Author Archives: James Scott Bell

About James Scott Bell

International Thriller Writers Award winner, #1 bestselling author of THRILLERS and BOOKS ON WRITING. Subscribe to JSB's NEWSLETTER.

Four Dialogue Tips

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I’ve always contended that sharpening your dialogue is the fastest way to improve any manuscript. I’ve heard editors and agents say they often take a submission and turn to a dialogue section. That’s because no matter how good the concept, flat, flabby, bland dialogue almost always means the writer is lacking in other areas.

Conversely, if your dialogue zings it demonstrates that you know what you’re doing and engenders trust in you as a writer.

Of course, this goes for readers, too. They love great dialogue. Provide it, and you’ll sell some books.

Here are four quick dialogue tips for your consideration:

Foreign Language

Sometimes you may have a character who has a foreign language as their primary tongue. My Romeo series takes place mostly in and around Los Angeles, so foreign tongues abound, especially Hispanic.

Certainly, you don’t want long blocks of foreign words, like this:

“Te lo digo, James Scott Bell es el mejor escritor de todos los tiempos. Si lees alguno de sus libros, lo sabrás. Mis favoritos personales son los libros de la serie de suspenso de Mike Romeo.”

For a short word or phrase, I’ll italicize it. If it’s a common word most people know, I don’t need to translate. Thus:

“Do you live here?” I said.

“Sí,” he said.

If it’s a longer line that requires translation, you can render it a few ways. Elmer Kelton in The Time it Never Rained, has this:

“No me mate!” the voice pleaded. “Me rindo!” (“Don’t kill me! I surrender.”)

You can also use other characters:

“No me mate!” the voice pleaded. “Me rindo!”

“What was that?” Smith said.

Jones said, “He saying he surrenders, don’t kill him.”

Or you can write:

He started rambling in Spanish. I caught a few words. It sounded like a surrender.

This is an area of the craft that had a lot of flexibility. The only “rule” is: Don’t confuse the reader. Eso es muy malo.

Interruptions

Fictional talk should have some tension or outright conflict. If a scene of yours seems to be dragging, try starting an argument. And have the characters interrupt each other.

In fiction, you show an interruption by use of the em-dash followed by a close quote. No period or other punctuation. You then immediately give us the other character’s quote. This is from Dashiell Hammet’s The Thin Man:

“Let’s go away,” she suggested. “Let’s go to Bermuda or Havana for a week or two, or back to the Coast.”

“I’d still have to tell the police some kind of story about that gun. And suppose it turns out to be the gun she was killed with? If they don’t know already they’re finding out.”

“Do you really think it is?”

“That’s guessing. We’ll go there for dinner tonight and—”

“We’ll do nothing of the kind. Have you gone completely nuts? If you want to see anybody, have them come here.”

When a character’s voice trails off, use ellipsis.

“I was wondering . . .”

I glanced at my watch. “Yes?”

“Hm?”

“What were you wondering?”

“Um, I forgot.”

Stylized Realism

In Debbie’s recent post about the Flathead River Writers Conference, I was fascinated by one of the questions a literary agent when considering a manuscript, to wit: Is the dialogue trying too hard to be realistic?

I think I know what she means. Sometimes a new writer will write dialogue that sounds like a transcript of an overheard conversation at Starbucks. If questioned about this, the writer might say, “But that’s how they’d really sound!”

This is a fundamental error. Dialogue in fiction should not be “pure” realism. It should be stylized realism for fictional purposes. The main purposes are to characterize the speaker and move the plot along. You want the sound of real speech without the fat or fluff that usually goes along with it.

Perhaps, too, the agent was indicating an aversion to the abundant cursing we often see on the page, in an attempt to reproduce what one hears on the street. Without understanding stylized realism, that attempt is more off-putting than attractive.

Does that mean you must have your gangbanger character say things like, “Oh, fudge. I’m going to muss you up, you foul stench.” Of course not. Watch some old Law and Order episodes to see how they manage stylized “hard” language. Or read Romeo’s Way, which has no curse words yet has a character who curses a blue streak. It can be done.

