THE ART OF WAR

When people think of a battle, most envision soldiers and tanks, warships and weapons … possibly rifles and a cavalry. But there are many types of personal battles, as Fiona mentioned in her previous blog post. These include internal moral battles, relationship conflicts, and personal vendettas. How your character deals with these issues is very telling and gives the reader much insight into that individual’s personality. It’s also a chance for you as a writer to provide an opportunity for your character to grow and ratchet up the tension in your story.

So how do you write a compelling battle scene, whether it be an actual fight, where the loser may wind up injured or dead, or a clash between two high school rivals fighting to become class president? I’m not sure if this is true for every writer, but when I write tense scenes, there’s always an urge to resolve the conflict quickly and move on. This is how I operate in life, as confrontation makes me anxious. But the reader doesn’t want a fight that’s resolved quickly and easily—without conflict there is no story!

So, if you’re like me and want to smooth out your MC's hardships asap, how do you build suspense and write an exciting fight scene?

I believe it was The Art of War for Writers: Fiction Writing Strategies, Tactics, and Exercises by James Scott Bell that gave me some of the best advice for writing tense scenes. (Even if I’m wrong, it’s a great book—it’s been quite a few years since I’ve read it, and definitely deserves a reread.) To summarize the advice: whenever you have the opportunity to resolve the battle, throw another problem into the mix.

So, let’s say your MC is in a dangerous situation that results in an actual fight scene. Most readers will root for the protagonist to win, but how much fun would it be to read about the character throwing one punch and knocking the antagonist out cold? It’s better to create a fierce battle where the MC is the underdog, makes a comeback, and then just before success, something happens—the character drops a weapon, another person blindsides the MC, etc. The more the odds are against your protagonist, the greater the victory will be. Because in the end, most readers want the good guys to prevail.  

Marching into battle

This month, we're looking at marching our characters into battle. Now, I could take the obvious route and discuss good old fight scenes, but I'm pretty sure one of my other YATopian buddies will have that covered. So, instead, I'm going to consider the internal battlefield your MC has to contend with throughout the entire book.

It's important to know what your MC's internal battleground is. This is where you look deep at the root of your MC's conflict. What are the polar opposite feelings they have? Your character needs to struggle, so you need to think "opposing sides." Once you know the basic two emotional "armies" so to speak, you then need to break it down further. You don't have just side A and side B. If it was an actual army, they would be broken down into units - infantry, cavalry, etc. How does this relate to your MC's inner conflict? These are the layers of emotions you have. For example:

Say your character is in love with their co-worker, but they are both going for the same promotion. Perhaps you have chosen the opposing emotions of competitiveness and selflessness for your MC. Your character is competitive by nature and wants, needs perhaps for a physical reason, this promotion. However, they are selfless by nature, and this is the person they love they are competing against. So, what to do? What other emotions hide in there? Let's look at these armies...

Competitiveness


Infantry - fear of failure
Cavalry - desire to prove oneself
Artillery -  sense of self-worth

Selflessness

Infantry -feeling like a good person
Cavalry - approval
Artillery - battling against the bad parts of their nature and trying to outdo them


Okay, so this is a simple example, but hopefully it will show that when you think of your MC's internal battleground, you can go past the basic conflict, and really dig in and find lots of layers to really bring your internal battlefield to life.

How’s the Weather?

What do you talk about when you can't think of anything to say? The weather, of course! Seriously though, weather has been on my mind a lot. Or affecting my mind.

While the calendar says spring arrived over a week ago, in interior Alaska, we still have snow. Like a lot of snow. Like you could lose a full-grown Labrador in the snow. But last week, the sun appeared and so did puddles, and I started to feel sunny inside too. Then the clouds came back.

After nearly nine years of living in Alaska and experiencing the extremes of sunshine-all-the-time and darkness-all-the-time, I’m beginning to see how the weather affects me. January and February are tough months if I don’t have plans to leave the state for warmer, sunnier climates. Last week, when the sun was shining, I felt happy and energetic. Then when the clouds returned, I felt lazy, listless, lethargic.

I’m so moving to Hawaii someday.

Anyway, what does this have to do with writing? In high school English, we talked about weather being used as symbolism. At the time, I thought that was dumb. The weather occurs regardless of how a person feels. It doesn’t rain when I’m sad or depressed. The sun doesn’t shine just because I’ve gotten good news. And to an extent, I still feel that way. The weather doesn’t mirror my emotions.

But from experience, I know weather does affect a person. When I’ve had bad news, a sunny day makes me angry. An overcast day zaps my energy and pulls me down, even if everything else in my life is happy and positive. And today, with the sun shining again (despite SNOW this morning!), I don’t feel the pull to lie around napping all day like I have every other cloudy day this week. 

So the weather should be considered in our characters’ lives. Besides the obvious—one doesn’t go cross country skiing on the river in the summer—how is weather impacting the plot? What would a scene look like on a rainy day versus a sunny day? What if the day were windy? Humid? Dry? And how is the weather impacting the character’s mood and behavior? Good news on a nasty-weather day? Bad news on a sunny, blue sky day? For a character who deals with stress by gardening or running might like bad news on a sunny day, and bad news on a stormy day for that same character could send her into a desperate situation if caught outside in the rain, thunder, and lightning. 

Obviously the weather isn’t a consideration in every scene, but give some thought to how the weather could add conflict to a scene or within a character, and have some fun considering the possibilities!