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.