David Guymer's Blog - Posts Tagged "matt-sylvester"
Favourite Scenes
Writing can sometimes feel a lot like real work. In fact, I learned pretty quickly after my first novel got published and I started getting deadlines, reviews and occasionally even money, that it’s almost exactly like real work.
There are days when can I sit at my computer before breakfast and be an eight-armed squid monster of wordy productivity, and there are others on which, for no discernible reason at all, I can sit and fiddle over the same 100 words for an hour. The only common factor between those two scenarios is that I do still need to be writing. Note here that taking two hours off to play Civilization doesn’t help (and there’s no such thing as just two hours on Civilization). Writing tie-in fiction means writing to deadline, and therein lies the pressure.
I’ve tried working at different times of the day.
I’ve tried dividing my day into hourly blocks of alternating work and rest.
I’ve tried writing first drafts long hand
I’ve tried pretty much everything to avoid staring out a Word document until one of us breaks. The working on paper seems to work for some reason, I think it frees my mind from the constraints of thinking its actually producing saleable work, but its hardly the most efficient use of my time. The hour on hour off method I picked up from an interview with Jeffrey Archer and is also remarkably effective, but I still sometimes end up with those periods where it feels like I’m going to burst a vein in my eye before another word appears on the page.
Some days, I suppose, the muse just isn’t with me, but I’ve also come to realise that there are certain types of scene where it is just generally easier.
------
Gav Thorpe:
I often find dialogue the most enjoyable part of writing. When you can get in to the heads of characters, their words flow through you. It's one of the reasons that I still think of Angels of Darkness as one of my favourite works - half of it is basically an extended conversation. Dialogue is also a great way to convey character, whether by tone, content or style. One particular segment that comes to mind comes from The Crown of the Usurper, book three of the Empire of the Blood collection. Gelthius, a former debtor inducted into the legions of Akshor and rising through the ranks from the patonrage of Ullsaard is challenged by his king when he claims he wouldn't want to be made First Captain (commander) of an Askhan legion:
“I just made you Second captain, and you tell me you wouldn’t want to be First Captain?”
“No, with all respect, King. Seems like a lot of work, and I ain’t the brightest. I thank you for the credit you’ve given me and the favour you’ve shown me, but I wouldn’t want a legion. I mean, in my experience, it’s them sort of thoughts that starts getting you into trouble, isn’t it?” Ullsaard’s eyebrows raised a fraction further and Gelthius realised what he had said.
“Begging your pardon, but I meant that some folks are suited to being on top and some aren’t, and I’m one of them what isn’t. Suited to being on top, I mean. And those that ain’t suited but try to get to the top anyway are setting themselves up for the biggest fall. If I fall, I’d rather it weren’t from such a height, if it’s all the same.”
------
Anyone who can write Black library’s definitive series for both the High Elf and Dwarfs clearly knows what they’re talking about…
But lets turn it back a few years now. It’s 2012 and I’m attending my first literary even as an author – Black Library Live. I’m as nervous as you might expect, but lucky enough to have fellow debutante Peter Fehervari right there with me for our baptismal trials. The trepidation. The excitement. The imposter syndrome. (Are we allowed to just go up to Dan Abnett and say hello? It’s Dan Abnett.) We were as twinned minds.
And even back then – he having just finished his debut, Fire Caste, and I still burrowing feverishly away on my own debut, Headtaker – our talk on the way to Warhammer World turned to the subject of the scenes we most enjoy writing. Peter professed a dislike for descriptions. I’m actually quite the opposite. I love going out all on describing something wondrous or fantastical, which is probably why Peter is so good as I’ve a noted tendency to overdo it on occasion.
A scene that’s essentially a single unbroken action sequence is always easy. The demands of pace and flow force me to focus on the essentials. There’s a scene in Headtaker when Sharpwit and the assassin, Fang Dao, are breaking into a network of secret tunnels, abseiling down a lift shaft, and sabotaging a battery of dwarf cannon, which was about 6000 words written in one sitting and with hardly any re-writing at all.
------
Matthew Sylvester:
Combat. There's nothing I like more - aside from coffee - than reading or writing about combat. I'm not talking about mental-based combat such as psionics or magic, I'm talking about the physical, the visceral, weapons and empty-hand combat.
