Lilith Saintcrow's Blog, page 195

How My Ankle Made Me Temporarily Deaf

I know I shouldn't have done it. My bouldering partner had just finished talking about how sometimes, one's body tells one it's just not going to work a certain route on that particular day, and one should listen. The risk of getting hurt is too high. I'd agreed, and I warmed up on some easier bouldering problems while she was practicing her knots. I knew I wasn't feeling a hundred percent, but I wanted to gut it out.

I moved to a particular route I'm working–it starts out with hand-matching on a nasty little pancake, then getting all the way over into the left hip, reaching up while tensing one's abs and sticking a sort-of-pocket with the right hand, then going up and smearing while the sort-of-pocket turns into an undercling and one has to half-dyno to stick one's fingers on a shoulderblade-shaped hold near the top. (Translation: it's a real bitch, and it requires a lot of core strength, trust in one's left foot on bare rock, and faith.) I got up to the dyno, knew I wasn't going to make it, and climbed down. Then I did it again, and I sent it, reached the top hold and felt gratified.

My body warned me, though, with a tremor in my quads and my hands not really sticking like they should. Don't do that again, my body said.

I didn't listen.

I chalked up, ran my gaze over the route, and stubbornly tried it again. I thought momentum would help. I failed the dyno, my fingers slipped off the top hold, and I fell. Which would have been okay, because I went loose and there were plenty of pads…except my foot landed exactly wrong on the edge of a new crash mat, my ankle rolled, and I immediately knew I'd done something utterly stupid. I let out a sound that scared the bejesus out of my partner, who dropped her knot and came to check things out, and I could barely hear her over the ringing in my ears. It hurt like hell. How my ankle could have made me temporarily deaf I don't know. Jeez.

Anyway, by the time I had my breath back my ankle was already beginning to swell, so I practiced knots a little and hobbled around. Nothing broken, just strained. Needless to say, there was no more climbing yesterday, which irritated me to no end, especially since it was my own damn fault. My partner made sure I was okay to drive, we called it a session, and I hobbled through a couple errands I couldn't put off before going home to ice and ibuprofen all. damn. day.

This morning the ankle is swollen and bruised, and I'm moving pretty slowly. No running, dammit, but taking the weekend off won't hurt me. It may even help; I'll be really fresh on Monday.

I'll be working on the next combat-scene post today in between other stuff I have to get accomplished, it might be tomorrow before I get it posted, so bear with me. But, as extra credit, you can take a look at my description above, and see if you can plot the arc of the story, as well as see where I revised to make the pacing quicker or slower. (Hint: look at sentence length.)

See you in a bit.

Related posts:Three Things You Didn't Know About Me
Reaching Higher
When Going Eighty Feels Like Standing Still

"Review" Does Not Mean "Immune"

There's freezing fog here, frosting every edge. It's very pretty if I can just sit inside and watch it. Venturing out into it, however, is a whole different ball of wax. Losing a lot of weight means I have very little insulation, and even with four or five layers on the wet chill just goes right through me. I have never been so glad for the heater sitting next to my writing chair.

So…buckle your seatbelts, darlings. Here goes.

One of the current Internet sh!tstorms revolves around this post "Beware of Unprofessional Reviewers." Of course there was a lot of pearl-clutching over this.

On the one hand, immature and nasty behavior among book bloggers is rampant, and the sense of entitlement from plenty of people who slap together something they call "reviews" is massive and stunning. (This is human nature, and not worth bemoaning more than tangentially.) There are great review blogs out there, but they are sadly more the exception than the rule. And there are some great review blogs that have devolved into masses of self-gratification and one-upmanship. In other words, it's just like the entire Internet.

On the other hand, naming the actual blogs the author had a problem with…probably not a good move. I might not have done that, but you know what? You write reviews for public consumption, you had better be prepared to be called on your behavior. Put on your big girl panties and deal. Also, it's the author's blog, she can say what she wants. She thinks someone's being a shitheel? Well, she can say so. Period.

There's a real sense among review blogs that authors should just not say anything other than a gushy "thank you sir may I have another?" no matter how the review bloggers act. Which is just not going to happen, any student of human nature can tell you as much. And seriously, I've read plenty of reviews (not even of my own work, thank you) where it's obvious the reviewer was responding to something personal in their life rather than to the book itself. Or it's equally obvious the reviewer is engaged in tearing down something they're jealous of. Expecting authors to not care about that is just pure-d foolishness.

