Fighting and writing workshop, day 2, Setting the Chessboard

This is my online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.

Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.

Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.

So, here is day two.... see you next week.

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 Day Two: Setting the Chessboard

Before even beginning a fight scene, you should know where it is, what happens to be lying around, and what is or is not available.

Keep in mind that you're going to have different rules of engagement for each fight, depending on the setting and the bad guy. If you're in the middle of a fantasy universe, where the technology is pre-atomic, the moment that some random adversary pulls a weapon, your hero/ine can immediately counterattack – be it a full disarm or a quick kick where it hurts – if only because the likelihood of your character being arrested for defending him/herself will be nonexistent (and you thought day one was a waste of time, didn't you? Heh.).

Obviously, the method and manner of the counterattack will be dictated by your character, and the situation. A civilian who knows Krav Maga will have different instincts than, say, a police officer with a gun.

Step one, of course, is your players. What is the physical condition of your character? How tall? How fat? How many protagonists vs. how many antagonists? If your hero/ine is seven feet tall, or three feet wide, it would be difficult to hide. An athlete can, at the very least, run or hide. Are either or both armed? With what?

Step two is knowing where your players are in relation to one another, and in relation to the environment. Fights do not take place in a vacuum. Pick a setting for your fight. Set it up in your own home, or someplace you know well, or someplace you've created out of thin air. Is it a place rich with weaponry? (See the improvised weapons article.) Or is it a place rich with hiding places?

Important note: consider that while your paper is two-dimensional, your setting need not be. In fact, unless you're on a stretch of highway in one of the flatter parts of Ohio, or in a strange part of a desert without sand dunes, you're going to have three-dimensional elements to it. Just something to think about.

Step three: Where is your hero(es)/heroine(s)? Where is your bad guy? This will dictate many of the choices for your main character. Is it easier to run, fight or hide? Does your character need to take cover? Can s/he get to a weapon, or will s/he have to work for it?

Assignment #2: Setting the Chessboard

Create a setting for your battle, keeping in mind everything discussed in the reading. Go as big or as small as you want. And keep in mind while your page is two-dimensional, your setting is three-dimensional.

What weapons areavailable to each character involved? What hiding spaces or cover is there? What would your hero/ine notice? What would the enemy notice?

In short: describe a room with a tactical eye. Can you characters run? Hide? What can they fight with? Throw?

For more ideas on the matter, I recommend looking at the http://shar.es/giQg reference link, mainly for some basic ideas on being aware.

Fighting and writing workshop, Day 1: fighting, your characters, and your world

As I mentioned, two weeks ago I said I was going to host an online forum workshop in writing fight scenes -- it was loosely based on one of my own blog posts. It just spun out of control.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.

Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.

Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.

So, since this workshop screwed over my blog posts last week, I figure that I should get some use out of it.

This was the first day.

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Day One: Fighting, Your Characters, and Your World.

Before one even gets to writing a fight scene, you have to answer multiple questions, not only about you character, but about the world s/he inhabits.

For example: if your main character is a civilian in the modern world, not only do you have laws to contend with, but a question of training.

Start with a situation. Your character is mugged. Some strung-out druggie who needs a fix wants your character's money. This character has a feeling that things are going to end badly no matter what s/he does. It is time to resist.

But then you have a problem before you even get to the technical aspects of writing a fight. Why would your character know how to fight?

Family – is fighting in the family business? Mercenary, samurai, knight, military family?

Culture – does your world resemble Sparta 2.0? Are there laws against fighting? For fighting? Is dueling outlawed or celebrated?

Profession – is your character a SEAL? An enthusiastic reservist?

Sports: Does your character like MMA? Wrestling? Target shooting? Hockey? Soccer? Any of these can be adapted to create the realities of a fight scene.

Hobbies: Your character may be nothing more than a smart, reasonable person who believes in self defense. S/he may also be a ballerina who can launch a nasty spin kick because that's what s/he did in Swan Lake – don't laugh, it works for actresses Jennifer Gardner and Summer Glau. S/he may have taken capoeira because s/he thought it was only a dance class. If s/he likes to fire off a hundred rounds a week at the local shooting range, why not? Even the basics of handling a gun can be useful.