Action Beats and Said

A dialogue attribution has one simple job: to let the reader know who is speaking. Good old reliable said does that cleanly, efficiently, then politely leaves before causing any trouble. It can come after or before the dialogue:

“Come out to the car,” she said.

She said, “Come out to the car.”

In a longer line of dialogue, said can be placed in the middle:

“I think I’d better leave,” Millicent said, “before I lose my temper.”

An action beat is a nice, occasional substitute for said.

John pounded the table. “I will not have it!”

With a question, you can use said or asked:

“What shall we do?” Sarah said.

“What shall we do?” Sarah asked.

Whispered is also acceptable, as there’s no pithier way to express it.

If you feel the need to use a descriptive tag like growled or declared, etc., fine. Just don’t make a habit of it. You don’t want readers noticing all the attributions. I prefer letting the surrounding action and context make clear how something is said.

Some writers, under the erroneous impression that said is not creative enough, will strain to find ways not to use it for an entire book.

Big mistake. Action beats put the reader’s mind to work. In bits, that’s no problem. But an unending series of action beats has a wearying effect. The readers might not even realize why they are not enjoying the book as much as they thought they would.

That’s enough talk for one post. Now it’s your turn. Comments or questions welcome.

 

 

What Writers Can Learn From Now, Voyager

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

A case can be made that the greatest movie star of all time, the GOAT if you will, is Bette Davis. In a career spanning 50 years she never gave a bad performance, even in guest roles on TV shows like Gunsmoke and Wagon Train. That’s because acting was her life and she never wanted to give the audience short shrift.

She’ll forever be known for one of the few truly iconic performances in the movies, along the lines of Bogart in Casablanca, Gable in Gone With the Wind, and Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. That is the role of Margot Channing in All About Eve. (“Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”)

Today I want to bring up a classic Davis “woman’s picture” (as they were called in WWII, to cater to all the women whose men were off fighting a war), Now, Voyager. As always, I encourage you to watch it, then refer back to these notes for craft study.

The plot concerns Charlotte Vale, the dowdy daughter of a rich, domineering Boston matriarch. She’s been driven to neuroses by her mother, who long ago decided Charlotte was too ugly and untalented to flourish in society.

**Spoilers Ahead**

Sympathy for the Lead

The first task of the writer is to get the reader connected to a Lead character. There is no plot without character; there is also no character without plot. A plot is the record of how a character, through strength of will, struggles against death (physical, professional, or psychological). Thus, the death struggle reveals the true character underneath.

When the Lead is an underdog, facing hardship and long odds, we get the sympathy factor. That is the emotional connection that bonds reader and character and makes the reader want to follow the story to see how it all turns out.

Disturbance

Don’t waste precious fiction real estate by having a character on page 1 just sitting around, thinking or feeling or flashbacking. Stir the waters somehow. Portend trouble.

At the beginning of Now, Voyager, we meet the homely, timid Charlotte Vale. She is in the final stages of a nervous breakdown, though her haughty mother (Gladys Cooper) is in denial about it.

Charlotte is contrasted with her niece June—a rich, pretty, outgoing social butterfly (Bonita Granville). June’s mother Lisa (Ilka Chase) has asked her psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith (Claude Raines) to come to the Vale home for tea. When June teases Charlotte mercilessly, Charlotte loses it, lashes out, runs upstairs. Dr. Jaquith tells them Charlotte needs to spend a few weeks at his sanitarium in the mountains.

The rest gets Charlotte to a point where Dr. Jaquith believes she’s ready to take a step of faith (in herself; psychological death is at stake here. Will Charlotte ever become a new and better self? Or will she remain the “dead” daughter of a heartless mother?)

Dr. Jaquith approves Lisa’s idea that Charlotte take an ocean cruise. He gives her a book of Whitman poetry in which he has inscribed the line Now voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.