I've always enjoyed writing about such things, often to the consternation of my primary school teachers. I even managed to have fairies and elves battling the bears when I wrote about a school trip to Paignton.
The reason that I love writing such scenes is that not only do I have experience of small-unit tactics due to my university days in the OTC, but I also have 24 years of martial arts experience, with a couple of years as a Special Constable and Doorman under my (numerous) black belts.
Combat is all about people overcoming their fears in order to achieve an objective. The objective itself doesn't matter, it could be a crate of kittens, but the mental and physical effort to overwhelm the enemy, whilst keeping yourself and your people safe is massive. Many people think that combat is all about pouring on more and more firepower. It's not. It's about out-thinking the enemy, flushing them out from cover, flanking them, forcing them to give ground, or bottling them up and then dropping some very, very big bombs on to them.
People often like to write about tanks and how cool they are. Which is true, they are. But for me combat is all about the infantryman, because without infantry, you can't hold the ground you've taken. Without the infantry you can never be sure that the enemy have been totally rooted out. It's gun versus gun, hand-to-hand, teeth to flesh combat that clears the objective and wins the battle.
The following is an extract from Blaise Maximillian: Bitter Defeat, a collection of alternate history dystopian dieselpunk stories set during and after the Great War.
"Trench warfare was one of the dirtiest forms of warfare. Firstly, you have men living in what are basically either open holes or buried holes in the ground, with the latter often being laughingly referred to as bunkers when in fact they truly resembled nothing more than holes in the ground. Add flooding caused by the irresponsible shelling of waterways, irrigation channels and even reservoirs to that mix and the poor sods forced to live and fight in them are constantly having to put up with mud. Energy sapping mud that gets everywhere, every crease or fold in the skin, every orifice.
If you add shit and piss from overflowing or shelled latrines, and men who have gut rot so bad that they shit where they're standing, as well as rats and the countless remains of unburied troops and horses – or some of their bodily parts at least – then you have the true meaning of dirty. The soup that was a result was a foul-smelling morass that sucked boots from feet and the air from the wounded as they slowly sank into its noxious depths.
That, believe it or not, was not the worst part of trench warfare. The worst part was that once the enemy has struggled across no-man's land, forcing their way through the cratered landscape as they slithered and slid, taking prat falls into shell holes, crawling through the wire, the distance in which you engage them is limited to no more than twenty yards, and often as close as twenty inches. Sometimes it is much, much closer. Men who would normally have balked at showing any public display of affection to their loved ones found themselves in a far closer embrace with their enemies.
It’s personal. The enemy has a face you could put onto any of the lads in your unit. The enemy has scabies, halitosis, body odour, fleas and lice, just like you. The enemy is as hell-bent on killing you, as you are him, and will use any weapon he can including his teeth. He will scream, shout, cry and beg you to stop stabbing him, even grab hold of your blade in an attempt to stop you from ramming it into his stomach one last time, all the time his eyes looking into your as if he can't believe that the time for him to die has finally come. That he can't believe you won't spare his life, tell him all's well and send him packing on his way. Why this is no-one - not even the man being killed - knows as, if he were on the other blunter, and far less pointy end of the knife, he would be ramming it home as hard and as often as he could. Mercy is for the recruits, most of whom die with surprised faces as the man who they were beating doesn't thank them profusely, but uses the breathing space to kill them. Mercy is for when the fight is done and the wounded are being collected. Even then it could be hard to find.
Trench warfare is positively medieval. Serrated bayonets, daggers, knives, bayonet swords, home-made spears, maces, billy clubs and knuckledusters are all used to rip, tear, slash, cut, smash, break and destroy the enemy. Even sharpened spades make excellent tools. At a pinch, the edge of the helmet repeatedly slammed into the throat or across the bridge of the nose will do just as well. If you do not have a weapon to hand then teeth, fingers, fists, elbows, knees, feet and heads will suit just fine as you smash the life out of them. Even the mud was a weapon whether it was flung into the opponent's face, or used to drown them.”
------
As you’d expect from a professional hard-ass (See here:
http://matthewsylvester.com/weapons-f...), Matt likes a good fight.