Review blogs do serve a number of necessary purposes. They're a way for readers to band together and discuss things. They build communities. They serve and fulfill social needs. They can occasionally serve as a facilitator between the writer and readers, which is downright awesome when it's done right. They can even (sometimes) provide feedback for authors, though this is not (and should not be) one of their prime goals.

But review blogs do not get to tell writers how to act. They can have opinions about how writers should act, sure, but those opinions are not given a lot of extra weight by the fact of them being "reviewers." Anyone with a laptop can be a reviewer, there's not a lot of quality control, and one's opinion as a blogger is not worth a lot until you've consistently shown why it should be. This isn't just on on the Internet, it also functions this way in real life. For example, lots of people have opinions about how I should act. Many of those opinions are just not worth a fart in a windstorm to me personally. The people whose opinions I care about–the people I love, or whose judgment I've been taught I can trust–are not The General Public. Also, lots of people have opinions about how I should/should not write my books/finish a series/write a character. At the end of the day, I may listen politely, but the decision is still mine. The judgment call is still mine, because I am producing the content. I'm where the buck begins.

So. Yes, the post about "unprofessional reviewers" named names, which is to my mind the only problematic part of it–but it's not very problematic. You want to act like a three-year old on your book review site, or produce shoddy reviews? Go for it. But do not expect that the behavior will always go unremarked or unchallenged. It's the Internet. It's public. Deal. You're not in the fricking Witness Protection Program. You're a blogger.

I personally do not respond to reviews one way or another, for reasons I've given elsewhere. But writing a post where one takes issue with specific behaviors, offers illustrations, and proffers advice to one's fellow writers isn't a crime. It isn't even worth the pearl-clutching that ensued, even though anyone with two synapses to rub together could have seen the pearl-clutching coming. It's not going to be a post people who produce book review blogs are going to like, certainly, but just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not valid, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean someone's committed a huge sin.

So, there it is. You all know the comment policy. That being said, go for it. Discuss.

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Reviews, The Internet, And High School
On Reviews

My Temper, and Linkspam

Have blown out three electrical appliances in the last two days. (Temper, my besetting sin.) And today I'm not going to be slowing down for anything until dinnertime (and maybe not even then) so here are some links in lieu of a post:

* The Return of the REAL King, a review of a new book on Elvis. I am pretty fascinated by the ongoing worship of all things Presley, and this book seems to focus on a little-mined subject: the actual making of the music instead of the messy personal life.

* A fascinating look at Russian television.

* Waterloo teeth. This is one of the reasons why I don't get when people say history is boring. It's juicy and fabulous and utterly weird.

* Chuck Wendig's utterly hilarious take on why you don't want to be a writer. I laughed until I cried, holding onto both sides of my desk, sides heaving and tears rolling down my cheeks.

* Monica Valentinelli on a writer's hidden enemy.

And with that, I'm outie. Got to work while the iron's hot, and there's errands today besides. See you.

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Just Not Happening (Much)
Simple Link Soup

Revising That Fight, Part 1

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames. Check us out!

Over at the eHarlequin site I've a post up: TAKEN, or How I Learned To Love Weasel Boy. Man, I had so much fun with that book. It was unreal. Also, the Literary Lab has a post on Lies You Believe as a writer; good stuff.

So let's see, where were we? Oh, yes. We've covered why you would want to beat the shit out of your characters; we've covered the holy trinity of reason, stakes, & cost; we've covered getting a zero draft. Today we are going to talk about the key to any good combat scene–the effective revising. Today we're going to take a look at the big-picture revising, next week we'll get into fine detail stuff. (I know some of you have questions. Relax, we'll get there. Promise.)

You've got a chunk of text that's a baby combat scene. The first step is not to go back to it for a little while. You want to give it time to rest, and you want to give your brain time to forget what you intended with the scene so you can clearly look at what's really there instead. This time varies from writer to writer–some people can achieve a slight but critical distance after 24 hours, others need a month or so. Some finish the whole book, then go back and start cutting and pasting, others revise in-process. Both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks. I use both, to varying degrees, depending on the book.

The second step is to look at the arc of the scene. Stories are arcs, remember? They have a situation at rest, an event that disturbs the equilibrium, rising action as the consequences are worked through, a crisis and falling action to a new equilibrium at the end. With each story, there can be any number of chapters that have their own arc, and chapters can also be broken up into scenes that have–you guessed it–their own arc.