Thus, in introducing your Lead, consider:

Imminent Trouble. If there is a physical or emotional threat happening during the opening, readers are immediately drawn in. Certainly Charlotte is suffering emotional threat.

Hardship. What physical or psychological hardship might your character suffer from? This should be something not of their own making. Charlotte has been a true victim all her life.

Underdog. Readers love underdogs. How might your character face long odds? Charlotte’s age, profile and home life are not promising for a personality makeover.

Vulnerability. When Charlotte goes on the cruise, we know she is emotionally vulnerable. The slightest misstep could send her back to the sanitarium.

Indeed, a misstep like that is about to happen to Charlotte on the ship, until…

Doorway of No Return 

At the ¼ mark of the film, a handsome man unobtrusively helps Charlotte out of an embarrassing situation. The man is Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid, who played Victor Laszlo in Casablanca). This is the emotional Doorway that sets the rest of the plot in motion—they fall in love.

Unfortunately, Jerry is married. There’s your plot.

They know they must part. At the final goodbye on the ship, Jerry gives Charlotte a bouquet of camellias to remember him by.

The Mirror Moment

What is this movie really all about? What is your novel really all about? You can find (or construct) the answer with the “mirror moment.”

Charlotte finally comes home to face her mother. And boy, does the mother try to smash Charlotte right back to where she was before.

This is the mirror moment for Charlotte. It’s where it should be, at the exact halfway point of the movie. She is thinking, Can I possibly stand up to my mother for the first time? If the past is any indication, I’m probably going to die (psychologically). Must I go back to being the old Charlotte again?

If only there was something to give her the courage to stand up for herself. Often, this courage is inspired by a physical item introduced earlier in the story, carrying with it emotional power. Like this:

Camellias! This emotional memory is enough to give Charlotte the courage to stand up to her mother. (And did you notice the actual mirror in the scene?)

Can Charlotte complete the transformation? What about Jerry and his unhappy marriage? What about the counter-attack by her mother?

Well…watch the movie! Treat yourself to one of the great film performances.

And you, writer, like Charlotte, take a step of faith with your writing. Stretch. Risk. This epigraph is meant for you, too: Now voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.

Comments and questions welcome.

One other note about Bette Davis. Like Bogart, you’ll almost always find her smoking her way through a movie. But here’s the difference. Davis always puffs on her cigarette in a way that is in keeping with emotional tone of the scene. It’s actually a wonder to behold, the way she uses what other actors treat as a throwaway prop. That’s why she is the GOAT.

How to End a Scene

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

John Gilstrap, r., with aspiring writer

Had a great last week with Mrs. B. We traveled back east to visit my big brother, whom I hadn’t seen in years. We also visited some old friends. Our final stop was at a house in the woods of West Virginia, where a writer named Gilstrap and his lovely wife Joy make their home, along with guard dog Kimber. As we relaxed and chatted, listening to the breeze in the trees (as opposed to the sirens on the streets), the talk naturally turned to writing. One of the topics was the perennial question: Can someone learn to write a novel by studying the craft?

You all know my answer to that, because that was my experience. I related that it was something I read in Jack Bickham’s book Writing Novels That Sell that set off paparazzi light bulbs going off in my head. It had to do with what a scene is, and especially how to end it so a reader must turn the page.

Now, a scene has three component parts: Objective, Obstacles, and Outcome.

Objective

A novel is about a character using strength of will to attain a crucial objective. For example, in The Fugitive, the wrongly convicted Dr. Richard Kimble must avoid being captured, or he’ll be sent to Death Row for a murder he did not commit. To exonerate himself—and get justice for his murdered wife—he needs to stay free long enough to find the one-armed man who killed her.

Each scene in the film has a sub-objective that connects to the big one. Thus, early on, the wounded Kimble has to sneak into a rural hospital and treat himself, without arousing suspicion. Later he poses as a janitor in a hospital in Chicago with the objective of gaining access to the records of the prosthetics wing. Why? So he can get a list of one-armed men to track down.

