]

This does help a lot. Thank you. Only will others be offended if I have these tweens/teens fighting in these underground tournaments? It wouldn't be like some no hold barred matches. It would still have rules like based on ones similar in traditional kumite or taekwondo rules. Just allow other things, like takedowns and such.

And is the incense drug the teacher uses to enhance the students performances still a bad idea?

 

[cak85]

So I had a discussion on a martial arts website about writing martial arts in my story, about the point scoring, how matches would be set up, the age brackets of how kids to teens would of been set up, what the tournaments were like in the 90's, if anything's changed, and they told me if I had never experienced and lived martial arts, the point systems, tournament matches and no whstvthe crowds are like or what its6like ro ein or lose then I can not write about it, even if it is fantasy

So I'll have to substitute it for something else, can anyone spitball ideas at me for what I can replace where the MC was training in his youth, other than a martial arts school? And I'll use the same concept I had planned and just avoid the martial art dojo.

I doubt George RR Martin ever stabbed another person with a sword but he wrote one of the most successful fantasy novels.

 

[The Dark One]

I doubt George RR Martin ever stabbed another person with a sword but he wrote one of the most successful fantasy novels.

As his lawyer I could say that...erm...that I've already said too much.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I doubt George RR Martin ever stabbed another person with a sword but he wrote one of the most successful fantasy novels.

As a fantasy writer - and a TV writer - I also doubt Martin has ever stabbed a person with a sword, but I'd be willing to bet he's stabbed something with one, and probably owns more than one, like so many other fantasy writers I know. I only have one sword, but not for lack of wanting.

Like I've said before, you don't have to have actually engaged in something fantastical to be able to emulate it. I know what two gallons of thick fluid looks like spilled on the ground. (Two gallons is about how much blood an adult human body contains at any given time.) I've stabbed stuffed t-shirts. I would kill to get my hands on some ballistic jelly. And a friend of mine is right now doing experiments for me in body elimination by soaking bones and teeth in various chemicals. Pro tip: hydrogen peroxide eats through it in a day or so. We estimate that it would take a week to reduce a body to teeth. Now, for the teeth...

I love books like Violence: A Writer's Guide by Rory Miller. https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Writers-Second-Rory-Miller-ebook/dp/B00CWGH46I/ It and others like it help to make our work plausible without killing anyone or doing hospital rotations, and they are awesome. We're writers. We do homework for a living. Good luck and keep researching, but don't let it stop you from getting started on the writing.

 

[FifthView]

Some things aren’t easily evaluated.

If a writer has his MC kill a dragon with a sword, I as reader can only guess the plausibility. Maybe I can make a so-called educated guess, because I’ve stabbed meat in the kitchen with a kitchen knife. But I have no experience of fighting dragons.

If, however, an author described his MC having a heart attack, being admitted to the hospital, and getting a stent placed in one of his arteries, I can evaluate that from my own experience.

Not every heart attack is the same, even so.

 

[Malise]

[The following message was copied and pasted from a post that I put in your other thread "So my story is too offensive". I just thought that it applied to the flow of the conversation that was happening here as well since not all of the people following the other thread are on this thread.]

I have a small antedocte about my own experiences with the 'writing what you don't know' issue that most writers do have.

I actually joined my school's wrestling team for a year just because I wanted to see how much I would suck at it, out of a sense of morbid curiosity. And it was a really bad case of morbid curiosity, as I'm as physically threatening as an underweight 5th grader that completes their mile run in 11 minutes. I did really suck. I lost 4 out of the 5 official matches I competed in and stalemated in 1, and I believe that I came into the stalemate fight wearing glasses with my fighting gear.

Around the same time, I was also writing a story about turf wars between organized crime members, when the only experience I had with the subject was living in an area of L.A where gangs technically stopped being an issue 25 years ago. Since I technically had more personal experience with the subject of organized crime than most people, I didn't do any research because dumb me assumed that 'street cred' and 'immersion in the culture' were enough for authenticity. Boy, I was wrong. I ended up with a story with obsessively well-dressed and flamboyant hitmen, too much female and pretty boy representation, and little-to-no mention of drugs, blood feuds, and broken families. The entire thing might've been the thing that justifies having sensitivity readers for criminals if mainstream media got a hold of it.

What I did notice however, was that my fight scenes did get infinitely better due to my experiences in wrestling. They got more dynamic and realistic, and the fights where the viewpoint character was losing were 10x more emotional (for obvious reasons). However, the issue was I wrote only good melee fights, and gangs don't bring knives to gunfights. This is despite the fact that I was in a marksman team before, so theoretically I should be able to write a good shoot-out. But experience doesn't equal expertise and considering the fact that I sucked harder in shooting than I did in wrestling, so I might've written my bad techniques in as 'god-tier tactics' that the MC supreme uses to kill everything. Like seriously, who brings a rifle (the only firearm I was trained in) to a pistol fight?