One of the things I really like to do is plot out a story, or a scene, or a chapter (generally one that's giving me trouble) on a sheet of butcher paper, and figure out where the arc is. Within that arc, there are several ways to play with the structure, to have mini-crises, to subvert expectations and play with conventions. Don't hesitate to play, or to break the rules here. But you must understand the rules to break them, and be prepared for the breakage not to work out well for your Readers.

I could go off on a monstrous huge ongoing tangent here, but I won't. For once.

This sort of big-picture revision is sometimes harder than all the fine detail stuff. For me it usually involves a lot of staring and thinking, maybe changing a word or two in a whole session's day of work, maybe scrapping half a scene and beating my head against the desk in pain. Occasionally it also takes a session at the heavy bag or a few miles on the treadmill, my brain chewing over and over the scene if it's not working, looking at it from different angles, pecking at where the rising action or the denouement should be and what's there instead.

The good news is, now that I've spent a lot of time doing this over the course of at least 20 (published) and umpteen (unpublished, OMG) books, I often get a clear idea in my head during the initial vomiting up of a chunk of text (nice metaphor, right?) and it turns out to be pretty structurally sound from the get-go. Which makes the big-picture revising a matter of making sure the transitions between what comes before and after the combat scenes smoother, getting rid of passive constructions, and just generally doing cleanup.

Keeping in mind that this is the big-pixel stage of revision, here are a few things to look out for:

* No Extra Hands, Please. Now is the time to get really clear in your head who is doing what to whom. And just because it is crystal in your head, you cannot always assume it is going to be so for your readers. (This is why a certain amount of distance is so critical–because sometimes you can't see the scene for the trees, so to speak.) This is where I normally run through my physical blocking of a scene again, at least once, action by action. Draw it out on your faithful sketchpad or butcher paper if you've got to, do it in your living room (props optional but very fun.) Be sure you know exactly what's happening at any moment.

* Physics Is A Bitch. Be A Bitch Right Back. If your character has superspeed, superstrength, accelerated healing, a funky battle ability, fine. There must be a cost for using that ability, and you need to have an idea of what laws of physics you are going to break. Go ahead and break them, but be ready with a cost and an explanation for the reader. Superabilities without costs make cardboard characters, and if you're going to break the rules in physics you had better have an explanation on hand for my cynical inner reader. This is where knowing exactly what happens is a godsend–you can figure out which rules you want to break, and how.

If your character does not have funkeh supah abilities, that's fine too. You still need to know about physics. You still need to know what a fight does to you, and how people respond to violence. Working within that limitation on your character is fun and educational, but you have got to have at least done some research, and you have to be prepared for your characters to leave limping. Or worse.

* Sensory Overload. Get into the scene. Fill it with sensory cues. What does this look, smell, taste, feel, etc. etc. ad nauseum like? Show me. Show me the sweat on your hero's brow, the way his hands are shaking, the roar of gunfire punching sensitive eardrums, the flat copper taste of adrenaline, the red shock of pain, the sound of muscle tearing loose from bone, the aroma of violence and fear. Give it all you've got. This is no place to be shy. You are trying to give me a full-color holographic immersion in an adrenaline-soaked fight using little black dots of ink on white paper. Make it as easy to get inside as you can on the reader, and make it as vivid as possible.

In the next step–the fine-level detail revising–you're going to scrap some of this, I guaran-goddam-tee it; but you want a choice of sensory cues to keep. Give yourself a range of sensory options so you can pick the ones with the most punch when you finally get to the detail revisions.

* Use Your Viewfinder. You've got to find your lens. What I mean by this is, first-person POV has a pretty narrow and tight focus, and showing the overall structure of a fight with that tight a focus is a job and a half. (Learning how to tell the reader without telling the character is a fine art.) Third-person limited POV is looser, but you run the risk of losing immediacy; third person omniscient is great for history and for some types of fiction, but severely handicapped when it comes to retaining a tight focus and giving a reader an entry point into the story. You know what sort of POV you're best at, most interested in, or a story needs; take a while to figure out how you're going to overcome the handicaps of that particular choice.

