The Best Fight Sequence

I just can't stop thinking about the fight sequence I saw this week.  It really struck me on any number of levels: totally epic and awesome, yes, but not just that.  So here are some thoughts on what made it so amazing.

I’ve seen a lot of Doctor Who—more or less every episode from Doctors 3-11, in fact.  And again and again, I’ve noticed that the bigger the purported stakes of an episode, the lesser the actual stakes—because when the stakes are too high, the Doctor cannot lose.  The show runners are not going to end the Doctor’s life permanently, and they aren’t going to destroy the Earth and they definitely are not going to destroy the entire universe and all time and space.  So if those are the purported stakes, then there are no actual stakes.  On the other hand, Doctor Who as a show has shown a willingness to kill off characters you’ve just met and come to care about in an episode.

To have actual stakes:

1. The audience must care about what’s at stake (which requires universe consistency)

2. It must be possible for the hero to lose

It’s not Doctor Who I’ve been watching recently, however, but the anime Bleach.  I’ve just finished the third season, and it had one of the single best and most memorable fight scenes I’ve ever encountered in anything.  Let me explain.  (Will include spoilers.)

In Bleach, there are special living swords that can be unlocked to greater power.  There are two stages of unlocking, and the greater stage is called Bankai.  Bankai is different for each sword, but frequently involves the sword turning into a giant monster to fight beside its person.

In order to defeat a powerful opponent, our hero, Ichigo, learns how to release his Bankai.  And the truth was, I was absolutely dreading seeing his Bankai.  We’d already had a giant ice dragon and a giant fire phoenix and a giant acid-spewing baby and a giant snake.  They had cool designs, but ultimately—was Ichigo’s Bankai just going to be another big monster?  Or maybe some souped-up version of his ability to shoot energy from his sword?  I shrank back in my chair and prepared to be underwhelmed.

And then.

And then I saw his Bankai, and I almost cried, it was so utterly brilliant.  Because it wasn’t a giant monster or a fancy light effect.  No: his Bankai form was him . . . merged with the spirit form of his sword.  Visually, it was striking and immediately obvious—and it also fit his character perfectly.  And I'd never in a million years have expected it.

Every hero has different tools or weapons.  Making these clever, making these fit the character and environment, makes a huge difference.  Bigger is generally not better.

Jackie Chan is famous for making good use of his environment for action scenes, and that’s part of it: variety.  But ultimately, his weapon is not any one external tool but his martial arts—his body and how he uses it, just as Ichigo’s weapon is his living sword.  In Star Wars, the Emperor’s primary weapon isn’t Force lightning or his lightsaber: its his precognition and scheming ability.  And these things are also integral to his personality.

But wait, there’s a twist.

Bleach has a LOT of fight sequences.  Ichigo can lose, and people you care about can die (stakes!) and the weapons and characters are (mostly) extremely varied and interesting.  When I saw Ichigo’s Bankai, it made me deeply happy, and I was prepared to sit out the rest of the fight sequence contentedly. 

And then Ichigo lost.  His Bankai had put too much stress on him.  He was dying.  His opponent was about to kill him.  And . . .

And he did not suddenly find strength, and he was not suddenly saved.  Instead, for the second time in one fight sequences, the tables were turned on the audience.  Something happened that I had no idea was even possible, but which perfectly fit the clues we'd been getting.

You see, in order to go on his current mission, Ichigo had had to undergo some very difficult training.  During one point in that training, he became possessed by a monster (a “Hollow”) and barely threw off the possession at the last moment.  Hollows always wear masks, and a couple of times after that, Ichigo mysteriously found a mask that had saved him from death.  But that had last been many episodes ago.

So: Ichigo is a moment from death, and . . . a mask begins to grow on his face.  He is possessed, and the insane Hollow begins to fight using his body.

The best action sequences move the plot beyond simply who wins.  They involve character development, learning, and changes—and these, too, are stakes.

It helped that Ichigo’s opponent was incredibly interesting and one we’d come to know and respect over the course of the show . . . but that was just icing on the cake.

I am so impressed right now.

Igor

(It's a little late for Halloween, but I found this story jotted in a notebook and thought I'd share it.  If nothing else, it's sure to remind me to do my anti-scoliosis physical therapy.)