Generally speaking, the first scenes that jump into my head when I’m planning a new book are the big, bloody set piece battle scenes. I look forward to them. I’ll often use the treat of one coming up to coax a few additional words out of myself. But even they can sometimes be a bit of a labour.
There’s a lot going on in a big battle scene. Combat between individuals? Easy. It’s essentially action and reaction, attack and counter, using the environment to mix it up and keep it fresh, but with an epic battle you’ve got mayhem all over the place, characters everywhere, and before you know it I’m drawing maps to catch myself up with who’s doing what, to whom, and where.
Even then it takes a lot of re-writes to get it all to work together. Some, like the battle of Karak Azul in Headtaker, just seemed to click. Others, like the big midpoint Battle of Trzy Siostry in Kinslayer, had to be redone 4-5 times before I was completely happy with it.
------
David Annandale:
Whereas I would hesitate to call any stage of writing easy, there are undeniably times where I find the flow of the words does come more naturally. In the best cases, I find myself disappearing into the world on the page, and my awareness of what's going on around me shrinks to near zero. This condition is not infrequently accompanied by a maniacal cackling, so it probably comes as no great surprise that it is the climactic moments of horror and grandiose mayhem that I particularly enjoy writing. Once all the elements have been put in place, all the actors have their appointed roles, and unfortunate events and cursed fate have brought us to a point where everything is hitting the fan for the characters, the sadist in me cries "YES! NOW THE GOOD BIT!" So the more apocalyptic the mayhem, the more things tend to spark creatively for me. One reason for this may be that the total breakdown of rationality that is often a feature of these scenes is (for me, not for the characters) liberating -- suddenly, anything goes, and the result is almost like transcribing brainstorms. The climax of The The Damnation of Pythos is the sort of thing I have in mind, where daemons are everywhere, and destruction is rampant.
------
I think part of the difficulty of doing battle scenes stems from the fact that a battle has to be more than just one line of super warriors bashing up another line of super warriors.
Characters always have to come first, before plot and definitely before simple action, and I love any opportunity to sit down and get to know them a little better. It actually came as some surprise to me to find that it was those quiet spells between fights, when a handful of characters can simply sit down together and let us get to know them, that turned out to be my absolute favourite scenes.
There’s one that I always think back to in Gotrek & Felix: Kinslayer. Felix and Damir are just sitting by the fire, drinking gorilka, and picking out shapes in the snow. It moved me to write it. I almost felt the loneliness and the cold.
"‘You fight in Praag before, yhah?’
Damir was sitting beside him, also facing outwards from the fire. Shadows ebbed and rolled over his patched hemp cloak like the wax and wane of Chaos. The ungol nomad offered up the liquor he was drinking. It smelled of turps and Felix waved it away.
‘Gorilka good for soul.’ Damir thumped his chest lightly and then waved it vaguely before him as though scattering seeds. ‘Made from same grain as feed horses. Only best.’ He grinned and offered it again. ‘Yhah?’
With a sigh, Felix took the offering, swallowing just enough to be polite and immediately coughed it back into his hand.
Chuckling, Damir clapped him on the back. ‘Yhah.’
Felix too found himself smiling. ‘Yes, I fought in the last battle of Praag. I was there when Arek Daemonclaw died.’
‘Doskonale, Empire man!’
The man looked pleased, so Felix assumed that this was good. Kislevarin was one of the most complicated human languages that Felix had ever come across with a ludicrous and – to Felix’s view – arbitrary gender system. And the fact that Ulrika and her father had spoken Reikspiel perfectly well had also removed any incentive of his own to learn it. ‘Where did you fight?’
Damir grinned. ‘Before I born, Felix Jaeger. But father and grandfather? They ride in pulk of Tzarina with Boyar Straghov.’
‘You make me feel old.’
Raising his gorilka high, Damir saluted. ‘To growing old.’
‘To growing old,’ Felix agreed and joined the ungol in a shot of the searing Troll Country spirit."
It’s those sorts of scenes where the characters open up and pull me into their world. And if they do that to me then they’ll probably do that to you too.
And the next time that the proverbial is hitting the fan, we’ll all feel their peril that little bit more keenly.
Thanks to Gav Thorpe, Matt Sylvester, and David Annandale for contributing their thoughts, and a special mention too to the legend that is John Gwynne who found himself at the last minute just too damned busy being successful.
