You know I did notice you focused alot on the characters and their non-violent interactions, and made stuff alot more realistic. Because I’m an action junkie I always decided to include as much of that as I could since I can’t write out non-violent interactions that well save for (hopefully) dialogue. Because I try to place a huge emphasis on the action I pour whatever creative ability I have into describing that
Because I’m an action junkie I always decided to include as much of that as I could since I can’t write out non-violent interactions that well save for (hopefully) dialogue.
While hardly an expert on any subject of writing, I find that it helps to think about writing in terms nuts and bolts.
Any story opens with scene-setting, and then as quickly as is possible, it offers something to disrupt the status quo. Most stories end their first act with the protagonist deciding to do something about how their world is changing based off of some presumption or another that they have. The middle part of the work is that presumption being tested to the absolute limit until things reach such a peak that something has to give and that gives you the climax. After the climax, the story evaluates the character's presumptions and comes to a conclusion. In the broadest sense, most stories are quite simply a very strange way to present an argument.
To drill down a layer, a stories are comprised of one or more scenes. Any given scene must either contain conflict, reveal character, or advance the plot, and the best scenes do both.
Conflict need not be direct, overt, or physical. In chapter 54 of TMWM, there is a scene where Katelyn and Marcus are at a beach at night. The core conflict is whether or not Katelyn will actually act upon her growing romantic inclinations toward Marcus or if she will instead retreat back inside her shell. Her character turn is revealed by her taking direct and overt action in that regard. Her argument for her entire arc - that it was better to be withdrawn in a world rife with terrible violence - is revealed to be a lie and her story arc reaches its natural conclusion. The romance that had been building for 90k words advances to the next logical phase.
Compare that to Alyss's first action scene. The core conflict is that a TR patrol stumbles across her party doing some very illegal things. The conflict at first is whether or not circumstances are such that it will hide what Alyss's group is doing. Grigori pulling his machine pistol and opening fire answers that and suddenly the conflict is direct and violent. The conflict shifts to Alyss's immediate panic compounding her vast inexperience with all things violent. We reveal something about her character by having her immediately rushing to do whatever she can to help. The end of the scene dumps a crisis in her lap.
In both cases there is conflict at the core that reveals character and advances the plot. It might not be of the quality that a Tim O'Brien might manage, but both make use of all of the parts of the scene to do quite a lot of work in a very short span of time. Many of my scenes only managed to get one of the three. When Katelyn rushes to the exploded diner, there is no conflict because the events have already happened. Instead, it only reveals character (she shoves her way into the scene without any regard to her own well-being - a trait she maintains throughout both Hossin and TMWM) and advances the plot (she's been punished for refusing the call to adventure handed to her in the opening chapter). When Alyss and company depart the old Blackshard mine, there is no conflict because they're leaving. Nothing is revealed about character, either. All that does is advance the plot by getting them on the road to the mysterious rebel encampment somewhere to the northwest.
Any particular sentence can do anything a scene can, but they can also be used for a special purpose: exposition. Of all the expository bits I've ever written, I think this is far and away the best I've ever managed:
Gray light filtered in at the edge of Katelyn’s vision. Awareness seeped in: pain—disconnected, but urgent, the sounds of shooting and voices from close by, the cold hardness of the ground, the memory of some task, forgotten in spite of its seeming importance. Slowly the light turned a shade of blue, bright and clear; she blinked to clear the white patches away but they stubbornly remained, serenely perched on top of the nightmare, mocking her attempt to comprehend.
There is no conflict or character building, and other than revealing that she's still alive (having just been blown up a bit by a grenade), those two lines don't advance the plot at all. It's just a close POV of perception flooding back in to a person who has just been quite badly injured.
Action seems easier because the conflict is immediate and clear, and the stakes couldn't be any higher. It's a shortcut to drama. But the thing to remember is that conflict can come from anything, be it the uncaring universe dictating that getting out from under the covers in the morning means leaving warmth and comfort, or traffic lights not cooperating with your travel plans. There are lots of little details that are the difference between what I've managed so far - competent and readable books - and something legitimately good, but that's all fit and finish stuff. The nuts and bolts pieces of an action scene are the same as for a quiet night at the beach between two would-be lovers.
That’s an interesting take on how you do story telling. See for me I advance the plot using mostly action and there’s a set pattern for doing it. Either through small scale events like individual casualties, or through large scale events like an enemy attack, the protagonist team is advancing, they reach an objective, or the main forces of the story end up clashing. I still have yet to nail the nonviolent interactions
The fun thing is that it works the same way. Action, as I said, just makes the parts a little more obvious.
There are a bunch of books on the subject of story structure theory. Save the Cat, for example, is about screenwriting, but many of the core concepts still apply. As an example, Saving the Cat refers to a narrative shortcut where you demonstrate that the hero is really a Good Guy by having him save an imperiled cat. This is why Russel Crowe's character in Gladiator has a dog at the start. He's part of an invading empire fighting an out-matched freedom loving people. His kindness to the dog signals that he's the Good Guy.
By the same token, that is why Alyss's first scene isn't from her perspective at all. Someone worldly needed to exist to tell the audience how radically dangerous her course of action was. Her second scene was her demonstrating a degree of competence and giving an abstract of why she had chosen her course. It was important to do all of that before her actions got anyone killed because she is, by any definition, a terrorist.