His back hurt.  That was one of the constants in his life.  Sometimes it burned or spasmed or shrieked up his neck or down his leg, and usually it ached—as his spine crushed the muscles inside the curves and stretched those outside and pushed his ribs around. He did not know what it was like to be without pain; he had been born twisted.

His mother had been horrified, when he’d emerged, his ear nearly touching his shoulder.  Some of his earliest memories were of horrified faces quickly withdrawn, of repulsed voices asking what was the matter with him.  Nobody ever smiled.

In those days, his parents still had hope that he would grow out of it, and subjected him to many agonizing traction treatments.  But when it became clear the mutation of his spine had damaged his brain, his parents topped bothering.  What was the use?  He would never be able to even speak clearly; grunts and gesticulations were all he could manage.  He was doomed to be the village idiot, no better than an animal.  And everyone knew that animals didn’t have proper emotions or feel pain the way people do.

He knew he was inferior.  For years, he thought “ugly” as much his name as “Igor,” and responded accordingly.  He could not jump or dance like the others; his every attempt at lightness ended in broad clumsiness.

Yet nature had another trick to play on him.  Had he been straight, he would have been a world champion; twisted, he was merely prodigiously strong.  He could lift carts and sheep and fallen trees, and in this way, he earned a slight living—enough that he neither froze nor starved.

In this way, also, he made his tormentors afraid of him.

His heart hurt.  That was another of the constants in his life.  His heart hurt, and he hated everyone.

Then the stranger came.  He was tall and straight, with an aristocratic profile and sleek black hair graying about the temples.  He arrived in an elegant black carriage with an unfamiliar coat of arms painted on the side.

Immediately, Igor jumped forward to hold the horses, hoping for a tip.  The horses did not balk from him as long as they remained under the stranger’s hand.  But the moment the stranger jumped down, the horses kicked and blew, wild to kick him.  Igor hung on grimly, grunting with effort.

The stranger observed this with dark eyes, then laid one hand on the nearest horse’s neck.  Both animals calmed immediately.

“You are strong,” the stranger said, looking Igor up and down.  His voice was cool, neither praising nor condemning, and Igor basked in it.

“I have business to attend do,” the stranger went on.  “Watch my horses while I am gone.”

Igor nodded enthusiastically, even as the stranger strode off.  He remained there nearly three hours, guarding the horses, not moving to the left or to the right.

The stranger returned and saw this.  Without a word of thanks, he mounted his carriage, and tossed Igor a silver coin for his service.

A silver coin was more money than Igor had had in his life.  He stared at it in awe, then clutched it to his chest possessively.

The stranger came visiting often after that, and each time, Igor leapt forward to hold his horses.  When other entrepreneurial souls tried to take his place, he beat them back mercilessly, and the stranger did not rebuke him.

With his increasing wealth, Igor purchased a brush and bucket so he could care for the horses in the stranger’s absence.  He gloried in his newfound position.  But the more proud he became of his duties, the more hostile and suspicious the other villagers became.  Young women had been sickening; some had died.  And always, it was worse after the stranger visited. 

It became so bad that the next time the stranger visited, the villagers met him in a mob, bearing foul-smelling herbs, wild roses, and crucifixes carved from mountain ash.  They surrounded the carriage, and Igor saw they meant to hurt him.  He roared and lunged at them, swinging a stick and breaking bones until they scattered.

On his carriage, the stranger watched coolly, not interfering. “I’m told your name is Igor,” he said, when the last villager had fled.

Igor signed that this was correct.  He knew the stranger’s name, too—Count Dinu. 

“We are alike, Igor,” the Count mused.  “At once monster and human.  Come work for me.  Do all I say, and you shall have food, live in a castle, and have as much money as your shriveled heart desires.”  And he smiled at him.

Igor would have licked burning coals for the Count.  He prostrated himself and swore in gobbled grunts to be his.

Two decades passed.  The Count did not treat Igor well, but he kept his word.  Igor brought him supplies and showed him where beautiful young women lived.  He was despised by all he met, and he despised them in turn.  None could match the Count.

