At the
battle on Telegraph Hill, Robert E. Lee supposedly commented to James Longstreet, "It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it."
I have not a single moment's experience of any kind of physical fighting, I can use a gun but never shot anybody. Never hit anyone very hard.
Even so, I find writing individual fights and larger group battles exhilarating.
It's all in the choreography. Monique taught me that, when writing any kind of physical interaction between characters, is is essential to get up and perform it - away from the keyboard, in the round even though only in my study or living room. One can't do that with an actual multi-party battle, but even so it is SO much fun to lay it out step by step, keeping track of every person or group, keeping them all busy at once, making them work in a kind of harmony.
I have rarely had as much fun as I did in writing the battle at Rhion. There were moments when I realized that somebody had to do a particular thing. Okay then, I cast back: who is still alive and nearby? What did he just do? Is he available to do this now? Would he do this? And then, how does he do it?
Sad to say, most writers (especially HF for some reason) purposely claim on behalf of their characters that a battle goes by in a blur. Sorry, but if an armed and armored warrior can't see very clearly what's going on around him, he will not survive that chapter, let alone the rest of the book. And if a writer is THAT lazy, I don't want to encourage his half-assed-ness by paying for his book.
There is just about no excuse for a writer not to know (meaning not to bother to learn) how weapons are handled and how they work...Not just in art, like the pot above, either; many of those were drawn for drama rather than accuracy.
Learning about this used to be difficult, but so what? There is no excuse. It's the writer's job to know what s/he is writing about. And these days it's dead easy to learn. That's why God gave us blogs and YouTube!
Here is just one link.
And here is one of my favorites
Beware, as always, of videos that show all the same trite errors as bad HF writers, TV and movies, and re-enacters make.
I have not a single moment's experience of any kind of physical fighting, I can use a gun but never shot anybody. Never hit anyone very hard.
Even so, I find writing individual fights and larger group battles exhilarating.
It's all in the choreography. Monique taught me that, when writing any kind of physical interaction between characters, is is essential to get up and perform it - away from the keyboard, in the round even though only in my study or living room. One can't do that with an actual multi-party battle, but even so it is SO much fun to lay it out step by step, keeping track of every person or group, keeping them all busy at once, making them work in a kind of harmony.
I have rarely had as much fun as I did in writing the battle at Rhion. There were moments when I realized that somebody had to do a particular thing. Okay then, I cast back: who is still alive and nearby? What did he just do? Is he available to do this now? Would he do this? And then, how does he do it?
Sad to say, most writers (especially HF for some reason) purposely claim on behalf of their characters that a battle goes by in a blur. Sorry, but if an armed and armored warrior can't see very clearly what's going on around him, he will not survive that chapter, let alone the rest of the book. And if a writer is THAT lazy, I don't want to encourage his half-assed-ness by paying for his book.
There is just about no excuse for a writer not to know (meaning not to bother to learn) how weapons are handled and how they work...Not just in art, like the pot above, either; many of those were drawn for drama rather than accuracy.
Learning about this used to be difficult, but so what? There is no excuse. It's the writer's job to know what s/he is writing about. And these days it's dead easy to learn. That's why God gave us blogs and YouTube!
Here is just one link.
And here is one of my favorites
Beware, as always, of videos that show all the same trite errors as bad HF writers, TV and movies, and re-enacters make.
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