Conflict - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

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13 Rules for Writing Fight Scenes

Conflict is central to fiction. Not all conflict is violent, of course, but at some point, one of your stories might require a fight scene. Therefore, even if it’s distasteful to you, it’s best if you learn how to write such scenes.

Fight Scenes Violent interactions can take many forms beyond individual combat. These include war, rape, terror, shooting sprees, etc. This post focuses on fights between two characters, but many of my suggestions apply to other situations.

People use a variety of weapons when fighting, including bare hands and feet, clubs, knives, swords, guns, any object available in the environment, and a wide array of science fiction or fantasy weapons. Again, most of the guidelines for fight scenes are general, and applicable to any weapon type.

For the following list of fight scene rules, I drew from, and combined, ideas from the following people’s blogs: Joanna Penn, Angela Bourassa, Amber Argyle, and the contributors to Wikihow. They’re all great sources of information, and I recommend you read each one. Now, here’s my list:

If possible, observe a real fight. Note offensive and defensive movements, tempo, exploitation of speed vs. strength, etc.
Study fictional fight scenes written by great writers. Pay attention to details selected, sentence structure, word choices, and techniques used to heighten tension.
Ensure your scene is relevant to, and advances, your plot.
Consider using the fight to reveal or further develop the characters’ personalities, and maybe the story’s theme. My favorite example of this is the “wizard’s duel” in the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone. During their fight, Merlin and Madam Mim are each turning themselves into various animals. Madam Mim’s animals emphasize power and strength; Merlin’s emphasize cunning and intelligence. The superiority of brain over brawn is the lesson Merlin has been trying to teach young Arthur, and is the major theme of the movie.
Ensure you’ve established that both characters have appropriate motivation. Why is each one fighting? What does he or she hope to gain by winning? That helps the reader care about the outcome.
Break up the lunges, punches, slices, gunshots, etc.—the mechanics and logistics of the fight—with short dialogue or description to keep from boring the reader. When using dialogue, skip the ‘said.’
Don’t overdo the description of the fight itself; trust the reader’s imagination to fill in such details.
Use short sentences, with few adjectives or adverbs.
Weave in all five senses in the fight, to put the reader there.
Show the Point of View character’s thoughts and emotions as the fight goes on. This is as important as the description of the fight itself.
Ensure your word choices and detail selections are appropriate to the genre and your intended audience. A fight in a military thriller must be accurate, believable, and authentic. A fight in a romantic adventure should focus on the POV character’s feelings.
Don’t forget about the aftermath of the fight, how much the POV character hurts, his or her feelings about the opponent, thoughts about whether the fight was worth it, etc.
In subsequent drafts, cut to the minimum.

It’s my hope these rules will help you write effective and compelling fight scenes in your stories.

Not to brag, but your characters couldn’t last one round with characters written by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 14, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Character Relationship Maps

Try as you might, some of you can’t help but read my blog. Perhaps it’s like a horrible highway accident; you just can’t avert your eyes. You regular readers know, then, that my mind favors images, graphs, and pictorial displays, and that’s what I’ve got going on today.

It isn’t that I disdain text; I am a writer, after all. It’s just that a picture is worth a thousand words, so when I need information in a condensed form, it’s hard to beat a graphical chart.

When a writer sets out to craft a story, it can be difficult to keep all the characters in mind. One technique for doing so is to use a Character Relationship Map (CRM). Like a mind map and Root Cause Analysis motivation chart, this map is something for your use alone. No reader will see it, so you can make up your own format.

The one I’m showing here, for the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope (Episode IV), is for illustrative purposes only and is not complete or necessarily accurate. My only intent is to show one possible example for a case familiar to most readers. To see many other sample Character Relationship Maps, do an Internet search for that term and click on images.

The CRM depicts, on a single page, all the relationships between all your story’s characters, or at least the major ones. Having this map before you as you write the story will help you keep these relationships in mind. Note that your story must contain written evidence of each relationship. If not, the reader will not know the relationship exists.

