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It's hot and damp as Satan's armpit here, but at least I got a chapter of This Summer's WIP written: "Twenty-Two"  . A sequential chapter, yet! Miracle of miracles! Did it do everything that I had in the outline for chapter 22 to do? Heck no! Have you met me? Now I have to find my physical, paper notebook so as to plan out a running battle for chapter 23. You know how difficult it is to write a running battle that is *interesting*? Well, at least, when you're me. I generally get very bored by big fantasy battles. You can't use spectacle in prose the way you can in a movie, and on an individual level--which is pretty much all you've got narratively--the sweep of epic battles comes down to an individual panicking and grinding through mud for multiple hours. This particular battle I have backed myself into a corner about means I have:  4 factions 2 characters that need to get captured 3 characters that need to get away some villains that need to stay alive some other villains that can die if I need them to possibly a house to burn down? a conspiracy to exposit Sigh. Definitely one for the ol' legal pad and scribbling. How do you write battle scenes? |
Heavens, I hope I never have to  I vaguely remember reading the one from The Hobbit, and that's all I know of it. |
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| Amethyst Angel 🌼 - Doesn't have to be a *fantasy* battle scene, for the record, or a big war scene. This one isn't a battle proper; it's more of an action set piece, with people holed up in a house under attack. It's just the more players you have in a fight scene, the closer it creeps to BATTLE scene, and thus to the deadly "the French came in from the north, flanking the Austrian cannon" that makes my eyes glaze over. |
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| Ah yes, Amethyst Angel 🌼 - The Battle of Five Armies. |
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| I have no idea why the end of This Summer's WIP has decided it wants to be written in reverse order. Last week I wrote chapter 31 and chapter 30. I got most of chapter 29 written today. I suppose at least this means when I get it posted, my reviewers can read to the end all in a gulp if they want? |
| With all due respect, which in this case is a lot (even if it doesn't sound like it) it's cause you're a weirdo. But I mean, that's what we're here to do, become even more of a weirdo. Gonzo and Daffy. At least I hope so.  But writing backward in time is a time honored method. You have a result then you look for the cause... |
| It's not weird. I always write "an" ending pretty early on so I have something to aim for. And I write out of order and all over the place all the time. You just gotta do what the story tells you to do. And sometimes, writing the ending before the stuff that comes before it makes it easier because you know what needs to be set up to get to the end. |
| Sometimes juggling something around from one file to the other helps. I've told you all before that I tend to compose chapters in separate MS Word files (for easier uploading to WDC) and then, when I've got the chapter how I like it, I copy/paste into the main manuscript file. (Yes, this means I've got a cluttered folder with PILES of files for each book. Yes, I could do this all much more efficiently in Scrivener. Writers are a rich tapestry.) ANYWAY-- I've been writing the end of This Summer's WIP despite being at the top of the third act, where what I really *should* be writing is chapter 22. But brains are weird. I thought to myself, "well, since I've written the last chapter and the second-to-last chapter, might as well paste them in the ol' Master Document and just see how the ol' wordcount is going". And then I thought, "but I wonder how many chapters to go? What if I put in the chapter numbers and then just some events placeholders, just so I know if the last chapter is number 30 or what". Friends, I have been TRYING to outline the end of this dang book for DAYS. Maybe weeks? But for whatever reason, doing it like this is how I was able to finally get the outline done today. So I can tell you, the book's going to have 31 chapters, and now I finally know what will happen in each of them, and all we gotta do is write them. Well, that and find the Lego people so I can do the choreography for the set pieces. |
| All right, gang. I need to check my terminology and I can't even figure out how to word this query on Google. I'm going to tell you a joke below, and then I want to know how you'd categorize the joke, with the technical name if possible. Here's the joke: Jester: Well, you know what they say about the Italian court. King: What? Jester: What better place to court Italians? This is, of course, from The Court Jester, a glorious hallucination of a movie where Angela Lansbury is a double-talk comedy princess just like a year separated from being the horrible mother in The Manchurian Candidate. Anyway-- Would you call this structure of joke 1) a pun or 2) something else? If 2), what is it called? Bonus points for any more of this style of joke you care to drop in the comments. |