But Igor made a mistake.  The girl he found, a succulent sixteen, was courted by three men, two foreign, each brave and upright.  They waited until noon and then stormed the castle while Igor was away.  In Igor’s absence, they stabbed the Count through the heart, sawed off his head, and stuffed his mouth with foul herbs.

Igor came upon them as they left, congratulating one another and embracing the girl.  Wild, hot agony scorched him and searing cold flooded his brain.  He tore all four of them apart and howled and fell to his knees and beat his chest, but it was too late.  His master was dead, and he could not bring him back.

For a year and a day, he remained in that castle, feral and agonized.  And then he set out into the world, to find a new master.

Setting

I ran a setting workshop.  Here are my notes, based of experience and research.

Setting Workshop

Setting impacts every scene of every book.  It can be used to enhance writing or to detract from it.  Below is a brief set of notes describing the three primary elements of writing setting: 1) Relevance: When should you describe setting?  2) Revealing Setting: Through what method should you convey setting?  3) Descriptive Properties: What should be in setting description?

RELEVANCE: Descriptions should bring immediacy to the world, not stall you out.  Use them for multiple purposes. (“Skid Row,” from Little Shop of Horrors establishes setting, conflict, characters, theme, etc.)

Why does the character care? 

•     Does it affect him/her?  Does it inform perception, identity, or physicality?

•     Does the character affect the setting?

Why should we care? 

•     Is that prop important?  What message/feeling are you trying to get across?  What do we need to understand this scene?

•     Does the setting help the reader better understand the characters’ motivations and backgrounds?

•     Does it help the reader better connect to the story?

•     How does the setting prime reader assumptions?

•     Is it interesting?

How does it add to the world building? 

•     Is it consistent?  (Fact checking!)

•     (Setting can be physical, social, emotional, etc.)

Why is it important to the plot?

•     Does it make sense that your characters are there?

•     Is there symbolic or thematic importance?

•     Does it help move the plot forward?

•     Does it add to or subtract from conflict?

REVEALING SETTING: Setting can be revealed through motion, character perception, or exposition.  Setting can be revealed gradually or all at once.  Generally but not universally, setting is revealed either wide shot to close up or abstract to concrete.  More setting description will slow the book’s pace, so how quickly or slowly do you want to dive into the story?  ( For example: fast action sequences generally have less setting description; slow, tense build-ups generally have more.)

Motion

•     Use action to build setting instead of just description

•     Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”:

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”

Character Perception

•     Level of experience: Would he know what type of desk the wood was?  Is he in the right state of mind to notice?  How would different characters perceive the same setting?

•     Mood (is the ruin enchanting because they’re in love or creepy because they’re scared?)  (Reader perception and reaction doesn’t have to be the same as character perception – narrative distance.  Does the character think it’s romantic while the reader actually knows it’s dangerous/creepy?)

•     Even a 3rd person narrator has a character and personality and should be consistent.  How do you move the camera?

DESCRIPTIVE PROPERTIES: Regardless of the method used to describe the setting in any particular scene, here are some helpful elements to keep in mind.

Details: What defines the room?  What’s the first thing you see?  What’s unusual about it?  I don’t need to know that the kitchen has a sink.  But if it doesn’t have a sink—that’s weird. 

•     The more precise the detail, the more interesting (my dog is lying against me vs. my dog is curled up against my thigh).

•     Describing in terms of something else—leaves are tresses now.  Don't need to spell it out.

•     Sensory detail: Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, temperature, kinesthetic, pain, balance, vibration, direction

•     Locale, time of year, time of day (check accurate sun/moon positions!), elapsed time, weather, climate, geography

•     Effects of time’s passage (What was the Shire like when the Hobbits finally returned?  The movie left out the Scouring of the Shire.  Why did Tolkien think it was so important?)

•     Lack of detail: when is it more tactful not to describe.  What should we not describe?  (Sometimes, a brief, dry, clinical description can be more impactful than a page of gruesome prose.  Understatement of that type often feels more real, especially in contrast.)

Background:

•     Consistency (internally, with world, with character perception, etc.)

