Wrapped Up Like a Blog

I'm a lover, not a fighter. Too bad my novels contain lots of fight scenes, but no love scenes.

I am not a romance novelist, nor do I write the type of sci-fi fantasy books that have love scenes (and, don't get me wrong, there is a place for that. I grew up on the Wild Cards novels and, as I've said to some ladies in the past, I learned about more than just the HUAC trials from those). But I saw an urban fantasy market oversaturated with sex, so I took that element off the table, but you can't have a paranormal private eye without a few juicy fight scenes.

And those have been harder to write than I expected. For the most part, with a love scene, you have a couple of characters and limited space (let's not get into exceptions. This is a family blog. Well, sorta). But with a fight scene, at least my fight scenes, there is often a LOT going on. Lots of characters to track, lots of space to navigate, lots of variations on words to generate so each punch or kick or dodge does not sound the same. As a writer who cut his teeth on radio dramas, I have always had an easier time with dialogue than action.

But I am working on it. In the first draft of my newest novel, I made it a point to put a fun and engaging fight scene up front, to show off the action and drama of the series. It was a lot better than some of my earlier work, but my publisher pushed me, challenging me to make it even BETTER. In this case, I turned to an expert. I picked up an ebook by Alan Baxter and, while it did not teach me to be a better fighter, it showed me aspects of fighting that I had not considered, truths about the skills involved and about what I, as a writer, should keep in mind.

Tomorrow, I'll post some before and after, and YOU can be the judge...