Another advantage of a Character Relationship Map is to ensure you create and understand the relationships yourself. Each major character should have some arrows going out and some going in. Each major character should have arrows connecting to all other major characters.

You might think a CRM would be useful only for novels, or other stories with plenty of characters. However, such maps can be helpful even for short stories with as few as two characters. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, you could connect two characters with four relationships using four lines. Use one line to depict how Character A feels about Character B internally, another line to show how A behaves toward B externally, and two more lines to represent the internal feelings and external behavior of B toward A.

Relationships can be complex. A good author shows some amount of friction, or at least tension, between even the friendliest or most loving characters. Why? Conflict is central to fiction. No two characters are alike, so they will think differently and there will be some level of uncertainty, some speck of doubt or occasional distaste even between the closest and most devoted characters.

To make your CRM more beneficial to you, consider using colors and line thicknesses or shapes to represent other aspects of characters and relationships. For example, you could use box colors to represent character gender, where they stand on the good-evil spectrum, or some other attribute. You could use line thickness to indicate the intensity of the relationship. You could use line shape to indicate the type of relationship, perhaps curved lines for friendship and jagged lines for enmity.

Characters, and their relationships, change through the story. You could show that by means of two maps, one showing the before state, and the other the after state. Or you could find some method of picturing the change on a single map.

Have you used a Character Relationship Map? If so, did you find it helpful? Leave a comment for a rather colorful character known as—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 10, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Conflict, the Necessary Evil

Ever notice how fiction seems full of conflict? Characters hate each other, fight each other, struggle with problems, strive to survive, etc. Why can’t they just get along together and have nice, trouble-free lives? After all, that’s what we real people want for ourselves, right?

Necessity

You may go ahead and write stories where nothing bad happens, where characters are always kind and thrive in a stress-free environment.

Just one little problem with that notion…no one is going to read those stories. They’d be boring! There is no reason to care about such characters. Their outcome is not in doubt.

Conflict is, therefore, an essential aspect of all fiction. Conflict drives the plot and creates interest in the characters. Since all fiction is about the human condition, and since conflict is inherent in the human condition, your stories had better include some type of conflict.

You might be objecting as you think about great stories you’ve read that didn’t involve any guns, bombs, swords, spears, knifes, or fistfights. Ah, but think deeper about those stories. Did characters disagree verbally? Did a character struggle to survive against Nature’s fury? Was a character conflicted internally?

Conflict comes in various kinds and need not involve violence at all. At its essence, conflict is two forces in opposition to each other. That’s it.

Types

What are the types or categories of conflict? Here’s my classification schema:

External
- Character vs. Character
- Character vs. Nature
- Character vs. Society
Internal
- Character vs. Self

Some people add other external conflict types such as Character vs. Technology, Supernatural forces, Fate, or others. To me, those are all included in the basic four types.

How many types of conflict should you include within a single story? Unless it’s flash fiction, I recommend at least two, with one of them being an internal conflict. We live in a psychological age, and readers want to see characters with some depth, some internal struggles, some flaws. Readers don’t even want antagonists to be pure evil; there needs to be some explanation how they turned so bad.

Resolution

I’ve blogged before about the need to ramp up the level of conflict in your story, but what about the resolution of the conflict at the end?

Although I personally enjoy stories where protagonists overcome their adversity through wit, cunning, and intelligence, it need not be that way. Not all conflicts need to be completely resolved at the end. Or the resolution of one major conflict may spark the start of another. Really, the struggle during the bulk of the story is more important than the resolution.

In fact, the protagonist may lose the struggle, as in Jack London’s famous short story, “To Build a Fire.” That story illustrates that fiction really is about characters contending with difficulties, not necessarily overcoming them in the end. It truly is about the journey, not the destination.

Resources and Summary

There really are some nice blog posts about conflict out there, including this, this, this, this, and this.