(Note – this blog post too was re-written three times!)
There are days when can I sit at my computer before breakfast and be an eight-armed squid monster of wordy productivity, and there are others on which, for no discernible reason at all, I can sit and fiddle over the same 100 words for an hour. The only common factor between those two scenarios is that I do still need to be writing. Note here that taking two hours off to play Civilization doesn’t help (and there’s no such thing as just two hours on Civilization). Writing tie-in fiction means writing to deadline, and therein lies the pressure.
I’ve tried working at different times of the day.
I’ve tried dividing my day into hourly blocks of alternating work and rest.
I’ve tried writing first drafts long hand
I’ve tried pretty much everything to avoid staring out a Word document until one of us breaks. The working on paper seems to work for some reason, I think it frees my mind from the constraints of thinking its actually producing saleable work, but its hardly the most efficient use of my time. The hour on hour off method I picked up from an interview with Jeffrey Archer and is also remarkably effective, but I still sometimes end up with those periods where it feels like I’m going to burst a vein in my eye before another word appears on the page.
Some days, I suppose, the muse just isn’t with me, but I’ve also come to realise that there are certain types of scene where it is just generally easier.
------
Gav Thorpe:
I often find dialogue the most enjoyable part of writing. When you can get in to the heads of characters, their words flow through you. It's one of the reasons that I still think of Angels of Darkness as one of my favourite works - half of it is basically an extended conversation. Dialogue is also a great way to convey character, whether by tone, content or style. One particular segment that comes to mind comes from The Crown of the Usurper, book three of the Empire of the Blood collection. Gelthius, a former debtor inducted into the legions of Akshor and rising through the ranks from the patonrage of Ullsaard is challenged by his king when he claims he wouldn't want to be made First Captain (commander) of an Askhan legion:
“I just made you Second captain, and you tell me you wouldn’t want to be First Captain?”
“No, with all respect, King. Seems like a lot of work, and I ain’t the brightest. I thank you for the credit you’ve given me and the favour you’ve shown me, but I wouldn’t want a legion. I mean, in my experience, it’s them sort of thoughts that starts getting you into trouble, isn’t it?” Ullsaard’s eyebrows raised a fraction further and Gelthius realised what he had said.
“Begging your pardon, but I meant that some folks are suited to being on top and some aren’t, and I’m one of them what isn’t. Suited to being on top, I mean. And those that ain’t suited but try to get to the top anyway are setting themselves up for the biggest fall. If I fall, I’d rather it weren’t from such a height, if it’s all the same.”
------
Anyone who can write Black library’s definitive series for both the High Elf and Dwarfs clearly knows what they’re talking about…
But lets turn it back a few years now. It’s 2012 and I’m attending my first literary even as an author – Black Library Live. I’m as nervous as you might expect, but lucky enough to have fellow debutante Peter Fehervari right there with me for our baptismal trials. The trepidation. The excitement. The imposter syndrome. (Are we allowed to just go up to Dan Abnett and say hello? It’s Dan Abnett.) We were as twinned minds.And even back then – he having just finished his debut, Fire Caste, and I still burrowing feverishly away on my own debut, Headtaker – our talk on the way to Warhammer World turned to the subject of the scenes we most enjoy writing. Peter professed a dislike for descriptions. I’m actually quite the opposite. I love going out all on describing something wondrous or fantastical, which is probably why Peter is so good as I’ve a noted tendency to overdo it on occasion.
A scene that’s essentially a single unbroken action sequence is always easy. The demands of pace and flow force me to focus on the essentials. There’s a scene in Headtaker when Sharpwit and the assassin, Fang Dao, are breaking into a network of secret tunnels, abseiling down a lift shaft, and sabotaging a battery of dwarf cannon, which was about 6000 words written in one sitting and with hardly any re-writing at all. ------
Matthew Sylvester:
Combat. There's nothing I like more - aside from coffee - than reading or writing about combat. I'm not talking about mental-based combat such as psionics or magic, I'm talking about the physical, the visceral, weapons and empty-hand combat.
I've always enjoyed writing about such things, often to the consternation of my primary school teachers. I even managed to have fairies and elves battling the bears when I wrote about a school trip to Paignton.