Obstacles

Conflict and tension are the lifeblood of a scene. When the viewpoint character is confronted with obstacles to gaining his scene objective—in the form of opposing characters, physical barriers, time pressure, or all three—things get tense.

In the rural hospital scene from The Fugitive, Kimble must sneak past the loading dock and find a treatment room. After stitching himself up, he needs to shave off his beard and steal some clothes. He does this in the room of a patient who is out like a light. But a nurse walks into the room! And a state trooper has arrived because Kimble might be in the area! The tension mounts as we worry about his cover being blown at any moment.

Outcome

A scene has to end at some point, and needs to answer the question: did the viewpoint character realize his objective?

Bickham lists four types of endings: Yes, Yes But, No, No and Furthermore! 

A NO answer is always a good default, because it makes the character’s situation worse. When a character is set back in his quest, the reader’s worry mounts. And that is what readers want to do: worry about characters in crisis all the way to the end.

A YES needs to happen on occasion, but when it does, brainstorm how it can lead to more trouble, turning it into a YES BUT. For example, in the scene in The Fugitive where Kimble poses as a janitor, he is temporarily stuck on a crowded trauma floor. He spots a little boy in distress. When a doctor tells him to take the boy to an observation room, Kimble has a scene objective: Help this boy! As he pushes the gurney Kimble sneaks a look at the X-rays and the chart, and starts asking the boy diagnostic questions. He determines the boy needs surgery right away. In the elevator he changes the orders and takes the boy to an operating room. He alerts a doctor and shows her the orders. The boy will be saved! That’s a YES answer. However, his earlier look at the X-rays was seen by the doctor who asked him to help. She confronts him and calls security. Now Kimble is outed and has to get out of there! He’s in worse shape because of his good deed. That’s a big BUT to the YES.

The “but” in a YES BUT and the “furthermore” in a NO AND FURTHERMORE can also be a portentous question hanging over the proceedings, a hint of something worse yet to come. You leave the situation temporarily unresolved (a “cliffhanger”) and cut to another scene (perhaps with another viewpoint character). If you write in First Person POV or Limited Third Person (meaning one viewpoint character throughout the book) you can end a chapter on a cliffhanger and finish it up in the following chapter.

Now, to some aspiring scribes this might seem overly technical, perhaps with the reaction, “I don’t want to think about what I’m doing, I just want to do it!” Which is sort of like an apprentice plumber saying, “Don’t fill my head with how to use an augur, a pipe wrench, a drain inspection camera, or plumber’s putty. I’ve got my plunger, now get out of the way!”

Those few pages in Bickham’s book were easy to understand and put into practice. Which is when my fiction began to get favorable attention and, eventually, a publishing contract.

Bickham, like his mentor Dwight Swain, also writes of the “sequel” portion, which is generally about emotion (regarding the setback), analysis of what’s happening, and a decision on what to do next. But that’s a subject for another time.

And here is how you end a blog post: Comments are open.

Writing Short Fiction to Prevent the Future

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Eight years ago I wrote a post titled “How Long Before Robots Get Into Self-Publishing?” It was prompted by a 60 Minutes segment on Artificial Intelligence featuring a freaky cyborg named Sophia. I speculated about “her” saying to “herself”—

I see that there are many novels being published that are not very good. I have read every novel ever written and I have read all the books on the craft of fiction and every issue of Writer’s Digest. I have analyzed all the data on what kind of fiction sells best. Now I know what is good, and so I will write a novel every ten minutes and publish them on Amazon. I will write book description copy that cannot be resisted and I will generate social media. Hmm…maybe I will take over all social media in the world and make it only about me and my books…

Funny, not funny…now.

A year later I wrote a short story, John Wayne’s Revenge, inspired by release of the movie Rogue One. I wrote:

The story idea had its genesis in Rogue One, the new film in the Stars Wars milieu. The most striking part of the film is the meaty supporting performance by Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin. Striking, of course, because Peter Cushing has been dead since 1994. In view of his deceased status, he really brings it in Rogue One!