Those are my opinions about conflict. You might disagree, and that disagreement itself would represent a type of conflict between you and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 21, 2014Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Ex-Out Deus ex Machina

Strange term, that ‘Deus ex Machina.’ All it means is ‘the god from the machine’ and if your story’s got one, you probably don’t want it.

Although the concept comes to us in its Latin wording, it dates from the plays of Ancient Greece. Performed in amphitheaters, these plays sometimes featured an actor playing the part of a Greek god, who would descend into the final scene apparently from the sky by means of a crane with ropes. The ‘god’ would solve the play’s central problem by means of magical powers.

Over time, the phrase came to mean the late and unexpected introduction in a story of a character, ability, or object that seems to resolve the story’s conflict in some miraculous way.

Not Recommended
You’ll want to avoid Deus ex Machina (DEM) in your stories because it’s the mark of an amateur writer. You get positive points for burdening your protagonist with difficult dilemmas to solve. But you lose those points and more when you’ve painted your hero into a corner and you can’t get her or him out without resorting to some external savior entering the action at the end.

The presence of a DEM cheats the reader, who is expecting a story about the human condition. The reader has, therefore, invested some emotional energy in your protagonist, following that hero along through all the conflicts, both external and internal. The reader is wondering how your protagonist will prevail. To introduce a DEM, therefore, is jarring and disappointing.

Difficult to Avoid
Sometimes you’re working along with your manuscript and you find you’ve put your protagonist in such trouble that, try as you might, you can’t think of a way out. You like the story otherwise, and really don’t want to rewrite in a way that lessens the difficulty and allows your hero to win the day through innate virtues.

These are the times you might be tempted to call in the aid of a DEM. Again, for reasons noted above, it’s best not to do so. In most cases.

When It’s Right
In the hands of a master storyteller, DEMs can work in two situations I’ve discovered: (1) when the author is making a larger point, and (2) in comedies.

For example, in Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” the French army conquers the town, enters the Inquisition, and frees the narrator from his horrible prison. But Poe is making a larger point about life and the freeing of the soul to enter heaven when the clock (pendulum) of life ceases.

In H.G. Wells’ novel, The War of the Worlds, it’s true the invading Martians are defeated by tiny bacteria. But Wells is making a statement about Britain’s encounters with cultures having primitive technology. He’s saying that, but for the microbes, even mighty Britain would have been annihilated.

In Monty Python’s movie “Life of Brian,” Brian is saved from a deadly fall by a passing alien spaceship. The DEM literary device is used here for comedic effect.

A Final Example
If you’re really, really good, go ahead and use a Deus ex Machina. Otherwise, best to avoid them. Let your characters figure their own way out of their jams.

Hmm, as I write this, I have no idea how to end this blog post.

Enter Poseidon, appearing out of nowhere.
Poseidon: “Silly mortal. Just write ‘Poseidon’s Scribe’ below your other babbling text, the way you’ve signed off every other post.”
Me: “Oh, hehe. Thanks Poseidon. You mean like this:

Poseidon’s Scribe.”

June 8, 2014Poseidon's ScribePermalink

When Your Protagonist Meets You

It saddens me to report that author Ann (A.C.) Crispin died a few days ago, on September 6. Before I discuss my connection with her, I should give you a brief bio.

A.C. Crispin was a science fiction writer who established herself with “tie-in” novels delving into the characters of established universes of Star Trek, Star Wars, the V miniseries, and others. She also created her own Starbridge series of novels.

Angered at how some agents, editors, and publishers cheat beginning writers, Crispin co-founded a group called Writer Beware in 1998 to both warn writers and to help law enforcement agencies prosecute scam artists.

I don’t know exactly when, perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, I enrolled in a creative writing course at my local community college. A.C. Crispin taught it. I recall her being a tough teacher, direct and honest with those whom she thought should consider non-writing pursuits. She usually said encouraging things to me about the homework I submitted, though.

A.C. Cripsin’s lectures contained references to the great works of literature, and she’d look around the class for flashes of recognition. When she didn’t see any, she admonished us to read the classics if we wanted to write well.

