Things That Make You Go “Ugh!": Fight Scenes

Don’t get me wrong. Like any good anime watching, summer blockbuster movie-going, adventure/fantasy/sci-fi reading, ninja/superhero/vampire slayer loving gal, I love a great fight scene.

But writing them.

Ugh!

(Humor and violence: a winning combination.)

For me, they take more time and planning than any other type of scene. They have to be dynamically choreographed and fully visualized, and still have a beginning, middle and end. Then when I’ve done all that thorough thinking things through, I have to strip the language used to describe those sequences of action down to its clearest, most concise and most potent form so that the action flows and the scene reads quickly (because action scenes are not the place to wax poetic). It’s a lot of freakin’ work for a scene that in real time might only last a few minutes!

(One of the coolest Samurai Jack fight scenes EVER)

And the stuff I write almost always requires at least one fight scene, often more.

Oh, how I hem and haw and find so many other things to do (like writing a blog post) when I know I must sit down and think through a fight scene. I guess I’m still a little traumatized from the time I decided to write a fight scene spread across nine characters, five points of view, and multiple simultaneous points of conversion. That mess wore me out.

(If I were ever to make a list of favorite fight scenes, this one would definitely be somewhere near the top.)

Oh, but when it’s done! When the sequences within the scene escalate to an explosive climax! When you feel that he victor of the fight has really earned his or her bragging rights! Or, best of all, when someone tells you they couldn’t put those pages down…well, it kinda makes you want to write another fight scene.

What’s the one element of your stories that you hate writing but love having written?

Anon, Good Thing-I’m-Supposed-To-Do, I Come!

My Five Favorite Ways to Procrastinate:

(In no particular order)

Cleaning up: Now, this is a tricky one because sometimes one procrastinates cleaning up, but cleaning up itself is an activity that lends itself well towards the goal of putting a time-consuming activity between you and the thing that needs to be done. In my last few years of college, you could always tell by my room’s level of organization when I was putting off writing a dreaded essay.

Looking for stuff on Craigslist: Jobs, art, furniture, apartments for rent, random free stuff… you can find anything on Craigslist! Even if you’re not currently looking for a job, art, furniture, a place to live, or random free stuff, it’s good to know what’s out there. And hey, sometimes you can even find things you actually need. For instance, that's where my former roommate, a sculptor who was working on an instillation piece, got the truckload of dirt she needed for her senior project. For free! (If you can believe it.)

Visiting Goodreads: I’m pretty neglectful of my own Goodreads account, but I like to read the negative reviews other people post. This will accomplish one of two things: A) Commiserate my own feelings toward a book I don’t like so I can be all, “Yeah, that’s exactly how that book sucked!” I may not absolutely love everything I come across but for the most part I'm pretty easy to please. I like or, at the very least, am entertained by most books I pick up. Even the generally-thought-of-as bad ones! So discovering a book I hate is an extremely frustrating event for me. A book has to be actively working especially hard to make me to hate it because as soon as I realize I'm hating a book I actively work especially hard not to hate it. Seriously, it takes me 100 pages to give up on a book I’m not enjoying! So when this happens it irrationally makes me a little mad that the book was working against me and my good intentions, and therefore I find myself in need of catharsis through someone else’s rant. Or, B) Give me some much-needed perspective. No matter how much you love your favorite book, someone out there hates it with a deep-seeded passion. Even the great writers couldn't please everyone. Something to keep in mind when your own work receives a negative response.

Walking around the house in circles: Sometimes intentional. Sometimes not. Sometimes I bounce from one room to another because I’ve forgotten why I was going into Room A until I’ve returned to Room B, then I go back into Room A where I get distracted by something shiny, then when the shiny thing and I are back in Room B, I remember what I needed from Room A, and round and round we go. Tis a vicious,vicious cycle, my friends.

Thinking about how to most effectively get stuff done via to-do lists, scheduling tables, and imaginings of various possible plans-of-attack: This one is probably my favorite because I feel a sense of accomplishment for having come up with a plan. In fact, coming up with a plan is such a big accomplishment that I deserve a break before really digging into the task at hand. Heck, I deserve the whole rest of the day off! It doesn’t matter that I will most likely throw the entire plan out the window by the next morning. Getting the thing done isn’t really what it’s about anyway…