So yeah, those were all the attempts that I made to intentionally 'write what I know' by seeking to 'experience what I write', which ended up with very mixed results. Was it still a fun story to write? Very. However, if you make me compete with a kid who spent their entire life in a gated community who is x100 more obsessed with Al Capone than I am to write a more authentic organized crime story, the kid in a gated community would probably win. Though there is a chance that I still wrote the better story, even if it's the less authentic one. So take that as you will.

 

[Gray-Hand]

Tolkien had no experience fighting with swords, shields or axes. Neither does George Martin, Bernard Cornwall, Conn Iggylden or David Gemmel.

Tom Clancy, Matthew Reilly and Lee Child have never been in a gun fight.

The wachowski sisters never learned martial arts.

As a ‘martial artist’, I hearby grant you permission to write whatever you like about martial arts tournaments.

 

[WonderingSword5]

We're writers. We do homework for a living. Good luck and keep researching, but don't let it stop you from getting started on the writing.

I completely agree! We as writers don't need to of actually stabbed something in order to write a scene of a sword fight or have to of used a gun in order to write a shoot out scene, or to of been a cop to write about a police scene or even of climbed a mountain in order to write about a mountain climber. I can do all my research through books and internet and get ask questions to those who have similar knowledge

I just don't understand why a few from the martial arts community got so offended and angry at me about wanting to put martial arts in my story

FifthView So for example if I don't know what the experience of someone who's been to the ER for say a heart attack, I could do all my research on that if it was a scene in a story?

Malise Thank you for this! I guess this shows that we can't all experience everything we want to write about and having the experience does not always mean it will make it better to write about, whereas someone who hasn't experienced it but does the proper research can write it better?

Tolkien had no experience fighting with swords, shields or axes. Neither does George Martin, Bernard Cornwall, Conn Iggylden or David Gemmel.

Tom Clancy, Matthew Reilly and Lee Child have never been in a gun fight.

The wachowski sisters never learned martial arts.

This is very true. I haven't notice anyone complaining over this and their stories have been very successful

As a ‘martial artist’, I hearby grant you permission to write whatever you like about martial arts tournaments.

Thank you I will! I'm glad you're not mad about it and others on here agree. I'm just wondering why some of those martial artists I asked took such offense to it? They seemed to of taken it very personally when I asked them

 

[FifthView]

So for example if I don't know what the experience of someone who's been to the ER for say a heart attack, I could do all my research on that if it was a scene in a story?

Sure, but I'm not sure how much research you'd need. That would depend on the kind and level of detail you wanted to use. Probably, a few firsthand accounts read online would be fine in many cases. But if you are writing it from the perspective of an EMT or emergency room doctor, you might want more research, for instance in procedures, equipment, medications, and so forth.

My general point was that "killing a dragon with magic" is a fundamentally different thing than real-world events, people, places, activities, etc., and you have more freedom in writing about things that few if any people have experienced.

So you could do a lot of research about space travel, for instance, but very few people have experienced it. You could make it hard sci-fi or a space opera.

The only additional caveat is expectation. Various genres have common tropes and burdens of satisfying the expectations of readers. So even though few people have traveled to space, avid readers of sci-fi genres might become upset if the book they just bought violates certain expectations. So...

Also, I've wondered who your target audience is. If you are hoping avid fans of the martial arts will be picking up the novel, you might run into issues there. Or not. Many fans like myself know next to nothing about the martial arts. But there are other potential readers who probably visit the forums you visited.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

There are so many resources out there for writers to get inspiration and research from, it isn't even funny. For example, I stumbled across this article sometime last year.

Experience: I was swallowed by a hippo

I think it's an amazing resource for writing from the perspective of someone being swallowed by a dragon.

Also, it's amazing how many doors the phrase, "I'm an author and I would love to ask you a few questions about (fill in the relevant blank). May I steal a little of your time?" Once, I needed information on how someone underage could enroll themselves in a school in Washington State. I'm in Missouri, and the internet wasn't helping me (for once), so I called the Seattle School District. A very nice lady there spent about an hour on the phone with me, and it was awesome.

I just don't understand why a few from the martial arts community got so offended and angry at me about wanting to put martial arts in my story

Hon, you won't make everyone happy all the time. No one can. You're going to upset some people no matter what, so do your best, listen to the perspectives of the groups you're writing about without talking over them or making assumptions, and then write your heart out. No matter how comprehensive your research is, no matter how many sensitivity readers you find, there will always be someone who says, "That's not my experience. You can't write that." Or even better, "That offends me. Go die in a fire." We all go into this business sensitive and worried about what people will think, but we toughen our skins and try really hard to not suck, and eventually it becomes obvious that the naysayers are in the minority. Write anyway.