As an example, you can check outseveral characters from one of my books.

Now, fight scenes do not necessarily require fisticuffs. Running away is a good, reliable tactical maneuver. Your character can always run.

Why does this matter? Establishing your character's own style of fighting is perfectly reasonable, otherwise, you have fight scenes that you've stolen from action movies … Yes, I've done that. Then I took a real self defense system, and I'vesince rewritten every last one scene.

Assignment #1

1) What are the cultural rules/legalities of your world when it comes to fighting? In modern settings, these laws vary by country, and even by state. In New York, if you defend yourself against an armed mugger, laws can be used to prosecute you. In Texas, if you defend yourself, you get a medal.

2) If your character had to fight, how would they do it? What is the style of fighting your character uses? It can be straight up punching and kicking, or furious punching and gouging, or something more informal like Krav Maga, or much more formal, like Tae Kwan Do. Does your character fight with improvised weapons, or instead use traps and trickery to dispose of the adversary? Or (also acceptable) do they run away until they can find a solid position to fight from?

3) Why does your character know that system of fighting? If you're writing the character of a Navy SEAL, that's one thing. If it's the civilian offspring of a military family, that's another. Does a family member teach the fight system? Was it something they thought was cool when they were twelve? Did they read too many thrillers growing up? Did they take ballet, or soccer, or football – something with a lot of kicking?

Fighting and writing workshop, from the Catholic Writer's Conference: Introduction

Two weeks ago, I had mentioned that I was going to be hosting an online forum workshop in writing fight scenes, for the Catholic writer's guild.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.

Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.

Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.

So, since this workshop screwed over my blog posts last week, I figure that I should get some use out of it.

This is how I began.

*****

Introduction: Writing a fight scene – Who or what is a “Declan Finn,” and why does he get to tell me about fighting?

It's a good question, and one that needs to be answered before many of you begin this workshop. I have been writing fight scenes since I was sixteen. I've written many novels, most of which fester on my home computer, and that I constantly revise the more I learn about life, the universe, and how to better destroy both. I grew up wanting to write thrillers and science fiction military novels, and I originally thought the best way to go about having a fast-moving novel was to have as many fight scenes as often as possible. Then I read them, and spiked more fights than I can recall.

In short, I'm a person who has studied many a fight scene, and has learned from his own mistakes. I mention this because there will be instances where you will read some of this and wonder, “Why is he telling me this? Does he think I'm stupid?”

The answer is no, but these were mistakes that I have made repeatedly over time, and sometimes still make when I don't think.

One of the documents that you will need can be found at this link here. It is a collection of “how to” articles for self defense and fighting. It is a compilation of a lot of basic fighting techniques, as well as things related to fighting. In short, you don't need any previous knowledge of any fighting technique, martial art, or even the basics of street fighting for this workshop. I will, however, recommend right now that you check out the link, and at least give each article mentioned a passing glance. They will be used over the course of the workshop.

References for certain techniques: http://shar.es/giQgA

References for Non-lethal weapons: http://www.zarc.com/english/non-lethal_weapons/nlt-usaf.html

References for guns: http://world.guns.ru/main-e.htm

References for army technology: http://www.army-technology.com/

Recommended reading:

Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series (for fight scenes on both small and large scale)

Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels (for hand to hand combat)

David Weber's Honor Harrington series (for navel warfare)

John Ringo's Posleen War, Ghost and Princess of Wands series (mostly for hand-to-hand, infantry, and special warfare)

Catholic Writer's conference, next week

There is a saying in the military -- never volunteer.

I should have listened.

You see, I was online with Karina Fabian, author of Mind Over Mind and editor of Infinite Space, Infinite God II, Why God Matters, and a few other things.  Her twitter had mentioned that she was all alone in the Catholic Writers Organization chatroom. I wasn't doing anything, so I popped in.  After a bit of conversation, she said she still needed some moderators, and even some people to run chats and workshops.

I shrugged, and said, "Well, the only things I excel at are writing fight scenes and making villains."

She said that those were really good ideas, and I should do them.