Your "viewfinder" is the peephole the reader is looking through. It can be a first-person narrator's head, or it can have the slightly-wider focus of third-person. (Don't do second, okay? Especially second in present-tense. That's just pretentious.) You are going to have to figure out how to insert or introduce some things into the viewfinder's field of vision for your reader that your character may or may not see. If you can't find a way to do this without breaking POV (for example, switching from first to third in only one chapter of a work) then you are most probably cheating, and a reader will call you on it. There is always a way, and half the battle is in knowing the limitations of your chosen POV so you can work effectively inside them.

* Purge Your Favourites. Say you know you have a favourite phrase, a favourite way to describe something, a habit of using "that" or "seemingly" to water down an otherwise strong and sexy sentence. On your first way through a scene in big-pixel revisions, kill as many of those as you possibly humanly can. Eradicate them before they breed. Don't worry, there will be plenty more left for your editor to tango with.

This is another thing we're going to take a closer look at in detail revisions. But for right now, that's enough work, right? Crack a brewski or whatever, you've done really well. In big-pixel revisions, you do not want to get weighed down. Take a chainsaw through it and don't get bogged in an endless cycle of ever more infinitely tiny cuts.

That's what the next round of revision is for. We'll talk about that next week.

Over and out.

Related posts:Story Rules, And When To Break Them
Why Would You Kick The Sh!t Out Of Your Characters?
Book Pimpage, And Combat Scenes

Magic, Begin

Thanks to everyone who has suggested Victoriana for me! Especially Reader Ariella–thanks for the ISBNs, they make things a ton easier.

My project for the morning (other than bouldering and getting in wordcount) is to find a decent map of London in the 1850s; one at least 2ft by 3ft that I can get laminated and tack up over my fireplace. Of course I plan on altering things with (relative) abandon–what use is history if one can't have a little fun–but I'd like the bones up there for me to build on, so to speak.

Yes, this is for the current work, but I don't know if I can announce it yet, so mum's the word until I get permission. But it's awesome, I am hideously excited and almost dancing with glee every time I get a chance to work. This is the period of creation where everything is shiny and fun and new, where everything feeds the work and serendipity, not to mention synchronicity, is working overtime. There comes a certain point where something clicks in a book, the characters get a breath of life and start misbehaving in earnest, and the whole thing achieves a critical mass and starts behaving like an organism in its own right rather than just a disparate collection of words.

I love that.

So, I've a fresh cuppa and a mass of reference books stacked at my elbow, tissues within reach and the window to my street uncovered. The clouds are gray cotton, the street is gray pavement, even the grass is grayish. But there's color and life and motion inside my head.

Let the magic begin.

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A Certain Value of Sane

Things I've said to myself this morning:

"Self, going out into the freezing wind with wet hair was a Bad Idea."

"The last two miles are easiest. Keep running. *wheeze*" (They're not easiest, they're just there and I might as well do them once I've done the other five.)

"Oh, look. Another broken tea mug." (No, I did not break it because it sassed me. I just put it down wrong. And it fell, and I thought of catching it on my foot, but that sent it careening…oh, hell, you don't want to know the rest.)

"I probably shouldn't have told that kid to watch her tone, but dammit, she deserved it." (The bus stop is sometimes a madhouse in the mornings.)

"OW! Well, now we know THAT hurts." (Said a couple times, actually–a few shocks of static electricity since the wind's up and it's dry, a stubbed toe, a banged-up knee, and fingers pinched in a drawer.)

"Driving in downtown Portland on a Tuesday won't be that bad, right?" (The store out in the burbs doesn't have what I want. *girds loins* Nos morituri, and all that…)

"Self, you just had to pick the one historical period you don't know enough about. Welcome to research hell." (I seriously need to get my Victoriana on.)

"Why does Indian food make me smell like buttered toast the next day?" (WEIRD, right?)

"You know, if I wasn't walking in the middle of the road, they probably wouldn't have tried to run me over." (…Yeah. I was thinking about gaslamps.)

"Eh, why not. It can't hurt." (Famous last words.)

"Don't you look at me like that. I have the opposable thumbs!" (Okay, so this was said to a squirrel who gave me a filthy look as I surprised her in my front yard. What she was doing with that stick I have no idea. Anyway. Also said to squirrels this morning: "Goddamn peeping Toms!" Look, they were trying to peer into my window! I CANNOT MAKE THIS SH!T UP.)

"Five more minutes…" (When my alarm went off this morning. You all know how THAT goes.)