The reason that I love writing such scenes is that not only do I have experience of small-unit tactics due to my university days in the OTC, but I also have 24 years of martial arts experience, with a couple of years as a Special Constable and Doorman under my (numerous) black belts.
Combat is all about people overcoming their fears in order to achieve an objective. The objective itself doesn't matter, it could be a crate of kittens, but the mental and physical effort to overwhelm the enemy, whilst keeping yourself and your people safe is massive. Many people think that combat is all about pouring on more and more firepower. It's not. It's about out-thinking the enemy, flushing them out from cover, flanking them, forcing them to give ground, or bottling them up and then dropping some very, very big bombs on to them.
People often like to write about tanks and how cool they are. Which is true, they are. But for me combat is all about the infantryman, because without infantry, you can't hold the ground you've taken. Without the infantry you can never be sure that the enemy have been totally rooted out. It's gun versus gun, hand-to-hand, teeth to flesh combat that clears the objective and wins the battle.
The following is an extract from Blaise Maximillian: Bitter Defeat, a collection of alternate history dystopian dieselpunk stories set during and after the Great War.
"Trench warfare was one of the dirtiest forms of warfare. Firstly, you have men living in what are basically either open holes or buried holes in the ground, with the latter often being laughingly referred to as bunkers when in fact they truly resembled nothing more than holes in the ground. Add flooding caused by the irresponsible shelling of waterways, irrigation channels and even reservoirs to that mix and the poor sods forced to live and fight in them are constantly having to put up with mud. Energy sapping mud that gets everywhere, every crease or fold in the skin, every orifice.
If you add shit and piss from overflowing or shelled latrines, and men who have gut rot so bad that they shit where they're standing, as well as rats and the countless remains of unburied troops and horses – or some of their bodily parts at least – then you have the true meaning of dirty. The soup that was a result was a foul-smelling morass that sucked boots from feet and the air from the wounded as they slowly sank into its noxious depths.
That, believe it or not, was not the worst part of trench warfare. The worst part was that once the enemy has struggled across no-man's land, forcing their way through the cratered landscape as they slithered and slid, taking prat falls into shell holes, crawling through the wire, the distance in which you engage them is limited to no more than twenty yards, and often as close as twenty inches. Sometimes it is much, much closer. Men who would normally have balked at showing any public display of affection to their loved ones found themselves in a far closer embrace with their enemies.
It’s personal. The enemy has a face you could put onto any of the lads in your unit. The enemy has scabies, halitosis, body odour, fleas and lice, just like you. The enemy is as hell-bent on killing you, as you are him, and will use any weapon he can including his teeth. He will scream, shout, cry and beg you to stop stabbing him, even grab hold of your blade in an attempt to stop you from ramming it into his stomach one last time, all the time his eyes looking into your as if he can't believe that the time for him to die has finally come. That he can't believe you won't spare his life, tell him all's well and send him packing on his way. Why this is no-one - not even the man being killed - knows as, if he were on the other blunter, and far less pointy end of the knife, he would be ramming it home as hard and as often as he could. Mercy is for the recruits, most of whom die with surprised faces as the man who they were beating doesn't thank them profusely, but uses the breathing space to kill them. Mercy is for when the fight is done and the wounded are being collected. Even then it could be hard to find.
Trench warfare is positively medieval. Serrated bayonets, daggers, knives, bayonet swords, home-made spears, maces, billy clubs and knuckledusters are all used to rip, tear, slash, cut, smash, break and destroy the enemy. Even sharpened spades make excellent tools. At a pinch, the edge of the helmet repeatedly slammed into the throat or across the bridge of the nose will do just as well. If you do not have a weapon to hand then teeth, fingers, fists, elbows, knees, feet and heads will suit just fine as you smash the life out of them. Even the mud was a weapon whether it was flung into the opponent's face, or used to drown them.”
------
As you’d expect from a professional hard-ass (See here:
http://matthewsylvester.com/weapons-f...), Matt likes a good fight.
Generally speaking, the first scenes that jump into my head when I’m planning a new book are the big, bloody set piece battle scenes. I look forward to them. I’ll often use the treat of one coming up to coax a few additional words out of myself. But even they can sometimes be a bit of a labour.
