Fight! Fight! Fight!

It's been a week and I've been struggling to come up with a topic to post on. Then a fellow writer at Musa, Jane Dougherty, posted this about writing fight scenes and it went click: hey, there's a topic I can actually talk about without sounding silly.

But first to sum up Jane's post quickly: sometimes I wish Fantasy had AK47s and nuclear warheads. Quite honestly, I know the feeling. I wish those existed in love scenes. Man, that would make life easier. Just a quick shot to the head and a little mushroom cloud...

Oh wait. Back to the topic at hand...

AK47s & Nukes

Close but not quite

They're pretty simple to write, I agree on that. Squeeze trigger, boom, recoil, splatter. I had little to no issue setting up gun play scenes in Red Sun. Then again, I wrote that story based off the premise: let's take a bunch of scenes the way they'd appear in a First Person Shooter (video game, for those unfamiliar) and turn them into a sensible first person narrative. In fact, when it comes to writing the AK47 and nukes, most of my inspiration comes from game series like Counter Strike, Modern Warfare, FEAR, Battlefield. Admittedly, computer games aren't very realistic so I couple the inspiration with knowledge gleaned from first-hand accounts, mostly from veterans who wrote about their experiences in some war or another, to add a little more meat to the bone.


To illustrate with an example from Red Sun:

Muffled voices sounded at the end of the hallway. A woman dressed in a business suit rushed around the corner. For the barest moment, she paused. My target marker hovered on her chest. The sawn-off in her hand rose toward me. I squeezed the trigger. My abber barked. The woman stumbled back. I squeezed another round. My target collapsed.

“Shock out.” Abyss hurled a grenade down the corridor.

The cylinder bounced around the corner. The grenade’s trajectory confirmed what I’d assumed: The corridor bent left. Pale blue light washed the white walls. The ceiling lights burst. My tactical overlay flickered.

I charged through the afterglow and into a rectangular room. Two server racks flanked a wooden door on the left. On the right, my sights caught a man seated in front of a computer. His hand groped for a sub machine gun. Two rounds, one to his back and one to his head. The woman seated beside him grabbed a pistol. My shot blew pink mist out of her shoulder. I put another in her head for certainty.

Ow, my eyes almost hurt reading that. But the end result of this approach was a fast-paced narrative which reads a lot like playing a video game just with a bit less action and more plot. When action happens however, sensory is limited to what's important at the moment, which in the scene above (taken out of context) leads to the impression there's no description at all - any scenery is put in scene before the shit hits the fan. Character actions are conveyed in short, clipped sentences to reinforce the simplicity of it all: I'm not thinking about the color of their shirt. It's me, my target and a split-second decision.

Swords & Sorcery

Because I'm tired of posting people's artwork, here's some of my own for a change

Now, here's where this all gets interesting, the topic of sword & sorcery (or sword and longbow as the case may be).

Initially I had horrendous issues with this too, so I feel Jane's pain when it comes to choreographing fight scenes. Then a few things happened. First, a few friends and me decided our final 'General Knowledge' project at our trade school would involve a Live Action Roleplay (LARP) so we bought a few Styrofoam swords, took them outside and whacked around a little. Then we researched a bit into how real sword fighting plays out (not the Hollywood kind) and realized YouTube is full of videos like this or this which offer a fair frame of refernce.

Finally, I started poking around media which portray sword fighting and realized 99% ignore the fact that a sword fight, much like a gun fight, will most likely not last very long. Sure, you won't kill someone at more than a few paces, but you won't have an epic duel with countless blocks and parries either - sword and shield vs. sword and shield could be an exception to that, I suppose. On a basic sword vs sword scenario, it'll all be over when the first gashes something vital (throat, wrist, ankle, leg, whatever's exposed.). Or, if everyone's decked out in plate armor, it'll be over when the first guy topples over and gets pummeled into submission because he can't see crap with that helmet on - or something to that effect.

My point with all this is that, while swordplay might be slightly more difficult to choreograph than AK47s and nukes, it doesn't necessarily involve too much more choreography. In fact, trying to make it look too much like a dance absolutely ruins what swordplay actually is: an incredibly aggressive act in which one tries to gut the other guy before he does the reverse. Trying to be nifty or too defensive will most likely only leave one exposed to a nasty cut, whereas being aggressive, pressing the advantage and bringing physical strength and speed to bear where it's actually useful (you know, the 'hit the enemy in a way that will hopefully kill them' part rather than the 'block parry and dodge like wussies who won't go for blood' style we see all to often) will likely lead to survival.

