Sanderson 2012.11 - Fight Scenes & Romances

all right so here we are let us begin our class as I frequently do by asking you what questions you have that you would like me to address yes excellent that's actually on my list to do today and so I will be getting to that today is going to be a plotting day primarily and then what I said I still have to touch a few things on world-building too but yeah we will get to we will be doing fight sequences will be doing action sequences will be trying to talk about narrative flow for scenes a little bit even though we've already talked about it some will touch on it again what do you think is important is like a well-rounded education like I know you graduates honors how does that I graduated honors cuz my friends all dead no Mike no sure why not and because no don't don't let the secret out but the honors classes are easier because they tend to be filled with people who are interested in the topic and because of that they are more fun and because they're more fun they're easier they may have more work involved but I found them drastically easier because they were taught by people who really wanted to be teaching the class and it was a topic that you know it's more focused toward what I want to do so I loved all my honors classes um drugs science but a broad education for writers kind of come into general big groups someone's talking about me this to me just recently and I agreed with it that you you have the writers who know a lot about one topic in extreme depth and they play to their strengths and write books about that right you can probably name a few of these go for it who'd be a writer like this Michael Crichton is a scientist yes Tom Tom Clancy yes John Grisham a lawyer he bribed slowly expanded Portsmouth patch but its core lawyer' lawyer' books george RR martin is medieval story in um and so there are people who know a lot about one topic I mean Herman Melville would be the quintessential version of this the guy wrote the Jack Aubrey books uh whatever his name is master and commander come on o'brien um he would be another great example this and those tend to be um they very very good books the other type of author is the author who knows a lot or knows a little about a lot of things and so they write books that they're a very broad base that include a lot of different things I think Robert Jordan was like this and rather than focusing on one topic they tend to you know touch on a lot of different things I'm more one of these type of writers and so really what it depends on what you want to make of your writing I think it's value very valuable for a writer to have particularly in fantasy science fiction to have some experience with psychology classes some experience with history classes um but you have to find the right ones you've got to find the wise for the history classes in other words some history classes are going to focus a lot on dates and things and I know that's the dry generic thing but I did take some that did that um you want to find the history classes that are going to say this is why the stirrup revolutionized warfare if you find the classes that teach things like that those are the classes you want to be it so I feel that science is very useful but again it depends on what your writing if you're writing science fiction and you want to write hide to hard science fiction you're going to want to be one of the focused type of writers that knows a lot about a few really powerful scientific topics and then you leverage that into your writing and your novels if on the other hand do you want to write space opera then knowing enough about science to not call a parsec a unit of speed might be a a advantageous thing so I know that he retconned an explanation for that you don't have to tell me you guys know what I'm talking about are you who doesn't know what I'm talking about you're in a science fiction fantasy class well the one I'm referencing stop it yeah in 12 parsecs and parsec is a unit of measurement that's you know like saying I managed to write run a marathon in 13 miles but yeah they've taken the expanding universe writers love this one they've taken great gone to great lengths to make it rational but it's like you know you like the light speed changes the distance you travel if you go anyway it's really funky I'm impressed by what they do but anyway knowing enough about a lot of things to not sound like an idiot in them and that can get you as I've said very far so it depends on what you want to do Stephen King said the last thing you want to do to be a writer is major in English um I agree with him with a caveat that yeah but major in English if you are a writer sure makes getting that major a lot easier because you can use your writing for classes such as this and it makes getting your credits your credits a bit easier particularly the master's degree but conventional wisdom from writers and it is good wisdom is that English majors don't necessarily make better writers than anyone else in fact writer has something about which to write tends to make a better writer than someone who takes a lot of English classes because what people don't know is that English doesn't focus that much on craft focus looks at literary analysis which can be useful to you if you're approaching your books from the right way but I think in large part a good history class is going to be more used to a fantasy writer that said I majored in English and got a master's in English so yeah all right other questions right here tell us about the educational value of video games okay um I feel like if you keep preaching the choir on this one but that the truth of it is video games like novels like everything else are entertainment we're doing entertainment first and that's you know we can talk all day about the literary value of books or what video games are doing and there are lots of cool things they're doing but I don't think it is right to a to not address the fact that this is entertainment and you know good entertainment does a multitude of things ah but we aren't sitting down right I think that if you sit down to say my first job is to inform and then my second job is to entertain then you end up writing a book that is like those books they force you to read in grade school that you know it's like the Dinosaur Train does anyone have kids has to watch the Dinosaur Train okay yeah so 7 the Dinosaur Train is like it pretends to be a kid show my kid loves it so it's great it works for it but it is not a kid it's not a story it is we're gonna go learn about this dinosaur and we'll put a very loose framework of a story around it I'm not conveying yes I know carnivorous dinosaur I know my son is like a years old is anyone you're going to be a paleontologist will you please name dinosaurs things that four-year-olds can pronounce because the only people in the world who care about dinosaurs are four year olds and the paleontologist so why not get them all excited while they're four-year-olds and instead of making it Diplo danke ba ba ba bla bla bla bla bla ba Soros just call it something that's easy to say yeah yeah they can come up with a new one it happens no does not a planet anymore these things can happen but yeah my son's like that's an Archaeopteryx I'm like you can't even say your name without slurring but you can say Archaeopteryx okay I suppose that so let's get anyway um so literary mail I don't know that this is the place to talk about that since it is a craft of writing class but I do think it's important for you guys to think about what you're doing um you want your writing to be meaningful but we are in a class about writing entertainment keep keep your keep that in mind I think you kind of do on that if you find it easier or harder to base it on something like I it's ah it's definitely harder it's definitely harder it's more of a challenge I try to do things like that to challenge myself and and try different things I think video games are a very interesting medium that is around to stay and will only become more mainstream as time progresses we've already seen it become more and more mainstream when I was a kid nerds played video games that's really how it was and that has it is turned into it transitioned into boys play video games and then it translucent into guys play video games and now young people play video games and middle-aged women who like to collect gems that actually one of the largest segments of gaming population is women playing bejeweled that type of game um but I think video games will essentially become a you know there's a there's right now you don't say to people do you watch movies you don't ask that because of course they watch movies who doesn't watch movies you know I'm sure