I breezed through the first twelve chapters of my fantasy novel The First Light. Two of the chapters weren’t even planned; they just grew as the story took on a life of its own. Then chapter 13 came along.
In this chapter there was going to be a fight scene and we were going to learn something about one of the secondary characters. I’ve noticed that fight scenes (even from best-selling pros) don’t feel visual enough. In a bind I stumbled across Writing Fight Scenes by Rayne Hall.
Photo by WoodleyWonderworks used under Creative Commons License
I gobbled that book right up and made up a few charts from the information that I gleaned. I wasn’t writing a huge battle scene, or an extended fight-to-the-death between hero and villain. It was just a small clumsy attack by non-professionals.
Thanks to Rayne Hall, I got through it, and it makes sense (to beta readers anyway). This situation was totally different from (gulp) writer’s block. I was still writing and editing short stories. I even wrote FIGHT SCENE GOES HERE and completed the rest of the chapter.
The working title for this chapter is “Assassins”; although, I’ve been toying with the idea of calling it, “Knives from the Darkness”, or something on that order.
Have you ever gotten stuck in a predicament like this one?
San Giacomo's Corner 
I have issues with fight scenes. It’s hard to do in written word. I always appreciated mythologies approach. “They hit each other. Eventually one died.”
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Wow Paul, I was just commenting on your blog….great minds think alike. 🙂
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When I write a fight scene, I visualize it on the small screen and write what I see. I am glad you introduced me to that book, however. May I borrow it later?
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It’s on my nook 😦
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Ha Ha, Paul Davis. You should read Mahabharata. It has very detailed battles, complete with imageries like ‘The ground was furrowed with wounds like a woman’s nails down her lover’s back’
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