So, in essence, one can apply the same style used in squeeze trigger, boom, recoil, splatter to feint, dodge, punch gut, slice sword arm, gash throat, run heart through, spit on for good measure.

To illustrate with an example from The Black March:

Note: the POV character is undead so there's a little leeway there but you get the idea

Compared to the djinnare, the guardians made up for the lack of impressive name with martial sanity. Sabatons kicked. Fingers grabbed at me. I slammed my claws into someone's leg and attempted to stab a skull. The blow missed. All three attackers scrambled to distance and, by the time I regained my feet, they had formed a circle, even the one whose leg I'd so badly mangled.

One of them snarled, "C'mon, filth, shoe us what ye got."

"Accepted." My longsword flew from it sheath. A jab at my face missed when I ducked.

In that split second, an opportunity presented itself: one armored foot placed too close for its own good. I slammed my knife into the boot. The guardian jerked away with a howl, which gave me time to gash his neck and leap clear ere a blade hacked my leg. Motion flickered ahead and behind, a bare moment to decide. I chose aggression; barreled towards the nearest guardian. He charged the same moment, teeth bared and roaring at the top of his lungs.

Blades rang edge on edge. His steel gashed my left shoulder. My sword punctured the robed chest and knife to the forehead sealed his fate. The moment I yanked free, the third guardian slammed steel into my ribs with all the force his mortal body could muster. Hissing in anger, I rolled aside, which tore the sword embedded in me from the guardian's hand. Eyes wide – stunned by what he had witnessed, I imagine – the last helpless mortal suffered two swift cuts to the throat. He stumbled back, spilling blood on the cobblestones.

"Blasted…" I yanked his sword out of my chest and tossed it aside. "Once is a coincidence, mortal." A jab to his shoulder made him scream. "Twice an unfortunate twist of fate..." I ran the man's heart through. "Thrice the—"

Given, the writing style is a little more long-winded (and less well edited because, y'know, I'm still procrastinating about that) than what I used in Red Sun but it follows a similar pattern: sensory is limited to what's important at the moment and character actions are conveyed in short, clipped sentences. There's one key difference though: actions aren't always attributed.

Where the Red Sun POV character knows exactly who's doing what and who he's shooting, the Black March POV character doesn't. I use this to convey the scuffle aspect of sword fighting. It's too fast, to in the face and too confusing to track every single movement every person involved makes and it adds a sense of drama to the writing - to the extent the POV character gets run through unexpectedly because he can't track three attackers at once even after 700+ years of experience in combat.

Character Classes

Diablo 2's Classes - a not quite so bad illustration

Now, there's also something else to consider, which is something that game designers going back to before dungeons and dragons have been aware of and periodically screwed up: character determines what type of weapon they'll use and how well they'll fare.

But let's take a step back to the AK47. The average soldier will probably use an assault rifle. The team's support character might have a machine gun or grenade launcher. A well-trained shooter probably won't rely on spray 'n pray whereas your average mobster might. Someone who's a really good shot might prefer a precision weapon (e.g. marksman's rifle) whereas someone specialized in long-range kills would likely end up with a sniper rifle. Someone who carries in self-defense probably packs a semi-auto or a revolver. Ofc. choice depends on what can be acquired too. The private detective probably would not have the funds - or need - to purchase an anti-material rifle unless he/she's a gun enthusiast and a 3rd world militia might have a bit of trouble coming by the newest anti-tank missiles unless they have a supplier. In summary, the gun is chosen by criteria of mentality, availability, situation and plausibility.

Back to Sword & Sorcery, the same can be applied. For example, a strong guy might go for heavy armor & battleaxe because he can smash through anything weaker than he is. A not-so strong guy might end up with a s spear because it's safer and he can keep distance. A general or the likes will probably only carry a sword and try not to end up in single combat. Anyone fighting in large-scale formations will definitely have a spear and shield - or pike depending on era. Archers need a strong bow arm, arrows aplenty and lots of training to hit anything - but  crossbows can be a cop-out since they're more like guns. But again that's all dependent on availability - if crossbows and longswords don't exist in a particular country, no one from there will have them unless they picked the tool up and learned to fight with it somewhere else.