there are people but you know it's it's and but you do still ask do you play video games and I think you know so it will become it's a medium that's here to stay things are changing and it is wise as writers to be aware of the possibilities there video games particularly the last the last five years or so really taken an effort to step up the writing because they found that what's going on talking to the people in industries they have hit a point in the technological development where they can do technologically pretty thing it pretty much anything they want to do and so the games are actually blending together because they're all having the same mechanics and so because of that what's starting to separate them is what separates one action film for another which is the story you place around it to disguise the fact that it's basically just the same story done again and they're doing that they're finding that with video games I did I they did the first game without my involvement they came in and said we need help with story um will you would you like to be involved and I said I really like to get my toes in this so I wrote the book and then wrote the story for the second one i co-wrote it that it was their story to begin with so it's not like I co-opted the whole thing but I did kind of blow in like a storm of of storytelling and leave them with a world Bible and history and a backstory and characters which had been named and all this stuff and so but yeah it was a fun experience they are yeah they're a couple of Utah guys from BYU graduated start their own company it took off got big they got bought by Epic Games who does the Unreal Engine and they have a studio in Salt Lake but there is room for videogame writers as of yet the writers tend to be people who are on staff so if you are a computer programmer and you have good storytelling chops there's a good chance you will be would be allowed to write story and you can get a job like that right now you still you know they're not hiring very many um very many people who are not part of the industry to just write for them they're going to people like RA Salvatore rather than you but it's it is a valid job I do have a friend who's a story a quest designer for World of Warcraft that's his job he has an English degree so yeah like yes does it ever I guess bug you like like how meaningful can enter just entertainment well you use a just we are doing entertainment that's what it is it's not a just it's a description of what it is um but describing a statue as a rock is true what you are doing is entertainment people are going to pick up your book for entertainment purposes that's why they go get it unless you know you there are people who are writing different types of things but I'm going to guess everyone this class the reason someone walks to grab that book is entertainment and a good book is going to deliver a number of things alongside it but you have to remember they are walking to pick up that book to be entertained and hopefully that to have a meaningful experience to learn something to grow as a person to see through the eyes of the others so that you come to understand other people more but they are picking up that book to be entertained don't forget that don't forget to be fun this is what I I think I think when we get very solemn about what our meanings are and our themes and our tomes we start start forgetting how to be fun and there's a lot of different types of fun and a lot of different books that are fun in different ways but don't forget to make an enjoyable experience alongside what you're giving um because that's why they're picking up your book yes um it's a good question I would say that for me and there are there various schools of thought on this there are some people who will build a story around a meaning this is a CS Lewis approach and it's hard to argue a CS Lewis though Tolkien did um where Tolkien if you would ask him what his books are about he would say they're about the characters and the stories that they tell and the mythology that I built they are not about anything they are about themselves and this was this was as I understand a long-standing discussion between him and CS Lewis about how didactic stories were intended to be and so it depends on your personal philosophy this is a question that has to be approached kind of from a personal philosophy standpoint for me I feel that I am writing a story first and the meaning will come from telling a good story and so if I am writing characters who are deeply passionate about topics which are meaningful if I make my characters meaningful and place them on opposite sides of a thought process on an issue and let them discuss about it in meaningful ways it will be it will have it will have depth to it by exploring both sides and that's what I do you get preachy by not putting in straw men now you avoid being preachy by not putting it's from it nothing bothers me more in fiction than a straw man particularly one who believes as I do and is exists in the story to be taught a lesson and that goes against the character philosophy that tried to express you in this class which is that a character is the hero in their own story they think live breathe dream and have a life outside of the main plot of the story and even if part of their narrative arc is to learn something about themselves having them exist only for one persist it's purposely taught a lesson is usually going to create a flat and unengaging character so that is my response to you let the characters decide your theme granted your passions are going to inform what the characters become and so you are going to be creating it but your if you see it through the lens of the of the characters the other thing I would suggest is be careful to give sympathetic protagonists with good arguments that are different from what you believe if you really want to have depth this is what you need to approach you want to discuss a topic put in someone who research what other people think other than you and put in a protagonist who expresses that philosophy in a strong and meaningful way and I believe that this is a method of achieving truth I believe that if something is true a strong argument is going to actually make a better argument for the truth than a weak argument well a truth that cannot stand up to a strong argument against it is not a very good truth in the first place so that means if you're very right-wing and you want to approach this in your books it will make your books more make your book stronger if the people who are have the opposing philosophy are not all pedophiles which is what happens in fiction you will find it how do you make the bad guy bad guy number one you make them spouse the opposite political philosophy you and number two you make them a pedophile I guarantee you can find examples of it in literature and so stay away from doing that and instead put a strong character who even if it's not the main character has a philosophy that you've researched and you've given their strong arguments and don't make the point of the book to prove them wrong let the reader read and say okay I see both of these arguments going back and forth and I can see I can pretty much tell I think what the main what the the writers philosophy is but the other arguments here and if someone disagrees with you is reading a book and they see their argument there that will make them appreciate you as an author so much more to say yes that's what I believe I am represented and it's not a straw men if you don't want to write books like that that's ok you don't have to that but if you want to do it which you seem like you do that is my advice to you all right other questions right over here romance I suppose we should shouldn't wait ah boy we probably should talk about that I'm not sure the thing is romance I am I basically build like I build most character interactions I just add a romantic element to it so I actually plot it out very similarly to the way I plot out any other character relationship interaction I just add a romantic element to it but we can talk about that let's um let's get into this yeah let's go and do a lecture on fight scenes and romance yeah I mentioned that at the beginning much money yeah yeah yeah third love magic right okay hey you guys can you imagine systems um just like like you think I do this or something um and boy Travis isn't here so I'm how many treats oh but I got something left that they had some last week's like Nate does yeah week old treats everyone tell Travis when he comes back next week that we missed him this was really by the way damage is not here I can tell you a really clever ploy on his part because I immediately started remembering his name and I