There’s a lot going on in a big battle scene. Combat between individuals? Easy. It’s essentially action and reaction, attack and counter, using the environment to mix it up and keep it fresh, but with an epic battle you’ve got mayhem all over the place, characters everywhere, and before you know it I’m drawing maps to catch myself up with who’s doing what, to whom, and where.
Even then it takes a lot of re-writes to get it all to work together. Some, like the battle of Karak Azul in Headtaker, just seemed to click. Others, like the big midpoint Battle of Trzy Siostry in Kinslayer, had to be redone 4-5 times before I was completely happy with it.
------
David Annandale:
Whereas I would hesitate to call any stage of writing easy, there are undeniably times where I find the flow of the words does come more naturally. In the best cases, I find myself disappearing into the world on the page, and my awareness of what's going on around me shrinks to near zero. This condition is not infrequently accompanied by a maniacal cackling, so it probably comes as no great surprise that it is the climactic moments of horror and grandiose mayhem that I particularly enjoy writing. Once all the elements have been put in place, all the actors have their appointed roles, and unfortunate events and cursed fate have brought us to a point where everything is hitting the fan for the characters, the sadist in me cries "YES! NOW THE GOOD BIT!" So the more apocalyptic the mayhem, the more things tend to spark creatively for me. One reason for this may be that the total breakdown of rationality that is often a feature of these scenes is (for me, not for the characters) liberating -- suddenly, anything goes, and the result is almost like transcribing brainstorms. The climax of The The Damnation of Pythos is the sort of thing I have in mind, where daemons are everywhere, and destruction is rampant.
------
I think part of the difficulty of doing battle scenes stems from the fact that a battle has to be more than just one line of super warriors bashing up another line of super warriors.
Characters always have to come first, before plot and definitely before simple action, and I love any opportunity to sit down and get to know them a little better. It actually came as some surprise to me to find that it was those quiet spells between fights, when a handful of characters can simply sit down together and let us get to know them, that turned out to be my absolute favourite scenes.
There’s one that I always think back to in Gotrek & Felix: Kinslayer. Felix and Damir are just sitting by the fire, drinking gorilka, and picking out shapes in the snow. It moved me to write it. I almost felt the loneliness and the cold.
"‘You fight in Praag before, yhah?’
Damir was sitting beside him, also facing outwards from the fire. Shadows ebbed and rolled over his patched hemp cloak like the wax and wane of Chaos. The ungol nomad offered up the liquor he was drinking. It smelled of turps and Felix waved it away.
‘Gorilka good for soul.’ Damir thumped his chest lightly and then waved it vaguely before him as though scattering seeds. ‘Made from same grain as feed horses. Only best.’ He grinned and offered it again. ‘Yhah?’
With a sigh, Felix took the offering, swallowing just enough to be polite and immediately coughed it back into his hand.
Chuckling, Damir clapped him on the back. ‘Yhah.’
Felix too found himself smiling. ‘Yes, I fought in the last battle of Praag. I was there when Arek Daemonclaw died.’
‘Doskonale, Empire man!’
The man looked pleased, so Felix assumed that this was good. Kislevarin was one of the most complicated human languages that Felix had ever come across with a ludicrous and – to Felix’s view – arbitrary gender system. And the fact that Ulrika and her father had spoken Reikspiel perfectly well had also removed any incentive of his own to learn it. ‘Where did you fight?’
Damir grinned. ‘Before I born, Felix Jaeger. But father and grandfather? They ride in pulk of Tzarina with Boyar Straghov.’
‘You make me feel old.’
Raising his gorilka high, Damir saluted. ‘To growing old.’
‘To growing old,’ Felix agreed and joined the ungol in a shot of the searing Troll Country spirit."
It’s those sorts of scenes where the characters open up and pull me into their world. And if they do that to me then they’ll probably do that to you too.
And the next time that the proverbial is hitting the fan, we’ll all feel their peril that little bit more keenly.
Thanks to Gav Thorpe, Matt Sylvester, and David Annandale for contributing their thoughts, and a special mention too to the legend that is John Gwynne who found himself at the last minute just too damned busy being successful.(Note – this blog post too was re-written three times!)