•     Do your research: know much more than you put down

•     If it’s boring, cut it

•     Are you excited about your setting?  Do you, the writer, want to spend time there? Does it frighten you, intrigue you?  Or do you not really care?

https://www.novel-writing-help.com/story-setting.html

https://www.nownovel.com/blog/talking-setting-place/

http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/settings.shtml

TL;DR: Should you include setting description?  How should you reveal it?  What should you include or not include?

Telling the Reader that Your Character is Epic

Recently, I read a novel about a woman who suddenly became queen after growing up in near-isolation, and her struggles to keep her throne and her life.  Most of the book was from her point of view, but maybe two-thirds of the way through, we switched to a pair of minor character’s POV for a page-long exchange that went about like this:

Character 1: Our queen’s pretty epic, isn’t she?

Character 2: She sure is!

Character 1: It’s wonderful how she’s going to save us all.

Character 2: It sure is!  Gosh, I’m glad she’s epic!

This didn’t ruin the book for me (the queen’s convenient new superpowers saving everything at the end did that), but it did make me start thinking—What’s the best way to make your character epic?  Because although this clunky attempt failed utterly, I have seen it done well and in multiple different ways, including:

Inconvenient acknowledgement of epicness

Villain acknowledgement: In the second book of Lois McMaster Bujold’s marvelous Vorkosigan series, The Vor Game, an antagonist recognizes Miles from the previous book.  He acknowledges Miles’s ability to talk his way out of any situation . . . and so orders his men to cut out Miles’s tongue if Miles says anything. 

Ally acknowledgement: Similarly, Miles gets into various scraps because people recognize his ability to get them out . . . and assume he’s coming to help him when he’s really trying to just pass innocuously through.  But once they beg him for help, he feels he’s obliged to do so . . .

In both situations, Miles looks epic . . . but naturally and thrillingly so.

Awkward and/or painful acknowledgement of epicness

I’m thinking here especially of a book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher.  The reader is used to seeing Harry Dresden scrape through encounters with beings far more powerful than he.  Since the books are entirely from his first-person POV, we see his fear and effort and luck.  It seems natural.  Then, at one or two points, a couple of his allies tell him how scary he is because he’s so powerful and always seems to win . . .

(Something similar happens to the titular Alex Verus in Benedict Jacka’s books, when a character points out to Verus that people who go up against him almost always end up dead.)

So we get great characterization and plot advancement while being told that Harry and Alex are epic.  And again, it feels natural.  It makes us more sympathetic to the protagonist—not less (and definitely not disgusted, as I felt about the queen after the ham-fisted attempt at epicness described above).

Untrue acknowledgement of epicness

My favorite example of this is actually from a film—Galaxy Quest.  In it, Alan Rickman’s character has a fanboy who tells him over and over how epic he is, until he just has to live up to that epicness.  (Come to think of it, this happens to some extent to all our main characters in that film.)  It’s inconvenient, embarrassing, and ridiculous—and pretty darn epic.

Overall

I don’t think it’s essential to tell the audience flat out that your character is epic, but I do believe that it can be done effectively and pleasingly while preserving good writing, advancing the story, and thrilling the reader.

Carmen Sandiego: Essential Characteristic

 


 Ah, Carmen Sandiego.  Sometimes her hair is auburn, sometimes black.  Sometimes her hatband and scarf are gold, sometimes her hatband and shirt are black.  Her hat is different shapes and sizes, her coat different lengths and styles, her shoes can be red pumps, black pumps, or black boots.  She usually has bright red lipstick and black gloves, but not always . . . and yet she is always recognizably the same character.

The first Doctor Who I ever saw was the second half of the Eight Doctor Movie.  Years later, I recognized the Doctor from a Reader’s Digest list of best sci-fi films . . . except it was the Fourth Doctor.  How in the world did I recognize them as the same person?  Recognize a picture of a guy in a magazine from a different guy in a film I watched years previously?

Rose City Comic Con, 2016.  Black hat
band and collar, auburn hair, black pants,
boots.

Denver Comic Con, 2018.
Gold hat band and scarf, black skirt
and pumps, black hair.  Same lipstick, same
hat with a different band, similar gloves.
(Also: This photo explains so much
about how Carmen gets around in
time and space  . . .)