"You know today is going to be one of those days where it's fun to be you but nobody else will get it, right?" (Staring in mirror as I put my Kuan Yin earrings on, to remind myself to be gentle.)

Yeah.

Have fun out there, dear Reader. And stay warm. The wind is cold, and it tends to drive people a little crazy–what, me? What are you talking about? I'm sane.

Well, reasonably sane. Maybe. I guess. For a certain value of "sane."

Over and out.

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Two speeds. One I use way more than the other.
4AM

Combat Scene: Zero Draft

Crossposted to the Deadline Dames, where there is even more advice, and giveaways too!

It's Friday again. How on earth did that happen? Before we get started, here's Philip Pullman: "Leave the libraries alone. You don't understand their value."

There are a couple new-this-week interviews with me, one at Reading Awesome Books, and another over at CJ Redwine's place, where I am interviewed by Captain Jack Sparrow. You can also enter to win a signed set of the first three Strange Angels books at CJ's until Sunday.

It's time for another in my ongoing series about writing combat scenes. So you've figured out why you want to beat the snot out of your characters, and you've got a grasp on the reason, stakes, and cost. Now it's time to write the damn scene.

The bad news is, writing a combat scene is just like writing any other damn scene. It requires your ass in the chair and your hands on the keyboard. The not-so-bad news is that the key to combat scenes is revising; but in order to revise you must have a chunk of original text to tweak. The good news is that there are ways to make it easier, and if you're reading this, chances are you've watched enough action movies to have some idea of how to visualize a good combat scene.

The usual disclaimers (every writer's process is unique, some of this advice may not work for you, your mileage may vary, beverage you are about to enjoy is extremely hot) apply. Given that, here's a few things that may help while you're writing a combat scene.

* Research, research, research. I like research. Plus, it can save one from making embarrassing mistakes. Research can be: reading a forensic pathology study guide, or a guide on combat psychology and physiology; going to the range and taking some handgun classes to understand just what it feels and sounds like to fire a gun; swinging a dress-metal katana in your backyard as you work out a fight in your head; asking a hobbyist about their passion for stamps/kung fu/military history; interviewing a cop/firefighter/martial artist. Most people love to talk about themselves and their passions or their jobs. A writer can learn a lot by listening, and buying a few drinks. There's also the Internet, which one can use as a research tool only if one applies a strenuous bullshit test to every piece of information found on it. You get the idea.

The danger with research is that you can mistake it for the actual work of writing. I'm a magpie for knowledge–my TBR stack is actually an overflowing bookcase, and I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting little facts and connections. I've fallen into the trap of getting so interested in a small research question for a book that I've lost a day or two to chasing down more and more about a subject, finally blinking and looking up and giving myself a good headsmack. Be open to serendipity, but give your research boundaries. And always, always, go about it safely. I do NOT recommend going out and getting into fights just to see if it's true that they hurt. That's stupid and dangerous. Please just take my word for it.

* Blocking. I found out about scene blocking in high school. I wasn't in drama–I wasn't pretty enough for the drama teacher to have as a protege–but I was an extra in a play or two, and the concept of blocking out a scene felt very natural to apply to combat scenes. I can't count the number of times I've been out in the backyard (or in the field that used to be behind my house) swinging around a dress-metal katana or cracking a bullwhip at a pile of something, blocking out a fight in my head. Something about the physical movement gives the visual inside my skull pegs to hang on, and informs them with a great deal of immediacy for me.

If you are concerned about looking like an idiot while doing that, you're just going to have to let go of that. I love ballet, but I had terrible anxiety in class until my teacher said, "Nobody is looking at you funny. Everyone else in here is worrying about their movements. I am watching, but even I can't watch you all the time, and I'm watching you in order to teach you. So relax. Everyone else here is worrying about the size of their legs too." By and large, nobody's watching. If they are, well, you can just tell them you're a writer.[1]

* Music. Music is a very integral part of my creative process. To get myself in the mood for a Kismet fight scene, for example, I would often listen to the Cure's Wrong Number with my eyes closed, watching Jill clear a hellbreed hole. I play certain songs for certain scenes, and I spend a lot of my morning runs in what seems to be a trancelike state, the music accompanying scenes inside my head while my body's occupied with running one mile after another.