| From Google AI: "A play on words, also known as wordplay, is a literary technique that uses words in clever and humorous ways to create an intended effect or amusement. This can involve manipulating the sounds, meanings, or structure of words to generate a double meaning, pun, or other form of humor. Here's a more detailed breakdown: What it involves: Puns: Exploiting multiple meanings of a word or similar-sounding words for a humorous or rhetorical effect. Double meanings: Using a word or phrase that can be interpreted in two or more ways. Other forms of word manipulation: This can include anagrams, spoonerisms, and other techniques that play with the form or structure of words. Examples: Puns: "Santa Claus' helpers are known as subordinate Clauses." according to ServiceScape Double meanings: . A sign that says "Out of Order. Please knock firmly" could be interpreted as both a request for service and a statement about the person's state of mind. Other wordplay: . An ambigram is a word that can be read the same way from different perspectives or orientations, like the word "ambigram" itself, according to Scribendi. Aptronyms: . A name that perfectly fits the person's profession or personality, like a baker named "Mr. Dough"." |
| Today I have: 1) polished the last chapter of This Summer's WIP, which is a banger you guys, this chapter is a doozy and I love it (at least for now) 2) written the penultimate chapter of This Summer's WIP, because apparently I'm working my way backwards at the moment, until I bump back into the sequential plot? At least for now? All of which means I've written like 7k words in the last few days, but can I show them to anybody? No! Not yet! Very annoying! |
| Today was a very Monday of Mondays, getting (more) school stuff figured out for the kids, doing both regular chores and the long tail of moving-to-a-new-place chores, fielding phone calls from various friends-and-relations who were checking in on us after bad storms in our region. (We're fine. The region is not, but we are.) So today I made a few edits, after I got a helpful review of one of my chapters, and then instead of writing the next chapter, I wrote some of the last chapter of This Summer's WIP. I often do this, and write the last scenes wildly out of order. At this point I've decided not to feel weird about it. (Yes, I've noticed there's a theme to my posts: "here's a writing thing I do, but I don't feel weird about it now." The truth is of course I feel weird about it. I'd rather be a writer who soberly makes an outline, elegantly executes the outline, and writes everything in order, typing a standard amount of words per day. Heck, while we're dreaming, let's say I always sit ergonomically and hold my wrists they way they're supposed to be on my keyboard. But we can only work with the brains we've got, no matter how much the process bugs us aesthetically. So more accurately: I'm trying not to feel weird about it.) What's a weird writing thing you do that you're trying not to feel weird about? |
| I think I'm still trying not to feel weird about writing full stop. It's such a strange, secretive thing to do, really. All those hours spent bashing away at a keyboard, and then maybe something emerges? And that's before you even start in on my crazy start with a scene that comes to me and write both ways from there approach to it, living in hope I'll find the start and/or the end eventually. And the craziness of always having multiple people living in my head and wanting to do things that the rational part of me wants to say no to, but can't. It's a weird job... |
Good evening, my friend. I've stopped by to offer one tidbit that may make you feel better about your technique. I have always been an inveterate outliner; my outlines are so detailed that I'm considered an outlier by other outliners. But I have learned that no matter how detailed and well-planned my outlines are, my characters tend to take over and start making their own changes to the plan before my fingers even get tired. I've also learned that they're nearly always right, so I have stopped outlining beyond about three scenes ahead. Yet another reason that I never hit the Big Time...  |
| Huttah! Finally, I have the next chapter done. "Twenty-One" Is this the one with the fight scene? No! I realized that if I put the fight scene in here, the chapter would be 7k long. So I....still have the fight to write. But fights go much, much faster for me than setup. Hopefully I got the setup done in interesting fashion with this one. We'll see what my brave critique partners tell me. In passing, if you want to improve as a writer, get thee some brave critique partners. I think we all believe, when we begin to write, that critique and editing are mostly about moving commas around. If you can find people who are willing to tell you when you need major surgery, though--and I mean major surgery, stuff like "have you considered telling this in third person, not first?" or "I think maybe chapter seven needs to be cut for pacing"--you have found gold. Cherish those people! (My crit partners: you know who you are. Consider yourselves cherished.) |
| Getting there, friends. The chapter is 3200 words and counting. (This means I will probably edit it down a bunch before it's done.) It's still raining, so I'm still writing. Meanwhile, I was chatting with Jack of Diamonds   and he made me remember this old story of mine. Maybe you're in the mood for a western-that-isn't-quite-a-western?