She asked us all a question on the first day of class that has stuck with me. None of us answered it correctly, and she’s written about the question in her essay, “The Key to Making Your Characters Believable.”

If the protagonist of any of your stories saw you walking along the street, and recognized you as the writer, what would he or she do upon meeting you? The answer, if you’ve done your job properly, is the protagonist would punch you in the nose. After all, your story drags that protagonist through bad and progressively worse situations. You’ve challenged that protagonist with tests of character that force him or her to confront deep, inner beliefs or fears. Perhaps in addition, you’ve pitted the world against your protagonist, multiplying the external problems that character must face. No wonder that protagonist is furious with you!

While you cowered from the rain of your creation’s blows, your nose bleeding, you’d be blubbering that you had to do it, you were forced put the protagonist through Hell for the readers’ benefit, to make a compelling story. That would probably sound pretty hollow to your character, I suspect.

Luckily, your fictional creations won’t be meeting you on the street or in any dark alleys. You are free to force them to crawl through mud and gore, to confront giant monsters, to face their deepest terrors, to suffer the despair of lost love. All with complete impunity. Go ahead; they can’t strike back, and your readers expect you to write stories like that. That was A.C. Crispin’s message to the class.

Goodbye, Ann Crispin, and thank you. Not only did you touch readers with your novels, you protected budding authors through your Writer Beware group, and inspired many beginning scribblers, like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 15, 2013Poseidon's ScribePermalink

15 Writing Virtues

Many people believe you aren’t just stuck with the way you are now, that you can better yourself by persistent act of will. I’m one of them, but let me just focus on self-help as it applies to the writing of fiction.

Benjamin Franklin was an early example of someone who developed a program of self-improvement. His method was to list thirteen virtues along with a brief description, then he would set about to focus on one virtue per week. Franklin actually kept a log of this, giving himself a black mark on days he fell short. Presumably, by focusing on one virtue at a time, it did not mean he was abandoning the others during that week.

Examples of his virtues include:

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin’s list of virtues, I’ll offer some virtues of writing fiction. I’ve grouped them into ‘process’ virtues dealing with how you write, and ‘product’ virtues dealing with aspects of the manuscript itself.

The Poseidon’s Scribe 15 Virtues of Fiction Writing

Process Virtues

1. Productivity. Fill hours with writing, not researching or time-wasting activity.

2. Focus. Turn off your inner editor during the first draft.

3. Humility. Seek other trusted people to critique your work; be receptive.

4. Excellence. Only submit work you’re proud of.

5. Doggedness. Be persistent in submitting to markets; be unshaken by rejections.

Product Virtues.

6. Relevance. Ensure your work passes the ‘So What?’ test.

7. Appeal. Hook readers from the first paragraph.

8. Engagement. Put your characters in conflict with something or someone; make the story about conflict resolution.

9. Empathy. Create vivid, engaging characters.

10. Action. Weave logical, interesting plots with appropriate causes and effects.

11. Placement. Provide clear but unobtrusive descriptions of the story setting, without overshadowing character or plot.

12. Meaning. Ensure your story’s theme explores eternal human truths.

13. Style. Seek your own voice, then follow it.

14. Communication. Ensure your characters’ dialogue is appropriate and advances the plot. (Mentioned here, here, and here.)

15. Skill. Salt your tales with symbolism and appropriate metaphors.

Your list would likely be different. One way to go about it is to examine critiques of your fiction you receive from members of your critique group, from editors, etc. Are there repeated criticisms? Turn them around and express them as a positive affirmation or goal, not as a negative to avoid. Those goals represent things to work on, and would be on your own list of virtues.

George Carlin fans would likely point out to me that there’s no such thing as self-help. People who get their list of virtues from their critique group, or from this blog post, aren’t exactly engaged in self-help, since they got help from others. Moreover, if beginning writers truly helped themselves get better, then they didn’t need help. Witty gags aside, it can be a comfort to a struggling writer that there exist methods for improvement, but all I offer is a framework for starting; the writer must shoulder the burden of actually doing the work to improve her writing.

