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