now recognize him and this sort of little thing works I don't know they teach you this stuff in like the married school or whatnot but making yourself memorable for a reason like this I mean yeah the person who's willing to go to extreme lengths in a non-creepy way can get very far and so you know I once told the group and they got terrified this prospect and didn't do it but right when iPads were coming out I told them get five of you together go buy five iPads load your books on it and give them to five editors as a gift that you have interacted with somehow or you have met that you want to be and say hey here's your free iPad all you have to do is read a page of each of our works I told them try something that daring that's pretty daring that's all that's like up to the line and maybe stepping over it for some editors but I guarantee that editors going to remember you and editors are not well paid so getting a free iPad they'd be like yeah no don't feel guilty but they do it I mean they they have seen lots of bookmarks they have seen lots of cute doilies and they've seen lots of you know pink papers sent to them to try and draw their attention they have seen all of that they have not seen someone give them an iPad loaded with five books but that might be over the line I don't know it's the sort of thing I might have tried I was after that whole being very poor thing but once again being very poor you can make that same argument going to med school you are very poor yes you're a med students you can't afford $20,000 tuition every year you're going to do it anyway and that's cheap tuition um so all right fight scenes and romance writing and read very appropriately let's talk about fight scenes first look how cute I'm being that's an r-rated film most you don't recognize that it was a book - yes don't talk about fight sins um yeah it's probably my terrible writing um yeah Tom yeah okay yeah um so fight scenes um easy way to remember this thing I'm going to talk about is don't talk about fight scenes sure let's go fight scene okay I'll write that any more writer thing remember to show now we've got a problem we're approaching and writing action sequences in a book and that is that our culture is now saturated with visual media and visual media is really good at action sequences alright really really good for example you can have an action sequence in a bull and it is show a movie that is basically 20 minutes of Jackie Chan kicking people or occasionally throwing a hammer at them right or whatever happens to be around you can watch that and it's not everyone's cup of tea but that works in the genre that's created for you can have an ending of a film that is basically a 15 20 minute fight sequence that's 1/6 of the time you've got what would happen if you wrote in a book 1/6 of your book being that fight sequence shorty bug yeah well it would be this yeah go and he kicked again and then he kicked him in a different cooler way and then he kicked him with his other foot and dust flew off and then um the problem you're going to run into is in a film blow by blows fun and a book blow by blow is not as fun I put the as in there because there are caveats to this there are people who really do enjoy just a lot of blow by blow it's not the general book you're going to read but they do exist and there is not in store them however just a blow by blow I'm going to say it's always not fun a dressed-up blow by blow can be for the right audience but for most the books you're going to be writing the blow-by-blow is almost irrelevant okay do we have any fight skippers in the class only one of you okay they skip the fight scenes read to flip and see who lives and then continue on with the story how many I got two of you the three of you that's usually women and I've got several in my writing group there are people who just will say okay you know I just flip them see who lived and then I keep going they've literally skip all the fight scenes um so yes all that work there are also a lot of people who read the last page and won't read the book until they've read the last page my my wife's assisted in one of these and it drives me crazy she has to look and see and if she doesn't like the ending but she won't read the book even it's like the last in the series or something shows so she can pretend that that ending didn't happen so what's that just right yeah write your own ending so far as you go oh yes first thing that I want you to approach and writing your fight sequences is to make sure you're being clear now this is going to push you toward doing more of a blow-by-blow initially alright that's okay as you're working on these the biggest mistake I find is people not being really clear with what's happening because the relevant information for this fight sequence is really who got hurt who didn't get hurt who lived that's what people want to know and if we can't follow with very clear language what's going on we're going to be in trouble so this has to inform all the other stuff we're going to talk about I'm going to talk about how to make them more exciting and more interesting but you've got to remember the fight sequence the action sequence is the place where you want to show the most you want to be the most concrete and you want to stay away from your you know you bring down your metaphoric language a several notches bring down your you bring up your level of concreteness getting rid of to be verbs getting rid of passive voice getting rid of all of these things that the redundancy that make writing slow you want to be short brief and clear and then well then you can go about hey I know there's a chair right here if you want to grab it there might be another desk open there's one back there if you'd rather to ask it so first be clear now this once you've got the clarity thing down and you're making sure that you're blocking so under clarity let's put a b and c who is where be concrete and see I had it something I said that was really meaningful what's that look yeah who's where be very concrete and Oh get metaphors down metaphors down and that includes killing passive voice and things alright so we haven't talked a lot about blocking so let me do it aside about blocking blocking is the phrase we use it's a stage term who is where and letting us remember where everyone is alright this is really important for a fight sequence now it doesn't necessarily mean that we want a step-by-step of what everyone's doing however if you burst into a room with two companions we want to know where to stick those companions in our head while the main character goes about what they're doing okay so you know John rushed off to the side toward you know the guys with machine guns and Mary ducked behind cover and threw a grenade okay that's enough to let us know okay he's going this way she's going that way we can forget about them for a little time a little while on the sake of clarity and focusing on our main character and go from there so who was where it was a good set up and I would say from there go to one character I don't even know my numbers are so we're just gonna go one character and follow them through the fight sequence if you're having trouble with the fight sequences start there and then have them give little updates once in a while where where where is what's happened with Mary throwing grenades what's happened with him you know a quick glance told him that John wasn't engaged and you know furious sword fighting cutting bullets from the air with his magical katana the flash of likes you know was like a strobe oK we've got him we've got one sentence we know what John is doing over there he's going to be popping bullets out of the air while we're doing whatever one sentence here and they're letting us know what other people are doing while we stick with this one character at the beginning that's not the way have to do it forever but if you're having trouble asite fight sequences one of the big things I see people do is number one they they kind of instinctively know that a blow-by-blow isn't fun and so they don't want to do a lot of this and they let themselves get lacs to where people are going and it becomes just you know things like it was a scene of chaos and destruction there was pounding in the air there was you know shaking of the ground there was screaming from there was there was there was there was there was there was that finally like a sense about our main character main character dropped to his knees and held his hands over his ears there was there was there was and then you know trying to get this big feel for an epic battle and then they'll go into like all the different battles that are happening kind of forgetting about our main character and then finally