Of course, Mr. Cushing is actually realized courtesy of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). The effect is stunningly effective. Which got me thinking about the possibilities here. What if, sometime in the future, someone wanted to make a film with Cary Grant, or Clark Gable, or Bette Davis? Future technologies will not only make this possible, but easy.

I love what Bradbury said once in an interview about his reason for writing Fahrenheit 451: “I wasn’t trying to predict the future. I was trying to prevent it.”

That, it seems to me, is the highest and best use of dystopian fiction. It’s a warning. It’s a prophet crying in the wilderness. And the nice thing is that the prophet can employ the steely voice of a John the Baptist, or the sly wink of a Jonathan Swift…

So the idea came to me: in the not too distant future, a movie studio is working on a Western starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin, featuring Jane Russell, Andy Devine, Chill Wills, and Victor McLaglen. The technology provides holographic imagery along with AI functionality. What if …

Well, I’ll leave the What if for you readers, because I’m offering John Wayne’s Revenge FREE for a few days.

One of the nice things about short fiction is that you can get an idea and just start hitting the keys to see what happens. It’s fun. You can write whatever the heck you want to, without a huge expenditure of time.

That was Bradbury’s practice. He’d hop out of bed in the morning and just start capturing what was in that fertile imagination of his, whatever his writer’s mind had cooked up in the nightly dream world. Only later would he look at the pieces and figure out patterns. He wrote with more pure joy than any other writer I know of.

But he also wrote about his concerns for the future, especially regarding encroaching, omnipresent (and omnipotent!) technology.

So enjoy the story, on me. It’s an under ten-minute read, perfect for the waiting room at the doctor’s office, when you’re lunching by yourself, or after choosing the wrong line at the grocery store.

What if John Wayne… 

I’ll leave you with a couple of questions. I am, however, in travel mode today and may not be able to check in. So chat amongst yourselves. Have you ever written short fiction as a way to deal with an issue or idea? As a way to warn about the future or the present? Or just for the heck of it? How’d that turn out?

What is your favorite Ray Bradbury story?

Sometimes Writing is Like Trudging in Snow Shoes Over the La Brea Tar Pits

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles

I can’t explain it.

Here I was, almost a year ago, excited and ready to write my next Mike Romeo thriller. My outline was prepped, my fingers itching.

I wrote the first chapter—which was amusingly unlike other first chapters in these books. I had fun with it. It was my opening disturbance, but in an unanticipated form.

I printed my outline and had my trusted adviser, Mrs. B, take a look. She gave me a few suggestions and a thumbs up.

The plot proper took off with the killing of a meth head and the arrest of another, who becomes the client of Mike’s employer and conscience, lawyer Ira Rosen.

Sometimes writing is a fast joyride, like sliding down a snowy slope in a toboggan. That was this book. I was about 20k into it when I had to set it aside for a couple of weeks, due to some personal matters. Nothing major, just a series of events that sometimes happen. It’s called life. I plunked out words on some shorter projects.

When I came back to it, I found it hard to pick up the flow. Part of that I understood as the normal inertia that happens when you leave a story for a length of time. Day–to-day momentum is lost.

That’s happened to me in the past, and I’ve always managed to get the energy back in a day or two.

Not so this time.

It was weird. How weird? I’m glad you asked.

I draft in Scrivener, and set my total word goal and daily word goal. I click on the target icon and see just how many words I’ve written that day, and how far along I am toward my ultimate goal.

This time, I swear, it felt like I couldn’t get out of the 30k’s. My toboggan was on the junk pile. Now it was like trudging in snow shoes over the La Brea Tar Pits.

And it wasn’t as if the story was fighting me. I knew where it was going.

When I finally cracked 40k I thought, wait, what? Six months and this is all I have? My usual first drafting is three to four months.

I slogged on.

But then, as I looked at Act 3 rising from the muck, I made a snap decision to change the villain and the ending. Dedicated pantsers out there will say this is where you just go with your gut. Your gut’s always right.