* Sensory cues. Most fights are chaos. Tunnel vision happens when an average person gets adrenaline really going. These two things can make it difficult for a writer to tease out how to describe a combat scene. Blocking the scene out will help immeasurably, but once you have, get some detail on the page. Tell me how the blood tastes, that the punch to the gut huffed all your air out and brought your dinner up in an acid rush, that the sound of the damned screaming as bullets plowed through their unholy flesh was a chorus of glassine despair. Don't worry that you're giving too much–that's what revision is for. Get as much sensory detail as you can into the fight scene so you can pick the best of it later. Here is where the ability to visualize is worth all the practice you can give it–and if you have trouble visualizing, find the sense you have the least trouble using. Some people are auditory writers, some are tactile; I'm very visual and olfactory. (Writing about death and decay sometimes makes me physically ill, since I smell what my characters do.)

Training yourself to go into a story like this strikes directly at the heart of what most of us are told when we're kids–to stop daydreaming, to pay attention, to not space out. It's a balance, like so much about this writing gig. Keen observation and paying attention are necessary (and they can't hurt when you're trying to cross a street or walking in a bad part of town); finding that little "click" and stepping into the hallucinatory space of daydreaming a story, that focused creative state, is necessary as well. You need both in order to do this well, so practice both; they will feed and inform each other in startling ways.

* Get in and get it done. I don't leave the keyboard in the middle of a combat scene unless there's an immediate physical emergency. Sex scenes, dramatic scenes, bridging scenes I can all walk away from, and sometimes I even let sex scenes marinate a couple days. (Again, YMMV.) But a combat scene depends on me sitting down, having it clear in my head, and getting out a chunk of text. Knowing the reason, stakes, and cost before I go into it helps.

These sessions are usually the ones that leave me soaked in sweat or shivering, adrenaline copper on my tongue and my body aching in sympathy for my hero/ine. These are also the scenes where the house could quite probably burn down around me and I might not notice unless I had to rescue children or cats. I am not quite deaf to the world during them, but it's close. I like this, it's one of the perks of writing as a career. But if I get up in the middle of it and go away, I lose steam and sometimes it's hard to find the hook to get back into the fight. I get exhausted if I stop or slow down. (Or, God forbid, use the loo. Forget Kegels, writing combat scenes straight through is great practice for one's perineum. Ah, the glamour of this career!) As an aside, this is related to my practice of not leaving the keyboard at the end of a scene or chapter. For some reason, I find it easier to regain momentum if I have even just a couple throwaway lines to begin the next chapter/scene before I walk away from the writing.

* Have fun. Fighting in real life is deadly serious. It is a last resort, not to be engaged in unless one or one's loved one is in direct dire physical danger. But fighting in fiction is fun. Action movies are fun to watch. Writing a combat scene, especially one in which you can bend the laws of physics a little, is a blast. Yeah, there's cost and stakes for your character, but you should be having a ball. Don't forget Steven Brust's invaluable little sentence to tack up in your writing space: And now, I'm going to tell you something REALLY cool. You're telling someone something really goddamn cool. Get into it. Have a ball, have a blast, have some fun. If you aren't, it'll be even more difficult for your reader to. You don't ever want that.

Okay. So, those are things that help you squeeze out the zero draft of a combat scene. But your work isn't finished yet. Not by a long shot. To really make a combat scene pop, there are specific ways to revise that lovely zero draft of that scene that made you go "ooooh!" We'll go over those ways next week.

Class dismissed.

[1] I really think this saved me from getting arrested once. (Suffice to say I was blocking out a fight with a dress-metal katana and a cop noticed and bounced his car up into the field. Once I told him I wrote romance, he just laughed and told me to be careful.)

Related posts:Why Would You Kick The Sh!t Out Of Your Characters?
Book Pimpage, And Combat Scenes
Reason, Stakes, & Cost

Me And That Sea Pirate

I have a croak like a raven and a slight fever, so the Tale of the Squirrel Surfer will be put off until tomorrow. I just don't think I can do it justice in my present condition. I keep wandering away from the computer to go lie down for a little bit and put together scenes of an alternate almost-Dickensian London inside my aching, stuffed-up head.

It's weird being me.

Anyway, in lieu of the Tale, I shall instead present you with this: what happens when you put me and Captain Jack Sparrow in a room together. Hilarity abounds. (I had so much fun with this.) Also, there is a zombie cupcake. And there's a three-book giveaway involved–I'll be giving away a signed set of the first three Strange Angels books to a lucky US commenter. Go, read, hopefully be entertained, and possibly win some stuff.