getting to them and doing what they're doing and this creates a very confusing sense in the reader whether like what is the purpose and the point of the scene Who am I following and usually a fight sequence can be narrowed down to one character better that's not to say that you don't want that chaotic feeling but you want the character feeling Kayle chaos feeling like there admits a battle you don't want the reader feeling confused confused character good confused reader bat okay so that same scene would be done you know that that scene that I just described they could film and Saving Private Ryan to make it awesome in a book that would be very difficult to do you would want to just start with the main character which they eventually do in Saving Private Ryan and follow that main character through so that we keep our focus for this for this this action sequence alright so number one take a character you got everything clear now your your your but you're probably still got a lot of blow-by-blow but that's okay the next step is to ask yourself what are we doing what is what is what is fiction do that these other forms of art can't do and try to play to the strengths of what's going on in your fiction in other words you can't compete with Jackie Chan for an engaging blow-by-blow action sequence so why try why instead not do what fiction does really well what can we do that they can't do on the street characters thoughts and emotions particularly if you can make us feel like we're exactly feeling what the character is doing now this is why I prefer to use direct thoughts of the character with a balance with a third-person narrative because I think this allows me to do a lot of interesting things and I try to make the thoughts shows rather than tell and you can do this you know it having it you can have a character stop and say wonder why those borders stopped firing or you can imply that this is a really chaotic action sequence by having them roll to the ground you know cut you know things exploding around them and have them think the mortars they've stopped that is a more of a show and I prefer to do this personally this is a this is a stylistic choice but it is one I suggest that you try out a lot of the thoughts that I'm saying used by you you are very exposed Tori which again is a stylistic choice I'm not going to say don't do it when I say consider trying to make the thoughts more shows to give us like you get a feeling of this is the immediate thought they're having at this moment and then the the narrative really does the tells that need to be told and let the thoughts be be shows indications of emotions as well as thoughts and you can show emotion with thoughts really easily it's a powerful way to do so without having to say he felt this he felt this he felt this great you're going to use some of that but lots of motions the characters are something that we can do that is very difficult to convey in film in the same way are you saying treat thoughts like a quotation rather than saying he thought this you would just have it in the midsection this is whatever it is I would put in italics underline italics yeah right yeah and I wouldn't even in that one I mean get a little tiresome if you do it too much it really does but it depends on your narrative flow and how often you break it and how often you put these thoughts in you'll see that I do it I probably do it like once a page and once a page the ticker as a reminder of the characters emotional and a mental state so and so thought at the end of those are just um you don't really need to we frequently do the thought is invisible in the the mortars they stopped I wouldn't put a thought there to help just give a little bit of an extra conveyance of the emotional state of the character they don't have time for complete thoughts so we don't have time to write down he thought he's just noticing it and you know that's replacing he noticed that the border should stop shelling and it's saving a few words which is good but it's also using it to convey a character a little bit more so we can you thoughts of emotions what else can we do a little bit more flexibility with pacing and yes we do yes Pacey good example because with our pacing what we can do is we can zoom through an hour and focus in on a moment in ways that in a book or in a film they kind of have to use like slow-mo and stuff and it's very natural in the rhythm of a book and so we can manipulate pacing it allows us to do this thing where you know we give a quick explanation of where he's going and where she's going and then we can pace it through the main character and and things like okay what else can we do we have a hand back here yeah senses good this is this should be part of what you're doing for your concreteness but it is a great thing to remember we are much better with some of the senses um yeah oh yeah yeah special effects unlimited great and don't overload your your fight sequences with descriptions but boy if this is the place to bring out the big guns where it comes to writing compact concrete descriptive sentences you know and I told you to bring the metaphoric language down that doesn't mean to get rid of it you get rid of it entirely but I would try and bring the metaphoric language into character voice a little bit more Robert Jordan did this you the metaphors of a given character and a person who is a blacksmith wouldn't use forging metaphors a farmer would use farming metaphors a soldier you soldier soldiering metaphors and you know a metaphor like the the battle grad smelled like they a forge after a long day's work with smoldering bits of metal and things and you know something like that cannon convey character and still be a great metaphor for something like this just don't get too flowery but some of these really strong concrete sentences for descriptions can can really shine in a fight sequence all right Martok story that story sure yeah and Princess Bride that how the characters the Cassini's troupe sort of is assembled and you get to know that any go spend 20 years studying fencing or whatever the things that they have to tell you when you yeah yeah yeah that's that's a good one as well really what a lot of these are getting into is your ability to use the thoughts and emotions considering all of this stuff if you look at it your fight sequences should start to shape up a little bit they should stop being a blow-by-blow and more be a an experience of the characters emotional and mental state while they're in serious danger a trained soldier is probably not going to have as many thoughts or emotions is going to have reflexes and so that's that's okay from here the next step where I go when I'm writing an action sequence as I start to look at this sort of thing that we learn as a writer the narrative flow of a sequence and you start to ask yourself questions like what is the point of the sequence and the point should not be to entertain with a blow-by-blow the blow-by-blow is a side thing what is what is this scene conveying is your main purpose here to advance the plot where a character dies is your main sequence here to show your character main character being resourceful in a time of great stress and danger is your sequence here to add a level of danger and threat to the to the world and all of these things are things that fight sequence can achieve and I think our vital particularly fight sequences that you consider when you're putting them in because they'll each have a different town so I can a loved one the other miss bond books used a lot of the fight sequences to give a crash course on the magic system yes I did that's a very common use of them of a byte sequence for me and I frequently use them for what I just said let's show how resourceful the characters are so we can show a character in their area of expertise being an expert I'll live law is a great example of this and you can compare the UM they have the tones of the fight sequences you can see where I'm trying to be illustrative of the magic and where I'm trying to say here is why this character is very confident you've seen them be a fish out of water now we're dumping them in the pond and they're the big fish and it's it's there for achieving character I character sympathy and empathy hopefully if I'm doing it right we do still do some blow-by-blow in that and the blow-by-blow can be fun and an action book is going to you you're going to want to have something action be fun but you sit down and say what is fun in a book for me in an action sequence what is fun is showing the characters making connections using their resources and interesting ways and being being clever if there are clever character if they're not clever character advancing the character