I’m not a huge cosplayer, but I do like to dress up for Comic Con.  In 2016, I dressed as Carmen Sandiego.  Then this year, my planned costume (the titular character from Alice: Madness Returns) fell through, so I decided to redo Carmen.  Redo . . . but not repeat.

The interesting thing is that I was equally recognized as Carmen in both outfits.  I had dozens of people call after me and quite a few ask for my photo.

The question is: why would this be the case?  Just because different people were familiar with different versions?  I think it's more than that.

(Tip: It’s important to be aware not just of your character’s canon lore, but also the fanon surrounding it.  While I was at it, I memorized some of Carmen’s lines from the various games.  When people called after me, I responded, “Good detecting, detective!” or “You’ll never catch me, gumshoe!” etc.  It was fun, and people seemed to love it.)

In fanon, Carmen has a thing with Where's Waldo.  So I found a few . . . When taking
this photo, quite a few passersby also snapped shots. 
(This is also a demonstration of why you should learn to pose better—
which I did in in most photos but clearly not here!  I'm not posed,
and so I look much less like her than I do otherwise.  Fascinating, no?
But see below.)

 What I learned from this experience is that it’s the essentials of the character that matter.  Carmen likes to tilt her hat in photos—

I only met one other Carmen this year, although my friend said she saw three.

She wears a brimmed red hat and a red trench coat.  That’s literally all you need.  The red lipstick, dyed hair, gloves, color choice, shoe style—all inessential ingredients.

But how you put them together can make the difference between an okay costume and a good costume.  Ask yourself: would Carmen wear this?  She wears and oversized trench coat, so should I?  Well, what would Carmen do?  She is a very stylish lady.  Do you look stylish in that trench coat?  Are you standing stylishly?  Walking with confidence and good posture?

(Tip: if you want people to take pictures of you at Comic Con, look approachable.  I have a bit of RBF, but as long as I kept a slight smile on my face, people stopped me, sang at me, called out to me . . . and generally smiled back.)

This is where we come down to characters.  If you took away the trappings of yours, the nonessentials . . . would you be able to recognize your character?  Can you tell which character is speaking without a dialogue tag?  (J.K. Rowling is the master of unique-sounding characters.  That something I need to work on.)  If I had my eyes closed in a room full of Marvel movie characters whose voices went through distorters, I could tell you which one was Deadpool’s by the way he talked.  Maybe also Iron Man’s.  In the first movie, I could tell you Thor—but he’s now altered beyond recognition.  I couldn’t tell you who the vast majority of others were.  And that’s not even getting to the side characters and the TV shows.

This isn’t an answer, just something to muse on.

What’s essential to a character?  What’s unique?  What can you take away but still have the same person?

And why did one person mistake me for Agent Carter?  The hat?  I think it was the hat.

(In 2016, I went with an Agent Carter, and she got called Carmen more than Carter. . . .)

Concatenation

I played World of Warcraft, off and on, for about a year back around 2006.  I quit because it was expensive, addictive, and not even fun.  Around 2008 or 2009, I became interested in watching machinima—videos made using games, especially but not exclusively World of Warcraft.  I watched a lot of Oxhorn.  I still follow Cranius, who makes videos with Legs.

Probably the most impressive machinima I saw turned out not to be a machinima at all, but rendered animation.  You can watch it here:
The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

The song is jpop singer Namie Amuro’s “Hide and Seek.”  I have a friend, whom I’ll call Ruby, who is a huge Namie Amuro fan, but I was just uninterested. My elder sister is a huge fan of the Japanese rock group L’arc en Ciel, which I never liked and probably biased me against Namie Amuro. 

Then I saw this video again and again, and the song really grew on me.  I wanted to hear more by the artist, but the few clips I looked up sounded nothing like “Hide and Seek,” and the story might have ended there, except that I became roommates with Ruby.  We lived together almost three years, and in that time, I watching all of Namie Amuro’s music videos and concert DVDs and acquired about eight of her albums and was generally converted into a fan.

Although most of her music still sounds nothing like “Hide and Seek.”  In fact, I get the impression (from her concert DVDs) that she doesn’t even like the song.  Oh, well.

So what was the point of all this?