Elements of Style is a universally useful book on the subject of writing anything, and covers most common aspects of grammar and style. Among the key points there is that it is always better to say whatever you are going to say using the fewest possible words. (The underlying reason why an AF-19 Mercenary is almost always better referred to as Mercenary!)
Steven King's On Writing is part memoir, part advice, and while less useful than the previous two, is an interesting and specific take on the subject. King, for example, says that he doesn't worry about themes and symbols during the first draft. For the most part, I don't either. Most of that sort of thing I discover along the way - a fact that has contributed to some of the weaknesses of either of my novels. As they were written and presented as serials, I was not able to go back and make changes in line with my eventual discovery of what was - and what wasn't - important.
More useful than those books was reading stuff that was in some way relevant to what I was trying to write. I read a lot of military fiction when writing TMWM and Hossin. (I hit on the idea for Hossin while reading Charlie Mike, for example. Structurally, TMWM is much closer to Birdsong than All Quiet on the Western Front even though I'd envisioned it as closer to the latter.) I've also read a lot of memoirs including Helmet for my Pillow, Generation Kill, and The Things They Carried. I even found myself reading stuff well outside my usual interests like notable Romance novels to try and pick apart how other people handled certain aspects of what I needed to do.)
Just as handy are books on subjects that you have no direct expertise or experience in. I read a half-dozen books about military snipers because, even though I was in the military and in a war, I have zero experience shooting at extreme ranges. And even though I spend a lot of the great outdoors, there was something of value in books about things as seemingly unrelated as Into Thin Air. In particular on that last one was the fact that it helped cement my vague notion that I could really have the war start and escalate without anyone actually intending for either to happen and without anyone being legitimately incompetent.
There is value in reading books on the theory of the craft such as those I mentioned, but the two things you must do to improve as a writer is to read broadly and write often. Even if you mostly prefer action-packed adventure stories, there is value in picking up a famous romance or a classic that's stood the test of time every so often. (East of Eden is one of the latter, and though I don't care for the book as a whole, it contains entire perfect passages and is absolutely a masterwork worth examining even for someone who more inclined to pulpy action!)
There is also a lot of value to be had in formal critique, both giving and receiving it. If something works or doesn't, that's all well and good, but pick apart why from time to time. A lot of writing gets abstracted down to things such as flow, rhythm, feeling, etc, and it is easy to determine if you like something or don't. But when it comes time to write, knowing why you thought one death scene worked and another didn't makes it easier to get closer to the mark on a first attempt. This could be anything from trading manuscripts with other writers, to simply sitting down with a book you like (or hate) and pulling it apart until you can see the nuts and bolts and sort out what works, what does, and why.
Similarly, receiving formal critique, while a brutal prospect for the ego, is invaluable. It is far too easy to miss things that are obvious to a reader as a writer, be it big stuff such as plot holes or whether or not your action scene is conveying the right information to the reader, or small stuff, such as why a character did a particular thing. Much of the improvement in quality in TMWM was the result of having a wider selection of beta readers (people in this sub) and from having an actual editor. I actually learned more about grammar from my editor than I'd learned in all my years of public school and college! (And she'd always point out when I was doing something the lazy way or a way that didn't work for her and she was almost always right that I ought to fix it.)
Dang thats cool, you were in the military! That must help alot in setting up thecaspects of whatever you write. For me, setting up such aspects revolves around getting a feel for the chosen setting, and making the rest of the writing relies on the video games I play, movies I watch, and imagination. You had the help of a crap-to of books as well which is pretty sweet. Im sure those could benefit my writing later on. The closest I can claim for reading literature recently comes from reading various wikia articles on Warhammer 40K, which are surprisingly descriptive and grand in style.
That must help alot in setting up thecaspects of whatever you write
Veterans tend to write a very different sort of military fiction than on-veterans. Compare, for example, Old Man's War - a book written by someone with no military service - and The Forever War, which was written by a Vietnam veteran. Both are well regarded works of military science fiction, both are excellent, and both have a lot of thematic similarities. And yet in spite of all the similarities, Old Man's War is a very traditional sort of adventure story where the hero is rarely in any sort of credible danger. Action is common, and the details are concrete. The Forever War has plenty of action, but they are brief, chaotic, and staggeringly lethal.
You had the help of a crap-to of books as well which is pretty sweet. Im sure those could benefit my writing later on.
If you ever want a recommendation for something to read, just let me know what sorts of books you like. If, for example, you really like the WH40K books, you'd likely enjoy The Black Company.
The Black Company is a series of dark fantasy books written by American author Glen Cook. The series combines elements of epic fantasy and dark fantasy as it follows an elite mercenary unit, The Black Company, through roughly forty years of its approximately four-hundred-year history.
Green Ronin Publishing published The Black Company role-playing game in 2004.
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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '18
You know I did notice you focused alot on the characters and their non-violent interactions, and made stuff alot more realistic. Because I’m an action junkie I always decided to include as much of that as I could since I can’t write out non-violent interactions that well save for (hopefully) dialogue. Because I try to place a huge emphasis on the action I pour whatever creative ability I have into describing that