in some other way so you'll see me use fight sequences and there's more books for a lot of things there's a lot of fighting in the Mistborn books and some of them it is to convey a sense of tone for the period to make that in the combat and this and some of these books are more like dances these kind of beautiful flowing one-on-one sparring matches in the night in the Miss we're intended to invoke a sort of sense of this is this is a wondrous magic system this is this is that you know this is wire foo without hopefully you know the wires being visible this is elegant and graceful and these are elephant graceful creatures who have come into conflict with one another and so I'm trying to achieve certain tones with these fight sequences this is very important for you as a writer to start paying attention to you for all the sequences that you're doing what is what is this sequence achieving what is its goal and it shouldn't just be one thing advancing the plot is usually not enough what is what is the tone of this scene going to do and fight sequences I want our place where people often just kind of say okay now we're in the fight sequence so we'll show them fighting and that's what the scene is about I find that the fight sequences are far more engaging if you say no what's the tone of this and how can I make the fighting enhance the tone of this fight sequence desperation or is it competence or is it you know misery and hopelessness there is no fighting back so questions on pipe sequences blasting authors that change your call I mean there are so many different styles on this patent is a big fan of uh of tad Williams is one of the big it in influential authors I believe in his his writing style career and tad was a master of the quick viewpoints well you'll get in really great sequences of his you'll have like five different viewpoints and the way he cuts them go study what he does other authors like Garber Jordan did not cut viewpoints nearly as often in his book in their books so yeah make your make your decision what kind of tone do you want it quick frantic cuts give a sense of speed to a book and well speed is the wrong tone term a sense of pacing like Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam if you're cutting scenes very quickly but if you do that too much the reader gets lost so it's a balance other questions about fight scenes you're all experts now good now I just said stuff that didn't make that much sense you confused how do you go about gauging whether you've gone too far a little bit - alpha readers yeah I usually operators because that balance is one of those ones that I have to have someone read it and see if they get bored yeah oh I think that's definitely if you've got a character that can do that it can be a great way to make that you want to make the fight scene here's the thing guys every scene should do something different and cool you should be trying to do something different and cool with every scene and from newer authors I read a lot of filler scenes like they're trying to get to the something cool and awesome well as a writer you should be able to turn any scene and it's something cool and awesome if it's not set it someplace interesting or have them doing something interesting while the scene is progressing you know there are lots of in television there are lots of masters of doing this you'll set a scene in an unexpected location and even though it's just talking heads going back and forth because they're watching the shark tank at the time and kind of you know their conversation is therefore reflecting kind of the nature of sharks you suddenly have this great underlying message for the sequence so set it play some places and having to do something something interesting just have something interesting and different happen in every scene if you can and you know when you sit down and say I'm going to write my fight sequence say what different can happen in this fight sequence but what's what's you know we're going to have a generic chase sequence okay what can we where can we put them to chase would be more interesting a chase through the cages of the zoo where you're jumping over partitions in from you know from the Lions Den - this is a different chase sequence then we're running down more generic streets um beginning you know the parkour thing from the beginning of one of the more recent James Bond films chase sequence is a great example of this it could have just been him chasing a guy down a street because there's lots of films to do that and instead they had this really cool parkour thing you know that is urban climbing and stuff and so ask yourself what can my fight sequence do differently where can we set it what can what hindrances can we give to the characters or advantages can we give to the characters and try and do this with all of your scenes if you can how do you find the differences between large battles um well that's gonna that's going to be a measure of tone for me when I'm writing armies I go for the often the sense of I am the small and miniscule thing in the center of this big machine that's crushing against another machine and you give a sense of that through the character's eyes by just having them having them you know they're trying to stay alive most people in wars are just trying to stay alive it's a it's a war between their training and their their survival in state and that if you show that inside of them that can be as interesting a conflict as anything else how do you like make it feel like awesome power remember when I was reading like The Wheel of Time yeppers love I was just like our even like Russia compared Oh was happening right like in that book of the magic it wasn't that much more awesome than things that happened lost other bright magic but just felt like awesome like I don't and I don't know there's necessary I think it's used to character personally it's use of character if they characters the way they're responding to it makes it feel awesome it will feel awesome and you know I can't this is one of those things you don't have to experiment with on your own and it's a really hard one because you will never be able to read your sequence and feel the same awesomeness because you know the sequence you can't feel that sense of wonder and awe because you wrote it unless maybe you hit yourself on the head and forget about it and do it yeah I often wonder what would the teenage Brandon think of Brandon's books now but yeah getting into specific questions like that how is it done it's done by a master writing a story where characters are passionate and are real and feel alive and we see the world through their eyes and it brings us in and gives us the sense that it's real and then we can feel a sense of wonder because if it's not real to us we can't all right let's talk out anything else on fight scenes this is really a matter of taking a lot of the things that we've talked about before and doing them really well I think the takeaway from this should be the remember that a blow-by-blow is usually not going to be that fun you're going to want to have like a little blow-by-blow and then you're going to want to have thoughts and emotions but stay away from as I've warned you say this is the thing stay away from I punched him now I pontificate on it I punched him now I pontificate on on it make sure you're making it appropriate to the tone because I punch him I pontificate is really not that much that any more interesting that I punch him I kick him I punch him I kick him and so make the goals of the character vital what are they trying to do it's one I should have mentioned earlier what are they trying to achieve and in a book you can show as they slowly try to achieve their goal in the fight if their fight sequence is just I'm keeping this person alive you build a sense of progression into that you show them trying and may and almost failing or failing at the end or set almost failing several times you build it like you would any little plot structure and by the end of it you should have achieved or failed in the character's goal all right romance romance is what hey what's movie what what different readers want regarding this is what differ wildly depending on the genre and sub-genre you're writing okay I think the best thing I learned for making a romance realistic was what I learned about making characters realistic I keep coming back to that concept but when the character is there just for a romance to occur the romance felt unengaging because it's a character you know falling in love with a cardboard cutout and so boy what can I say about romance um oh you yeah okay I hope you're gonna take over and teach us I've got Dave's lesson on it I'll teach that one after this he