Finally, the thing with swordsplay is, just like a Glock won't fare well against an AK47 at range, some match-ups are akin suicide. Take any sword vs. spear - spear wins 9 out of 10 because of reach. The swordman will never get close enough to land a blow or disarm the spearman unless the spearman's tired or otherwise screws up. Turn that around with, say, sword & shield vs. spear. A shield's hard to beat. In fact, it's a game breaker for most match-ups. Whoever has a shield beats anyone without one and when both have a shield, the longer pointy thing will probably be better off than the not-so-long pointy thing (there are exceptions to this, of course). God forbid there's no shield at all, then you're screwed against anyone with a shield - unless you can smash it away somehow or do what the Romans did with the Pilum.

Conclusion
There's a lot to consider, that's for sure, and I would say there might be a bit more complexity to Sword & Sorcery style combat than gunplay. But it isn't too much more or too much more complicated.

Research is required and broad knowledge of weapons, technique, strategy and tactics tends to help just as it would be with guns. For both AK47 and the sword, one needs at least a vague grasp of what it might feel like to be in that particular type of fight, what the capabilities and limitations of the weapons - and the characters - are, and how to combine all that into a good scene. 

The biggest hurdle for Sword & Sorcery - in my opinion, at least - is that we've grown up in a culture of Hollywood movies and, for the most part, don't actually KNOW what it feels like to be in a real sword fight. Gun fights on the other hand are a more frequent occurrence these days and are portrayed with fair (I say fair) accuracy in most common media.


So I'd venture a guess and say the issue with swordplay is more that of a mental block than a factual issue with Swords & Sorcery era weapons requiring so much more detail - let's be honest, if they were that hard to train and use, no one would've been able to raise an army, give them all a bunch of spears and go off to conquer half the known world before everyone died of old age. 

Down with the Sickness

Following up on my first post about procrastination, I say with pride that I have made baby steps towards getting things done. I started editing my fantasy WIP - hooray - and I did the wash. Those dishes are still piling up in the hallway though...

the aforementioned dishes, of which half have since been removed

But I'd prefer to move on to today's topic: the sickness - aka story research. Perhaps it would be best to first explain why I consider this a sickness. The answer is that, whenever I actually decide to do research - you know, instead of just wing it - I get obsessed.

While writing Red Sun for example, I needed to learn how fast-roping procedures worked. Having never served in the military and not knowing whom to ask, I went where every sane IT professional does and queried Google. Cue six hours of me reading US army manuals and watching YouTube videos, all to write one paragraph of text. Not to say that research isn't important or informative but there's something about me and curiosity which disallows me to stop reading even after research has lost relevance to the topic at hand - I started with fast-roping, continued on to how tilt-rotor aircraft function and ended up reading about flight controls despite the fact there's no scene in the entire work where that could POSSIBLY have added any value.

The same sort of thing happened while writing The Black March - that fantasy WIP I'm editing. I had established early on that there would be a large army of humans facing off against a smaller force of undead. This lent itself well to a guerrilla-esque war, especially since the undead don't tire easily and can out-march a human army. Awesome setup, I thought, but I didn't have the faintest clue how fast - or by what means - a human army in the 14th century would march.

Unlike the fast-roping thing, I knew my dad's familiarity with military history would give me a pretty good answer. Indeed, while not exactly 14th century, he pulled out an infantry manual from the 1790s and set me up with some basic calculations which accounted for the difference. Honestly, I can't remember the details but I think we worked out a human would march 8 of 24 hours and cover about 20 kilometer tops (there's the whole having to organize the column, get everyone going, navigate, stop for rests, sleep and so on which slows down the entire process). By that theory, an undead army which doesn't need to stop for more than an hour every day, could probably cover 60 kilometers in 24 hours. Then I started calculating distances, drawing up maps, checking those against my text and finally ended up with a number which is once again mentioned in exactly one scene.

Now, to jump from past to present, I'm down with the sickness again. I'm sketching out a prospective cyberpunk/biopunk universe and decided, if the concept bears fruit, I want to use a semi-realistic hacker as my main character. Naturally, I'm aware hacking doesn't work the way Hollywood would have us believe it does but I didn't - and still don't really - know anything about the actual methods employed.

I did however find two really useful resources: MalwareMustDie, a blog dedicated to malware research, and the FireEye blog, which is written by a security company active in enterprise threat prevention - there were several others I looked into too but those gave the most detail IMO.