Namie Amuro recently turned 40 and, after a 25-year music career, decided to retire.  I guess dancing energetically for three hours straight in high heels while singing flawlessly is pretty tough on a body, and one might want to do something different.

Anyway, I received an email from Ruby that had been sent at about 2am saying that Namie Amuro’s ~Finally~ concert was sold out in Japan, but that there were plenty of tickets left in Taipei, Taiwan, in about a month, and would I like to go?

Which is how and why I was in Taiwan for a week.

And it was amazing.

Pushing Past Personal Limits

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a post called Writing Advice, in which I listed the (few) things I believe are necessary for writing well.  I still stand by that post, although I think I’d like to add one item to it:

Writers, get more exercise.

If you’re anything like me, you have a tendency to sit for ages in front of the computer or with a notebook, which is great if you want to look like Jabba the Hutt but not so great if you want actual blood flow to your brain.  So you just sit there, getting stupider, when twenty minutes of exercise would cut right through your writer’s block and overall make you a happier, healthier person.

You’ll also learn a lot about writing action sequences and their after effects.  Have you ever worked out until you wanted to puke and faint?

I did, last week, because I did a high-intensity Zumba . . . my first really serious exercise in seven months.  15 minutes in, I honesty wanted to puke and faint.  I had to put my head between my knees for 30 seconds.  Then I kept going, and the endorphins kicked in.  After 45 minutes of Zumba, I felt like I could dance forever—and love it.

(Boy, was I sore the next day.)

And that’s something a lot of writers don’t bother with: action sequences leave you sore and aching (and often bruised and cut and broken and headachy and weak), and this effects not just what you can do physically, but what you can do mentally.  That hour of Zumba pretty much knocked out my brain for the rest of the day.  But after a week of getting lots of exercise, when I went back . . . I didn’t feel like puking or fainting.  I just felt fantastic.  And it totally worked out my soreness from the strength-training yoga two days earlier.

So exercise not only improves your brain and body, it also teaches you what certain types of exertion feel like.

But that’s not what I sat down to write about—it’s just what reminded me of it.

In my life, two instances stick out to me where I (out of character) exerted myself far beyond what I might have believed possible.  These aren’t necessarily the most exertion I’ve ever gotten—just the ones that I’m amazed at myself about.  Because I didn’t have to do them, and (beforehand), I couldn’t imagine wanting to try.

The first happened when I was maybe eleven years old.  I was a competitive swimmer.  One Saturday, during our dry land training, one of our coaches decided to run a contest: whoever could do the wall sit, with good form, for the longest would get a free PowerAde.

After 15 minutes, she begged us to stop, and promised that the six or seven of us left—er—sitting would all get a PowerAde.

I literally couldn’t walk after that. 

I have never, before or since, done the wall sit for more than a minute.  I’ve never enjoyed the wall sit.  But I did it.  And I got a PowerAde.

Yay?

The thing is, in the end, it wasn’t about the PowerAde.  It wasn’t even about my fellow competitors.  I just kept going because I was keeping going.  I think I would have been there for twice as long, if she hadn’t stopped us.  What madness is this?

The other time was last July 4^th.  I’d been doing Zumba for a couple of months by then, and I was friends with the woman who owned the dance studio.  She asked us to Zumba for the Fourth of July parade through town: 3.5 miles at noon in 95° weather.

I hate heat.  I’m not huge on physical exertion.  I wasn’t in that great of shape.

Our instructors dropped out halfway through.

I danced the whole way.  I was the only one who danced the whole way, and one of only two dancing at the end (my sister danced most of the way, but came over faint near the beginning and had to stop).  I danced through the puke stage, through the elation stage.  I danced through the fatigue stage and through the collapse stage.  I danced until my body’s air conditioning kicked in and I had chills running down my limbs.  I danced beyond all sense, beyond all endurance, and I smiled the whole time.

Why?  Madness?  Masochism?  No: because the people at the end of the parade deserved to see dancing as much as the people at the beginning.

How strange and uncharacteristic those two events—that wall sit and parade Zumba—were for me.  I never would have believed them of myself, but they’re true.  And now I know a little more about myself, and about what will drive me to push myself beyond endurance.

What would push your protagonist to that level?