doesn't get job with it what's the difference between like a kind of a childish romance right and say don't roam ants and do you really need to make that much of a difference in your writing oh that's that's actually a question because it's something I've thought about quite a bit um certainly there's going to be a big difference between a middle-grade romance and a teen why a romance middle grade is you know the kids are usually just beyond girls are yucky or boys are yucky and they giggle but they don't you know they don't profess true love and I think that one's actually you know easier for you to distinguish then the the teen romance which is here's the thing how realistic do you want your romance to be that's question number one okay how realistic do you want your romance to be that's a little like asking how realistic you want your fight sequences to be it's kind of a loaded question my applied sequences are wildly unrealistic because they're taking place in the fantasy world and we're doing fantastical things with them even if you pull out the fantasy I tend to arrange the situation's in such a way that they would be somewhat unrealistic I do more Hollywood style fighting than I do tough and gritty fighting and I probably should have talked about this in the fight sequences thing but you know topping gritty fighting the real nature of fighting is you take a wound and you don't fight anymore that's the end um two people one person can almost never beat two people if there's two of them in one of you you lose that's how fighting is in the real world if they're if you're all trained the only way to get that is the sort of intimidation factor which is the kind of Berserker factory vehicle watch people fight online you can see like little videos like there's this one that I saw this guy who just goes crazy rips off a shirt and takes down four guys but what he does doing it is he shoves this one he knocks this one away he goes crazy on this one and the other Stanback going holy cow he's going crazy um and so and that's the that's the way you beat a group in real life in real life if two people come at you with swords in the shield and you have a sword a shield and nobody around you you're dead we don't like to talk about this but it's true I mean yes you could probably beat those two guys once in a while but those sort of situations you know two-on-one is not very fair see we got some martial artists in here right um I am I what am I saying wrong about this um it's really hard to fight two-on-one isn't it yeah here's another fact of real fighting for you getting the guy on the ground is the best way to win in an unarmed fight um you don't want to kick him and punch him except for once get him on the ground and put him in a headlock that's how you win um preferably while pounding them in the face while you've got in a headlock don't laugh that's what you do you really want to beat somebody you kick them really hard or you rush at them really hard and knock them off balance and down you get them on the ground you put them in a hold and you beat them senseless that's how you win you can't do that in a group because notice when you're doing that what happens to their with their friend they're jumping on your back and then you lose but that's you know real battles with them with a sword and shield you did not usually take place like the test and circling and the things and then exchange they went like this no really you put your shield up and you hit over the other guys shield or to the side of it until one of you dies or gets hit and that means you die and it's over like that that's that that's a battle a one-on-one now in real warfare they're putting you in ranks and formations so that sort of thing doesn't happen you're here stabbing with a line of a bunch of guys stabbing at a bunch of other guys come at you stabbing and you're hoping to break their formation so you can do the stuff I just talked about to them and that's real war so it depends on how realistic you want to make it we're talking more about fantasy warfare I'm talking about medieval warfare yeah modern warfare is completely different beast completely different beast um question/comment I'm just going to say it's almost like if you ever watched the Olympic fencing the Algar in like one second yeah just whoever goes first yep and so that's that's that's realism so going back to the romance how realistic do you want your romance do you want to allow it to be Hollywood Hollywood if I'd a little bit and there's really nothing wrong with that it's a trope that we all buy into just like we buy into the fact that we can have extended duels commonly and that one person can take on three granted it helps too with suspension of disbelief when you give them magical powers and you make them you know you make the fight sequences try to feel realistic as they would be if these magical powers happen which will you know are cleverly designed to make the battles work more like they would in a Hollywood show yeah go to zero right right like you say like one hit yeah who does like how much how much damage can we do to our characters right believably before they should lose what time uh what what type of story are you telling me you know you know Bruce Willis in die hard that guy should have been dead long ago but the story works because he is just so tough he's not um and you know realistically in it you take a wound in your arm and you're out of fighting for what six months you don't fight again for six months you take a wound on the side you don't fight again for six months if you know or maybe longer you're down that's it you know I mean you take a wound in the leg and you can't March you are not on the battlefield that's what happened you know and these you know you had lots of people cycling off the battlefield and on the battlefield as well it's another thing we mentioned talking about warfare there were long extended campaigns and a lot of warfare is about not actually fighting a lot of warfare is about intimidating the other people getting in position to fight and then having the quick clash and seizing a little bit of ground or losing a little bit of ground or attacking a supply line very rarely did they actually have the big battles they did still happen that we're just like everyone runs at each other and at the end of the day we count who's alive the most most armies will break after ten percent casualties you see ten percent of your friends fall in this rank and holding that rank gets really hard because it's breaking apart and when the rank breaks you know that you're dead and so you break first and run and that's what armies were about is making sure you didn't break first and run and both sides will be taking a bunch of losses and both sides no one was winning both sides were losing one just broke first that's very frequently what would happen so if you want to write sequences like this don't listen to me because I've learned to fake it I think it well enough and then I give it to experts who tell me what I'm doing right and wrong go research it here for yourself because it'll be things I've said today that are true in some cases but not true in a lot of other cases and you'll just have to know it let's let's do talk about really the romance though how realistic you want your romance to be a lot of people who are reading for a romantic subplot are not looking for a realistic romance um that's perfectly fine I don't know you know your your scale of how unrealistic the romance is going to be it's going to vary depending on what type of story you want to write I try to keep a little more on the realistic side but I'm sure there are people who do it much more Stickley than me they would look and say this is complete fantasy branded but lets up let's look at Twilight as an example Twilight is an example of a very realistic teenage romance this is how teenagers really do approach romance everything is the most passionate that has ever existed in the history of mankind they are very you know she wrote Bella like a real teenager and then the tone of the story was that this is actually true love and that's where it becomes a fantasy I'm not saying this to snicker this is what this tension lead unn and this type of story and it's perfectly all right it's the type of story that's being told they're making the the kind of like I'm taking the idealized sense of combat and making it the reality in my book they're taking the idealized sense of love at first sight eternal um you know soulmates made for each other that see each other and are passionately ravenously in love with each other like teenagers and making that a real basis for a solid relationship and that is bit that is one of the big tropes of