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| Here is (some of) the cathedral duel in Ladyhawke: Note this follows my first rule: this hurts. Navarre (the gorgeous Rutger Hauer) is on a suicide mission to kill the evil bishop. But the knight on the white horse is almost as good a swordsman as Navarre, and while I couldn't find a video of the rest of this fight on YouTube, they spend about two more minutes of the film hacking at each other, breathing hard, and generally knocking each other's teeth out. It also follows the second rule: at no time is the action confusing. You can tell what Navarre is doing, the actions of his enemies make sense (why do the other soldiers not attack while he's in a clinch with the white knight? Because Navarre is their old captain, and they love him, and only reluctantly raise their swords against him, unlike most movie minions who just stand around waiting for their cue). You even get glimpses of what non-combatants like the bishop and Phillipe (the kid in the robe) are doing. Third rule, though, that this fight illustrates: things should go wrong. Navarre's plan is clearly to ride his warhorse into the church, trample anyone who tries to stop him, and stab the bishop in the face. This doesn't work. There's too many innocents in the way, the other knights are too competent, and it's hard to ride horses in a church anyway. In writing, you can think of this as asking "what's the most straightforward, logical thing the character could do?", having the characters try to do that, and then arranging fate so that nothing works the way they hoped. Then watch them improvise. (Eventually, Navarre ends up throwing his big sword like a javelin.) We love our characters but... look, for them to self actualize, and for fight scenes to actually mean anything, we have to give them hell. Sigh. Now I'm off to write my heist/fight. What hell are you going to give your characters today? |
| It's raining here and the kids are still abed, which means I'm finally (maybe?) finishing up this chapter, and there's a fight scene in it, of course, and that made me think about my theory of fight scenes. (The fight isn't the hard part of this chapter for me, it's that it's kind of a heist, and the heist has to go right and go wrong at the same time. Whatever. That's not important. Fight scenes.) Let's analyze! Here is one of the best fights to ever be filmed, in my opinion: Daredevil season 1, the hallway fight: Now maybe you don't like kung fu, or superheroes, and so you're like "I'm not going to watch that video." I'd encourage you to do so anyway, because Matt Murdoch (Daredevil) is the least super superhero you'll ever meet. He's also my absolute favorite, and here's why: Matt gets the crap kicked out of him all the time. He doesn't have super strength or healing powers. He's got hypersensitivities that allow him to echolocate and an amateur boxing hobby, and that's it. If you watch the fight in the video, he's punching a bunch of gangsters who've kidnapped a kid, and he...takes a beating. By halfway through the fight he's weaving and falling almost as much as his enemies. He keeps getting back up, but by the time he throws that last punch he knocks himself through a doorway. He staggers back into the hall and has to wait, gasping for air, to collect himself before he goes in to rescue the kid. So Raven's first rule of fight scenes is: they should hurt, and they should be difficult. Superman could have knocked all those gangsters into a pile without a care, and it would have been a much worse scene. When you're the guy who can punch the hardest, punching isn't interesting. Next rule: do you notice how you can follow Matt's advance even during the parts where you don't see him? Fight scenes should be clear, even though the fight itself is chaotic. (I particularly like that microwave getting thrown to clock the reinforcements.) My secret weapon for this, if you don't have a handy partner to block with, is to use Lego people and a grid. And...I'm running out of space, so I'll write a part 2 with my other favorite movie fight. |
| My best advice this evening? Go put your records on. A few years back The Husband gave me a turntable for Christmas so I could listen to my albums again, and then I hurriedly went to the secondhand store in my old home town that didn't know better than to price secondhand albums at $5 (Five! Five!!!) and rounded out my collection. And so I'm sitting here in the dim light with the windows open, listening to Us and Them while the thunderstorm rolls outside, the way God intended. Go. Put your records on. Trust me. |
| Today's plan is to hide from the rain and do some work on This Summer's WIP, and when my brain starts to throw a fit about composing, take a walk (in the rain if necessary) and do some reviewing. I confessed to you yesterday that I have three (3) chapters from This Summer's WIP on the go at the moment, a thing that I've always done, but that I'm just kinda letting happen more nowadays. Here's how it looks. I have a folder for the book. Inside I have a main Word document, called "(This Summer's WIP) Manuscript", then I have a document for each chapter ("SummerWIPThree"), because I got tired of copy/paste uploading to WDC (I use a lot of italics, it's very sad). THEN I have a document called "(This Summer's WIP) Cuts" where I put things I write that may or may not ever be in chapters, but that I love too much to get rid of. This prevents me from getting the dreaded thing where I can't progress because what I wrote is wrong, but I also can't just delete the wrong thing because look how pretty it is! I put it in the cuts document and move on, tra la la. When I finish writing a chapter and upload it to WDC for my writing group to look at, I also copy/paste it into the Manuscript Word doc. (Yes. I could do all of this in Scrivener without having a billion little documents. But for whatever reason, I cannot compose in Scrivener, only edit. I don't know why! Brains are weird.) So today, the next sequential chapter in This Summer's WIP should be chapter 21. I have three word documents open, all of which have been titled 21 at one point, as I dink around with my various POV characters. As sometimes happens, I have a terrible feeling that I'll finish all of them at roughly the same time and then have to decide which one is ACTUALLY chapter 21. (It's going to be the villain POV I think.) What are you planning to write today? |
| Today was Figure Out School For The Kids In The New Place, which means I didn't do much, writing-wise, except let the subconscious churn and do some reviews/responses. (Okay, and I did my Artist's Way morning pages, and I dinked around with the like three partial chapters that I've got going. But I didn't finish anything.) Revise This WIP will wait until next week, when I hear back on the outline. Which means the rest of this week can be dedicated to This Summer's WIP, i.e. Impulsive Disaster Mage & Boyfriend Annoy Local CIA Agent, Save World. I'm going to try very hard to actually FINISH any of the three partial chapters I have on the go for this one. We shall see. |
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