Other than that, let's see…oh yeah, the Selene & Nikolai reunion story will be in the upcoming Mammoth Book of Hot Romance, which I don't have a link for yet. You guys seem to like that Nichtvren couple and are inundating me with email! Heavens. I had no idea Selene was so likable–I found her a bit difficult, albeit for some really good reasons. And Nikolai, well, I never liked him. But we all knew that.

Anyway, I'm going to go nurse this cold and see if I can't get the next few scenes of the sorceress and the logic machine out of my head and onto the laptop. Peace out.

Related posts:Selene Is Now Live!
Comi-Con Or Bust
A Couple Of Cool Things…

Interview And Linkspam

There's a new interview with me over at Reading Awesome Books, where I talk tangentially about Christophe's plans and why Anna's a tragic character to me. Later this week Captain Jack Sparrow will be interviewing me over at CJ Redwine's place. (THAT should be fun. I am told cupcakes are involved. Though the rum is gone.)

Other cool stuff this morning: how words get their meaning, sleeping protects memories, and Taco Bell "beef" is really only 35% beef. I don't know why that last one surprises anyone, really.

My two thoughtful, lovely spawn brought home a nasty cold from school that is currently trying to colonize my corpse and I've got two short stories to dress up and get out the door today, so I bid you a civil adieu, dear Readers. Hope your Tuesday is magnifique.

Related posts:Linkspam! (And Drop-Dead!)
Interview on Parahub Radio!
I Must Smell It

Reason, Stakes, & Cost

Cross-posted to the Deadline Dames!

First, the news: this week marks the release of Taken, the Harlequin Nocturne I had so much fun writing. Also, I can announce that a new Jill Kismet story, Holding The Line, is in the Those Who Fight Monsters anthology, coming in March.

It's time for another Friday writing post! (I know, I had to reschedule to Saturday.) Last week we talked about why you might possibly want to get your characters involved in some ultraviolence. This week we're going to talk a little bit about what a good combat scene consists of; next week we'll talk about writing strategies when you're actually writing the scene. (What, you thought this would be simple or easy? Not on your life, dear friends.)

There's a holy trinity when it comes to an effective combat scene: Reason, Stakes, and Cost.

* Reason. It's a combat scene, people are fighting. There needs to be a damn good reason for this. The reason needs to be good enough for the character(s), good enough for the reader, and good enough for the story. You can occasionally have a fight scene where the character knows they don't have a good enough reason for this situation they're in, but you absolutely must have a reason good enough for the reader and the story. Meaning, a reader needs to be able to see why this whole thing is occurring and be convinced that it's reasonable within the context of the story, and the story itself must support and require such a scene. Combat scenes have a slightly higher threshold of disbelief than most other scenes.

Now, there are plenty of popular books where the reason the characters get into a fight isn't what I'd strictly call good enough. (I am an exceedingly picky reader nowadays.) The most successful of these have components of wish fulfillment and Hollywood wicket-shooting in them. The wicket-shoot is what I call the idea that "these sorts of movies/books always have a fight scene at this point, so we've got to throw one in whether the story really calls for it or not." (In other words, you're just thumping the croquet ball through the hoops with no rhyme or reason. Kind of like a croquet cargo cult.) This can be perfectly serviceable, but it's not what I want to write, and I advise against it. It's hard to pull off correctly, hard to make viable unless one is a Big Name, and to my mind it insults the reader's intelligence, which I never want to do.

So, think about why your character's in this fight, why they can't avoid it, why it's necessary to the story. Make sure you as a writer have a damn good reason, your character has a damn good reason, and that the story requires it.

* Stakes. An effective combat scene has stakes. The character you're beating up (or the character you're having beat other people up) has something to lose or gain by engaging in this violence. This gain or loss has to be big enough that violence is a viable response.

I don't say "reasonable" or "appropriate", because violence by definition isn't reasonable and is hardly ever appropriate out here in the real world. I say "viable" because it has to be, for the story and the character. It also has to be appropriate to the character. If you have a character who is, for example, a drug dealer, violence as a viable response is different than for, say, an English teacher. If you have a vampire hunter or a werewolf with rage problems as a character, violence is viable for the story in a different way than if you have a Regency rake with a habit of dueling.