the romance genre is doing that so that's question number one and so it goes back to your question of what's you know what's what distinguishes a teen romance well teenagers tend to be think that their patent dates Romeo and Juliet where if Romeo and Juliet had lived they would have broken up in three or four weeks that's what the the show doesn't talk about am i right parents of teenagers that's how it goes I guess there aren't a lot of parents of teenagers in here ah yeah what's that yeah lovely Oh got one um but that's the towel it goes and that that's what Romeo and Juliet skipped and so what's a real romance like well you've probably been through some of them real romances involve a lot of trying to guess what the other person's thinking and being wrong they involve a lot of doing dumb things um for what you think are good reasons but really aren't they involve a kind of fumbling and kind of you know all of this sort of stuff and you can make a really deep and powerful romance that way but it takes a lot of work and so sometimes the quick and easy romance is a better fit for a story one of the things that day boulders have talked about with romances is a concept he called braided roses this is one of the most fulfilling archetypes for a reader is to have two characters this works not just bromance so two characters who are forced to be together in a way that together they look beautiful like a pair of roses but they each have such personality quirks and such that they rub each other the wrong way and they jab the thorns into each other so they're like a pair of braided through roses like is it the reader can get a sense over time that they're beautiful together and the characters can get a sense eventually they're beautiful together but at the beginning it's just about those thorns you've read stories like this isit it's a very well-used archetype but it's something to pay attention to the two people who don't get along very well at the start but are forced to travel to each other and come to a mutual respect and even love for one another it works just as well with with you know buddy-cop type stuff as it does with with romance so that is one approach to writing a romance um that's not how much romances really are that's all that's a fanciful version too it's a nice one I liked I liked that one um I use that one but it's a fanciful one real romances really are more like ha could probably go out with her yeah this is this is all right hmm maybe she's not interested maybe I'm not interested huh okay we'll go out again yeah I'm interested I'm really interested Oh but am i coming on too strong Oh is she coming on too strong I mean that's how it is we joke about on women overthinking things but men do too and remember just to make your characters characters you know rather than fulfilling gender tropes what else do we have to say on this you guys help me out give me some suggestions yeah how do you braid those roses my toes no well one way is the love triangle which is introduce another romantic interest which is almost as as desirable to the to the reader you want it to generally be almost or you make it equally and it's like who will they end up with the problem with that is with the types of stories that we're telling if you make the romance the most important thing about a character it can get out of hand really quickly for you as well as for the reader meaning if you know the girl in the story is you know supposed to be saving the world but the love that the love triangle becomes the most important thing then in a lot of ways you're undermining your own story it's okay to have a love triangle in there but you still want your characters to be real to be people and so yeah so love triangles one you know there's going to be lots of you you can plot it like you do any plot sequence like I said the goal is to characters fit together they hook up at the end well what can interfere with that what interesting things can happen what can we find out about the two of them that like I said when you're building a character what can you find out about a character that that will not make them fit the role they're to be in what can you discover about two characters that would make them impossible to get together but then make us want them to anyway do try to make sure hey do you want this chair right here yeah yeah this one right there yeah do try to make them fit together so that they don't get together just because and this is this is a common problem romances the male protagonist and the field own protagonist therefore they must get together do make things about them compliment one another and you can do this by either the opposites attract method which is holes that the one the one have the other one fills in vice-versa so they're good for each other and that can actually work or they have similar likes and interests and so they they enhance one another when they're together doing either one of those is fine but do try to make sure that that happens for your romances too often it's just assumed that they will get together and that's what you were talking about they're getting together because of course they're going to get together because there's exactly one male protagonist age 17 and exactly one female protagonist age 17 and everyone else is either married or way too old or way too young except for Knight's Tale where he totally should have ended up with the flexpay yes no no he shouldn't have because they would have bad together but anyway he was he doest you notion that when they put in a lost love for her so that they could take her off the table as a potential romantic interest I still love my deceased husband okay no romance for you like me I like are you sure all right let's plot a romance all right all right we're going to work it out we're going to build this let's just go to the show instead of tell because these are some the reason I'm having so much trouble this one is these these sorts of things like I've told you before character growth and progress is an instinctive thing for me and something I do as I go and so when I actually write a book I don't I say this is a potential romantic interest this is also a potential romantic interest these are you know these are connections that could be made at some point in the book I will often do that I won't always but I will often do that and I will allow the character to grow in the direction that it feels like the match works and so let's do this let's build ourselves two characters how old are they 24 okay are the same age okay she's 27 he's 24 all right I married an older woman so I'm uh partial um all right 27 24 what is that do that obsession see a planner what's that city planner okay let's try not to do a romantic comedy so let's do a xian'er thing so we're going to put urban fantasy okay what it doesn't have Durbin fantasy does not have to mean vampires you wanted it to be actual fantasy all right so she's an urban planner for the fairy world yeah they will be you know the UM the hidden world whatever it is she's the person who is the liaison when they come and say you know we want to be building a new series of fairy Hut's on top of this skyscape scraper can we get zoned for that um so she's you know urban planner okay and she has to get like the proper permits and make sure that there's like no psychics living in the house that could accidentally discover the fairy world by you know hearing the voices on top or things like that what's the dudes of dudes profession and/or detective okay it's effective there you go you're doing this already alright so we've already got one rose braided together right he is investigating the fairy world that she in part is supposed to keep secret alright what's the plot of our book what's the what's the capital P plot the big thing that's happened that that is going to drive the whole narrative okay big Lord fair world so we've got the fairy haha and there's a fairy turf war going on which is directly related to what she does and it spilled over into what he does he doesn't know about the fantasy world she does um they met on match.com p.m. ooh but not by accidents okay this is good but what happened how did they meet you know they just have the you stop which like a normal date and they're like nothing's going to happen here in that fact they have a horrible first date I heard full ones I'm like this can work either way you can either have like some kind of controlling force pushing them together but you can also coincidences are a huge part of romance yes they are that's what makes it feel special yeah very nice very nice thing to add okay so they met a month maximum you're saying it's just a coincidence that they did and that's part of what drives this