I’d love to hear if you’ve found my list useful, or if you’ve developed your own list, or even if you’ve embarked on a completely different method of improving your writing. Let me know in your comments to this blog entry. For now, back to improving his writing goes—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 12, 2013Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Tightening the Screws

Today I’m discussing why and how writers increase conflict in their stories. Long-term fans of this site with keen memories will recall that I promised to get to this topic in a previous blog entry. Far be it from me to let you down.

Conflict is a necessary part of all stories and it’s a good idea to ramp up the level of conflict as your story proceeds, both to hold your reader’s interest by building tension, and to subject your protagonist to a progressively more difficult test of character, forcing him or her to confront inner fears or character flaws.

Let’s look at a couple of examples. In the 1993 movie “Jurassic Park,” directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, we see a gradual step-up in conflict. The central protagonist, Dr. Alan Grant, is persuaded to leave a paleontological dig to conduct a review of a theme park. Once there he is awed that the park engineers have re-created living dinosaurs. He is put in close contact with children, which he dislikes. When part of the park’s security system is deactivated, a Tyrannosaurus attacks the group. Grant and the children must spend the night in the park, with predatory dinosaurs on the loose. They encounter cunning Velociraptors, and finally both Velociraptors and the Tyrannosaurus.

Conflict need not be physical, or even dangerous. In the 1964 musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, the conflict is of a different nature but also increases. The village milkman, Tevye, must first contend with the fact that his eldest daughter has chosen her own husband against tradition and his wishes. Then his second daughter likewise makes her own marital match, but with a political and cultural radical. Later his third daughter seeks to marry outside the Jewish faith. Finally, on orders from the Tsar, Russian authorities expel the Jewish villagers from their town.

Notice how, in each case, the author chooses plot events that begin with small conflicts and then escalates, figuratively tightening the screws as with the medieval torture device, progressively challenging the characters with more taxing situations. Just as the protagonist resolves or comes to terms with one disaster, a worse one occurs. Moreover, the nature of the conflicts is such that they strike at a character flaw. In Dr. Grant’s case, it’s his dislike of children. In Tevye’s case, it’s his over-reliance on tradition. The protagonists are forced to grapple with their own weakness and try to overcome it.

It’s sad, in a way, that writers must put their characters through the torture of increasing conflict intensity, just for the sake of reader enjoyment. But as long as the characters stay imaginary, it’s all legal, so ease your mind about that. You’re welcome to comment on this topic of increasing the level of conflict. I’ll return now to my Work in Progress (WIP). Please don’t mind any screams you might hear as the screws get tightened by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 5, 2013Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Giving and Receiving…Critiques

‘Tis the season for giving and receiving, so I thought I’d discuss critiques of fiction manuscripts. Last time I did so, I said I’d let you know how to give and receive critiques. My critique group meeting 2 experience is based solely on twenty years of being in small, amateur, face-to-face critique groups; not writing workshops, classes, or online critique groups; so the following advice is tuned to that sort of critique.

First of all, to give the critique, keep the following points in mind:

Read the submitted manuscript straight through once, and just note where you were “thrown out of the story” for some reason. Jot down why and come back to those points later.

Re-read the manuscript again. You could mark some of the grammar or spelling problems, but don’t concentrate on those. The author wants you to find the bigger stuff.

Where there are stand-out positives (“Eyeball kicks” in TCL parlance) note those and praise the author. The word critique should not have solely negative connotations. A positive comment from you could keep the author from later deleting a really good description, metaphor, or turn of phrase.

Be clear and specific in the comments you write; avoid ambiguity.