To date, I've sunk approximately 20 hours into reading up on malware. In that same time span, I wrote a measly two scenes. Now I'm acutely worried I'll never get around to actually writing and simply continue researching until there are so many ideas floating around my head that nothing comes of them.

Not to say I don't like reading everything I can. It's interesting, fun and makes me feel like I'm actually learning something useful for a change. But it's also a sickness, an obsessive need to make every last detail plausible, no matter how small. At the moment I'm wondering if I'm not taking it a little too far - more so considering the story I'm researching for isn't even past the concept phase. The mere thought of so much 'wasted effort ' (yes, I know it isn't really wasted) conflicts with the part of me which demands I must be efficient in any endeavor I set myself to.

Oh, if only the human mind were a rational construct...

Procrastination

Hi

Note: please read that in Andrew Scott's voice if you know who he is.

Since we've discretely skipped over the introductions, we can get right down to it: for the past weeks, I've been procrastinating. Not with everything, mind you. In fact, in many ways, I've been quite productive. I paid the bills. I wrote that vbscript to modify a JSON file (if you aren't familiar with either of those words, let me translate by saying I spent three days writing and debugging 700 lines of code to add 10 lines to a simple text file). But everyone at work was happy I solved the crisis of the week so I can be happy too. Right?

I wish. 

See, I might work in some obscure branch of IT most people have never heard about but, when I'm not writing horrible scripts I truly and dearly hopes the world at large never sees, I write fiction. 

If you're like most other people I meet, the obvious question will now be: why does a guy in his mid-20s wear black nail polish? 

Okay, okay, I'm kidding. Most people don't notice the nail polish and go straight to: what do you write?

Hah. That's the easy one: sci-fi and fantasy. I've been writing since I was twelve and my first novel's coming out as an e-book in a few weeks.

Oh crap. Here comes the hard one because conversation tends to flow thus: Oh, that sounds cool. What's it about? 

Were this to be a real-life conversation, I'd flail around hopelessly, open my mouth once or twice, and genuinely look like an incompetent buffoon because I can't condense an entire novel into a simple sentence and convey the essence thereof in a split second. 

Thankfully this isn't real life but the first post on a blog called Another Flock - oh, if you're wondering about the name, I adore sheep and all the less obscure names on blogger are taken. But I digress. I'm trying to tell you about that book I wrote. So let's abuse this neat thing called copy/paste and...

In a city consumed by war, one soldier is determined bring his terrorist father to justice.

Germany, 2072. To the citizens of the United Earth Government, politics are a thing of the past, implants a part of daily life. Humanity has found peace at last, or so the Government claims. On Marh 25th, a terrorist plot turns millions of civilians into mindless puppets, willing to take up arms against their Government, willing to die for a cause they've never heard of.

To Samuel Lobreu, a Government soldier, the crisis is simply another mission. He doesn’t quite get the ‘coerced by implant’ line but knows his duty: eliminate the terrorists and their unwilling pawns. But, when Samuel learns his father is connected with the terrorists, he becomes obsessed with a single question: could the man who had raised him be the mastermind who corrupted millions of innocents? There's only one way for him to find out: confront his father and hear the truth for himself.

For those interested, release date's set for 10th of May and you'll be able to pick it up here or Amazon or wherever else it'll end up being available.
 
Of course I don't want to seem like I just made this post promote my own novel, even if that' what motivated me to start this blog. Actually, that's a miracle in itself because, like I said at the beginning, I've been procrastinating for weeks. There's all sorts of things I want to be doing: wash that growing pile of dishes in the hall, clean up the mess around the house, buy and play through Bioshock Infinite, download the School of Rock soundtrack, go clothes shopping, edit that fantasy novel which has been lying around since January and... okay, let's leave the list there because I'm starting to feel a wee bit guilty after that last one. 

Unfortunately, guilt isn't enough to get any of that stuff done. There's no deadlines in private life, no boss breathing down your neck, not even a friendly kick in the ass from time to time. On second thought, my friends do occasionally tickle me when I deftly avoid some event I promised I'd go to...

Anyways, it's almost depressing I haven't got over that adolescent mentality of "study five minutes before the exam" but that's the state of affairs. Thankfully, there's a shred of hope: I can take "start a blog and post about my upcoming novel" off the list. Even better, this gives me an excuse not to do anything else productive all weekend. 

Aww yeah! And I'm off to do just that.