whole story is that you know these two different people we start off with a little bit of his story we start off a little bit of her story and we're like oh this thing is happening this is cool meanwhile they're both living their lives and they both are wanting you know and so they end up on a date together and that's the first time they interact it could actually be kind of cool as a end of act 1 sort of what are these two characters they meet randomly you know you've seen them both browsing profiles online and go on a date together and during the date the the very gangsters order a hit on one of the two of them um and suddenly you know they order a hit on him and you know you could do a very nice reversal where she's an urban planner but she's you know ex-anti you know very gangster something like that you know she's got some powers in the fantasy world and so Tori turns into a the the tough detective guy has to get protected by the woman in a business suit to keep him from being assassinated by the fairy gangsters for reasons that they don't know and he had knows nothing about all of this he's just been investigating something completely separate but it does tie in and so what you suddenly worked into it is a reason they have to be together they were having a horrible first date um it ended with an assassination attempt and now she by nature of what she is feels like she has to keep him alive he wants to get the heck out of here because she's crazy and her friends that dress up like LARPers who tried to kill him or crazy you're laughing because this is fun this is going to be a fun story now in this one this is turning into more romance and so at this point I would say I'm not really writing a romance I want to have a strong romantic element to an interesting story and so I would start building more personality for each of them separate and I start building this very gangster war and things and make sure that when we introduce both of them they have compelling stories and narratives that are aside from the romance it's going to come at them but this is going to turn into a romance story um you know as one of its main things this is the relationship arc half of track art no but it works really well to do some usually I would say you want it to you want it to kind of be like this if this is the plot arc you either want your relationship art you go like this or relationship Arctica like that so you say you're mirroring them a little bit but what's happening is they're expressing true love for each other right before the big climax which they then go you know fight together or right after it and you'll see this happening very frequently in storytelling so the question is we've built this now we get back to your original question how do we make this continue to be interesting this is what you want to do what plot cycles can we throw into this that will be interesting and not terribly cliche but we'll still keep tension going prolonging of the gratification of coming together yeah that can either happen with the characteristic traits the characters traits being in kind of conflict right number of things like in the name of the wind it's basically just being compressed yeah and then or it's really the just like the try fail kind of model that makes it interesting and that's basically a continuation of them trying to not get or trying to get together in it not are you wanting them to get together and it's not working at the try fail does work very wonderfully for this so you would build into this by rebuilding this plot I'd say okay so let's come I would come up with and we don't have time to do this because I want to go to writing groups but let's come up you would come up with you know three scenes where they start to build a mutual respect and affection for one another by what happens and then I would build three scenes where it goes wrong you'll watch hitch you'll find both of these okay hitch is great film and you'll find three scenes where everything kind of goes wrong and you'll be able to find three scenes where things are going right and usually what's happening is it's this until we hit this and it's this until we hit this things are going right things are going right oh no I just fed him shellfish and he's allergic to it and everything's going wrong and you build up to like the you know the kind of big one which is the I you have betrayed me the reason hitch works well as a romantic comedy is because I feel that it has a stronger on third act fall apart than most romantic comedies knew usually it's like I'm not going to be with you for stupid reasons and this one it works because it kind of has been lying to her all along about what he does and who is and she finds out and it's a really traumatic thing for the way the story has built it up and so you do things like that and so he's right you the anticipation of ooh they're coming to like each other know why did that wrench get thrown into it oh they're coming like each other no why did you have to mention that your Irish ancestors you know slaughtered leprechaun ones that she's a you know she she studied leprechauns and evil and ex-ante fairy gangster school is her like you know thesis on how wonderful they are you know something like that I'm going silly of course on you but um yeah that would be your arc for this what's that you have a plane we do that every time I do one of these in the class though if you're like we need to write this book what's that yeah go for it Cheers yeah that's right yeah very answers of course I've done all this cut stuff constantly but you could revise all this this could go a little bit dark this could go a little bit light urban fantasy has uh has opportunities for both so um depends on if it means adding a new character or not if you're done otherwise my suggestion might be to start to do a few things like this hinting at two characters that you will then use in a sequel to get together if it's a book that you are planning a sequel for or do a little false romance or something like that it's interesting I had two romances in the way of kings the first volume and both of them I tried to do it some somewhat non stereotypical ways the first one it happens between you know two people in their 50s and that's the primary romance of the of the book and then the other one is a kind of more flighty realistic teenage romance where it's really one person trying to manipulate the other and they don't know it all along and I felt that the the balance between the two of them between the the youthful this is all sunlight and roses and the we've been around the block before we know about all this stuff was a great contrast for me and so but neither of those romances are dominating factors in the novel and you can something like that in without them being dominating all right last question this kind of way humans are why like relationships or anymore like yeah and they just feel like you want them in our story but like sometimes they do kind of get like yeah there's something else that I'm care about yeah and there's something there's so much else you can care about but we you know romance is important it's useful most III put a romance I think basically in every book that I've written in some way or another because relationships are meaningful but you can do them on such a different scale where you can have them just be very subtle things that that you know maybe in the future these two characters would get together or you can make them a central focus of the book or you can anything in between what else is there to do there's you know any kind of relationship you can have you can have but the thing is it's going to break down into archetypes because that's all I have time to tell you right now but you know you have the the young whippersnapper comes to respect the UM the wise elder or you can have the wise elder needs to be taught you know comes to respect the impulsiveness of youth that he has lost and forgotten or you can I mean you can we can think of hundreds of these but they're all going to be basically built the same way which is why people talk about plots their only being whatever six plots or whatever you know number is trendy right now it's because you're you have a hundred different relationships but you would build that your plots in one of just a couple of ways if you wanted that romance or that relationship that aspect to to come to work in a way that you know your readers like yeah I like that

Channel: zmunk

Views: 83,756

Rating: 4.9364071 out of 5

Keywords: brandon sanderson, BYU, creative writing, fight scenes, romances, narrative flow, plotting a romance

Id: V9cdgE6FjRs

Length: 80min 58sec (4858 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2016