Look for the following story elements and comment if they’re not present or they’re weak:

1. Strong opening or hook

2. Compelling, multi-dimensional, non-stereotypical protagonist with human flaws

3. A problem or conflict for the protagonist to resolve

4. Worthy secondary characters, different from the protagonist, who do not steal the show

5. Vivid settings, not overly described

6. Consistent and appropriate point of view

7. Appropriate dialogue that moves the plot and breaks up narration

8. Narration that shows and doesn’t tell.

9. A plot that builds in a logical way, events stemming from actions that stem from understandable motivations

10. A story structure complete with Aristotle’s Prostasis, Epitasis, and Catastrophe (beginning, middle, and end)

11. Appeals to all five senses

12. Active sentence structure, using passive only when appropriate

13. Appropriate symbolism, metaphors, similes

14. A building of tension as the protagonist’s situation worsens, followed by brief relaxing of tension before building again

15. An appropriate resolution of the conflict, without deus ex machina, resulting from the striving of the protagonist, and indicative of a change in the protagonist

If your group shares comments verbally, do so in a helpful, humble way.

You think all that sounds pretty difficult? Ha! It’s much harder to receive a critique. When doing so, here are the considerations:

Submit your work early enough to allow sufficient time for thorough critiques. Be considerate of your group members’ time.

While being critiqued, sit there and take it. No comments. No defensiveness. Just listen to the honest comments of a person who not only represents many potential readers, but who wants you to get published.

So, when it comes to critiques, is it better to give than to receive? In contrast to most gifts, it’s harder to receive them, but it’s still a toss-up which is better overall. But perhaps both are just a bit easier for you to deal with now, thanks to this post by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 30, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Romancing the Short Story

Bet you didn’t expect me to write a blog entry on writing romance short stories, did you? Well, for one thing, if you desire to become an author, you should learn to write about anything, even topics or genres you know little about or have little interest in. You never know what you’ll end up being good at.

Second, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the romance genre has a vast and insatiable readership. Perhaps not so much in the short story length as in the novel length, but again, what if you’ve got a potentially great romance writer inside you, but you never try the genre to find out?

And, it turns out I have written a couple of short story romances. “Within Victorian Mists” is a steampunk romance, and “Against All Gods” is a romance story set in Ancient Greece. So I am nominally qualified to discuss the topic.

To figure out what’s special or different about romance short stories, let’s start with basics. Any fictional story must have certain elements, including character, plot, conflict, setting, style, and perhaps theme. We’ll dispense with the last three by saying that romance stories can take place in just about any setting, be written in any style, and can explore just about any theme.

Romance stories are character-driven. The characters must be intriguing and complex. The point-of-view character should have aspects with which readers can identify and empathize.

The plot is the emerging love between the characters. Choose your events such that they enable the characters’ love to either develop, or be tested, or both.

The conflict is the protagonist’s struggle to attain love itself, not the sexual act or the fleeting emotions of love, but the deep and shared realization that the two major characters cannot live without each other.

In a short story, you’re going to have to be choosy. It’s very difficult, in just 1000 to 10,000 words, to encompass the typical progression of a love story in its entirety, from the first meeting, through the burgeoning attraction, through the testing or challenge, to the final realization of love. There’s a natural pace to the process of falling in love, and the short story length doesn’t fit that pace as well as the novel length does.

Consider selecting one vignette, one emotion-charged event of a larger love story, and leave the earlier parts as backstory, and just hint at the later events. To explain what I mean, let’s consider what Christie Craig and Faye Hughes describe as the plot points of a romance story, the events that sum up to the plot arc:

Introduction/meeting
First acknowledgement of attraction
First acknowledgement of emotional commitment
Dark moment (what I’d call a test of love’s strength)
Resolution

Your short story could consist of just one of those events, and hint at the rest. Charge your story with emotion, and ensure the protagonist experiences an internal change in the direction of love, and that could be sufficient. It might be all you can manage within a short story format.

Have you written a romance short story? Submitted it for publication? Leave a comment and let me know what happened. When you began writing did you ever think you’d write a romance? No? Neither did—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 11, 2012Poseidon's ScribePermalink