What does a character have to lose or gain this fight? In plenty of my stories, the combat comes about as a function of a character's job–for example, Dante Valentine on a bounty hunt, or Jill Kismet on any ordinary night. Sometimes the violence comes about as a function of a situation a character has been thrust into, like Sophie in Taken or Chess in The Demon's Librarian. Danny Valentine may fight on a bounty she's on, or she might fight for survival. Sophie's response to violence is to get the hell away from it, which is reasonable; in the same book, Zach's response is to engage because it's his job as a Carcajou to fight vampires. Chess gets into a fight with a demon because that demon is snacking on schoolchildren in her city and she feels responsible; later, when Ryan kills a soldier-demon inside a human body Chess has serious problems even though the soldier-demon is coming for her and self-defense and survival would tell her to fight like hell. In each situation the stakes are different–survival, a job, self-defense, protecting someone else. But those stakes have to be high, otherwise there's no reason for a character to put himself/herself through the agony a fight represents. And those stakes have to be clear to you before you can make them clear to a reader.

Which brings us to cost.

* Cost. A combat scene must have a cost, period. (Remember? No risk, no reward.) Part of that cost is always physical.

Look, it hurts to get punched in the face. Things start swelling and you are no longer able to see clearly or breathe properly. Getting gut-punched steals your air and hurts like hell. Getting shot hurts like a mofo and can easily send you into shock. Getting burned is no goddamn picnic; getting stabbed is agonizing and life-threatening. This is not a walk in the park with sunshine and kittens. This is a fight, and you will pay for it–whether that payment is shock, or waking up the next morning feeling like you've been thrown under a steamroller, or you end up in the ER trying like hell to focus through the blood and shock so you can give a good reason for being there.

If your character avoids this by having superspeed, superstrength, and jacked-up healing, fine–but there needs to be a physical cost for those things too, or you've just taken away a major reason for me to empathize with (and care about) your character.

Part of the cost of a fight is mental and emotional. Human beings do certain things when they run up against violence. There's post-traumatic stress and emotional reactions. Even if you're trained for violence, there are funny things that happen inside your head during and after a fight. If you're looking to have combat scenes in your books, you need to be familiar with what violence does to people. (I'd recommend starting with Grossman's On Combat.) I do not recommend going out and getting into fights to figure out what it feels like (this is stupid and dangerous, please take my word for it) but I do advocate researching what happens to the human mind and body during one.

The cost also needs to be an integral part of the story. For example, the psychological cost of the murder Jill Kismet commits every night affects her relationship with her lover Saul; Dante Valentine is an adrenaline junkie and doesn't think clearly unless she can burn off some of that trigger-twitchy; Sophie doesn't trust Zach because he appears violent and unstable; Chess reaches the end of her ability to cope with Ryan's world near the crisis-point of the book. The cost also functions within the scenes themselves: Kismet and Valentine get punch-drunk after a while, and each book is a grueling endurance race for them; after a while, Dru Anderson just starts wishing for a bed and some decent food because she's cold, hungry, and tired of fighting. The cumulative cost of combat scenes needs to wear on your characters. That wear will give the reader something to focus on, a way to enter into the character and empathize with them. Wincing in sympathy is an emotional reaction on the reader's part, and it is a writer's job to evoke that emotion.

Does this seem like a lot to think about while you're writing? It is. But relax. While you're writing the combat scene, this can largely stay in the back row. It's during revision that reason, stakes, and cost need to be in the forefront of your consciousness.

One of my favorite things to do during revision is to get out a piece of butcher paper and a Sharpie and break down combat scenes inside the story arc of a book. I write down the reason, the stakes, and the cost, and then I look for ways to bring those things out, to give them more of a jolt. If the reason characters are getting into a fight is unclear, I fix the problem in previous scenes; if the stakes of a fight are muddy I can put in a word or two to make them visible and high, if the cost isn't high enough I ramp it up.

This is part of what makes revision such unholy fun, the same way long endurance workouts are unholy fun. *makes face* If it seems like we're approaching this backward, talking about revision before we talk about the actual writing, you're right. But you've got to understand foundations and underlying structure before we can talk about the writing of the scenes themselves, and that's largely what we've done up until now.

So we've covered why you might want to beat the shit out of your characters, and the holy trinity of what makes combat scenes work. Next week we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of actually writing combat scenes and making them (hopefully) enjoyable to read.

Stay tuned!

Related posts:Why Would You Kick The Sh!t Out Of Your Characters?
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