Happy Sunday all!
I have been very remiss in my blogging lately but I swear I will have more posts up soon. Who new life could be so demanding sometimes? *lol*
What brings me here today is Sari Webb’s Share The Love Blogfest she is doing for her birthday! So happy Birthday Sari! I hope it is an amazing year to come!
Ok I fancy myself a writer so I will ask for help, but anything I want to post is WAY too long (re: 1000+ words) so I think instead I will just ask a question.
How do you make your battle scenes flow? I can’t help but get lost in them, struggling through every action. So do you have any helpful tips for writing action scenes?
And for a little extra credit I will also talk about the other part of the blogfest I will share about a book I LOVED recently and why.
The book I have fallen in love with recently is Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly. This book was beautiful. Bottom line, it was beautiful to read and it was beautiful to hold. Revolution is a contemporary YA novel but with the added aspect of very well researched historical fiction layered in. and it is layers in beautifully. It is the story of a girl named Andi Alpers who is popping antidepressants and flunking out of her New York prep school, grieving over her younger brother's death. She finds solace only when playing guitar. When the school notifies her mostly absent scientist father that she's flirting with expulsion, he takes Andi to Paris for Christmas break, where he's testing DNA to see if a preserved heart really belonged to the doomed son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Andi is ordered to work on her senior thesis about a (fictional) French composer. Staying at the home of a renowned historian, Andi finds a diary that relates the last days of Alexandrine, companion to the doomed prince. The story then alternates between Andi's struggle with depression and Alexandrine's efforts to save the prince.
I truly love this book for touching on so many levels, and wish I had had it to read when I was in high school. Donnelly has such an amazing voice that you really truly feel for each girl and connect with them even if you have never thought about killing yourself or tried to save a dying boy. There are so many layers to this story that I feel are revealed beautiful and at the correct time. You really get to see inside of Andi’s head and to know her completely. Just truly a stunning work. I highly recommend it to any and every one.
Hi Alexis, thanks for sharing your thoughts on Revolution! I'll have to check it out.
ReplyDeleteWith fight scenes, I try to keep my sentences short to keep up the pace. Try to focus on all the senses too, like the smell of blood and the sight of gore and the bite of a blade/bullet in flesh. I don't think you need to know heaps about fighting in order to write a fight scene. With the right details it can seem real without having to show play by play blows of the opponents.
Wow! This sounds like an awesome book, I'll have to see if I can find it!
ReplyDeleteAs for fighting scenes, I don't write any. But one suggestion would be to watch a fighting scene you really like and then write down what you see going on. That way you can see an actual fighting scene flows like, and then see how you interrupted it.
This story sounds pretty amazing! I love a good read. Will have to add it to my list :)
ReplyDeleteYou know me, I love my fight scenes. To help keep everything clear, I plot plot plot and essentially choreograph the whole scene in my head. Sometimes I'll even draw myself a "playbook" depending on how involved the fight scene is.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I agree with Sari, keep the sentences short. That way it reads quickly, kind of like fast-cuts during an action scene in a movie. This is one principle I'm trying to get better at.