I figured that it would at least get me some publicity.

So, in case you've been wondering why the last few weeks have had some strange, spare posts, well, now you know why.  I've been a little busy.

You see, my fighting and writing thing is actually an entire workshop.  And I've been trying to put content together for the last month.

So far, the class boils down to:

Fighting, your character, and your world: fighting as a cultural component to it.  Look up the story behind capoeira or Krav Maga, and you'll see how much fighting and culture are intertwined. Not to mention it helps to know how and why your hero knows how to fight.

Setting the chessboard: remembering that the page is only 2D, but the world is 3D -- you'd be surprised how many authors don't remember that as they're writing.

Writing fighting technique: hand to hand combat.  I even dedicated an Examiner article as a ready reference guide.

Choose your weapon! Guns in fighting... I would have made it about weapons, but there are just so many things you can use to kill someone with.

Military terminology and writing for a war zone: it's mostly terminology. Aside from tactics, and a few other things, large scale wars and small scale fights differ very little in terms of writing.

Final questions.

After that, there's a chat on writing a villain.

I have yet to break it to them, but it's no different than writing another character.

Here's hoping everything works.

But if I'm not around, you'll know why.

Music blog: simple gifts

This one is a bit of a twofer, so ... enjoy.

Yeah, I had nothing better to post today. Things are a little busy.

Psychology of writing; building your characters from the inside out

Yesterday, I gave a simple, fill-in-the-blank character generation chart for how to make well done three dimensional characters.

As you can tell, it's a very simple way to do it. As noted in the post, it was stolen from a role playing game chart.  However, the chart was created by author J. Michael Straczynski, and I think he might have used it himself at points.

But, you can also get fancy.  You can have entire personality tests for your characters.  For example, there's the Myers-Briggs test ... you know, the type that results in a 4-letter code like INFP (Introverting-Intuiting-Feeling-Perceiver) or ESTJ (Extraverted-Sensing-Thinking-Judger), or M.O.U.S.E.... no, wait, that's the Mickey Mouse club. My bad.

You can also have the Lie to Me special .... if you never heard of the tv show, don't even bother looking it up on Youtube.  It was mostly about the actor Tim Roth being a schmuck; which at this point, might be stereotyping.  In this case, I mean kinesthetics -- studying body language.  I suspect the tv show was stolen from Jeffery Deaver novels (ie: Roadside Crosses, and other Kathryn Dance novels), in the same way CSI was practically spawned from Deaver's far superior Lincoln Rhyme novels (doing forensics before it was cool).

If you want to really try screwing around with your character's head (and, let's face it, who doesn't?) you can always try to build your own profile of them.

There is also at least one psychology blog for writers on the dark side of your characters -- though from the amount of time given to it in the blog, you might as well just study a Sean Ryan short story (right hand column). And for making bad guys.... though I might suggest my own column on that.

Anyway, I think that might be more than you wanted to see today. Hope to see you tomorrow.

Be well, all.

How to create a character the easy way

Pardon me if I've done this before.  I actually started making a whole new blog on writing a character, and I was going to link back to a character generation chart I stole from a role playing game written by J. Michael Straczynski.

Then I discovered that I didn't actually have the darned thing.  Oh well.

If you ever wanted to know how I created my characters, well, this is the short version.  After a while, they just sorta start taking on a life of their own.

I'm going to expand the list tomorrow, and go into much more detail.

Character Gen Chart

Name:

Sex:

Weight

Hair color?

Eye color?

General baring?

Usual dress?

Born where and When?

Environment?

Family economy?

Parental relations?

Relation with parents?

Occupation of parents

Char ever go to work with parents?

Siblings? How many? Age range? Names?

Closet family member?

Childhood interest

Developments

How was childhood unique?

College Major? Minor?

Fav subject in school?

Other interests before then?

Special Relationships?

How was edu unique?

Job? Good or bad at it? Like it?

Peer Recognition?

Lifestyle

Where live? Roommate?

Often travels?

Relaxes how?

Kind of friends

Romance

Family contact

Most Dangerous act

Silliest

Farthest from home she’s been

Exercise?