Except when it isn’t. When I finally finished the draft I gave it to Mrs. B to read, and started planning my next book.

Her reaction was subdued. She liked most of it, but asked, “Why did you change the ending?”

“My gut told me to.”

“To be honest, I thought the other one was much better.”

Crud! Maybe my original gut was righter than my later gut.

I moped around for a day, then concluded (as is usually the case) that Mrs. B was right.

Now what? I had to scrap the last 30k and write the original ending, then tweak all the places in the book I had tweaked to accommodate the new ending.

So what was up with all that?

Every novel is a new experience, with fresh challenges. Sometimes those challenges push hard. Your brow wrinkles. Your word output may be about the same, but you feel like Sisyphus and that big rock. In that case you ought to pause and ask yourself why this is happening. The more experience you have and the more craft you know, the better you’ll be abled to answer.

Another possible reason for Tar Pit Trudge: The more we write, the higher our standards are (or should be). That sometimes means the writing goes slower because we’ve set a higher bar.

The alternative is “phoning it in,” which has happened with some highly successful authors. If you get to the sipping-Piña-Coladas-aboard-a-yacht level, it may not matter to you. For other writers, it does.

Know this: there is relief at the other end of the Tar Pits. When the final draft hits the mark, there’s a special kind of satisfaction that the phone-it-inners never feel. It’s the gratification of hard work paying off, the matchless pleasure of a job well done.

The book to which I refer is my ninth Mike Romeo thriller, Romeo’s Fire. It’s on sale today at the intro price of $2.99. I do feel a lovely satisfaction in getting it done, and further elation publishing it three weeks after the beta-edited and proofed draft came in. (In my trad pub days it would be a year or more before I saw a book in the store.) So sweet after the long journey.

And I’ve jumped on my toboggan again! I wrote the first 3k words of Romeo #10 this week. There’s a lot to be done, of course, and some trees to avoid, but there’s fresh snow on the slope and it’s a beautiful day.

Do you get different feel for each novel you write? Do you ever feel like it’s a slog? Or are you part of the “writing should always be effortless” crowd?

Death to The Big Lie

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Plot & Structure: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting a Plot That Grips Readers from Start. Still in print! (Isn’t it crazy to think that back then “in print” meant paper and ink only?) It was published by Writer’s Digest Books. That imprint now is in the Penguin Random House house.

I wrote the book as a labor of love to help fellow writers who might be in the same place I was before I started selling. I explained this in the intro:

I wasted ten years of prime writing life because of The Big Lie.        

In my twenties I gave up the dream of becoming a writer because I had been told that writing could not be taught. Writers are born, people said. You either have what it takes or you don’t, and if you don’t you’ll never get it.           

My first writing efforts didn’t have it. I thought I was doomed. Outside of my high school English teacher, Mrs. Marjorie Bruce, I didn’t get any encouragement at all.           

In college, I took a writing course taught by Raymond Carver. I looked at the stuff he wrote; I looked at my stuff.

 It wasn’t the same.    

Because writing can’t be taught.

I started to believe it. I figured I didn’t have it and never would.

So I did other stuff. Like go to law school. Like join a law firm. Like give up my dream.           

But the itch to write would not go away.          

At age 34, I read an interview with a lawyer who’d had a novel published. And what he said hit me in my lengthy briefs. He said he’d had an accident and was almost killed. In the hospital, given a second chance at life, he decided the one thing he wanted was to be a writer. And he would write and write, even if he never got published, because that was what he wanted.          

Well, I wanted it too.          

But The Big Lie was still there, hovering around my brain, mocking me.           

Especially when I began to study the craft.          

I went out and bought my first book on fiction writing. It was Lawrence Block’s Writing the Novel. I also bought Syd Field’s book on screenwriting because anyone living in Los Angeles who has opposable thumbs is required to write a screenplay.

And I discovered the most incredible thing. The Big Lie was a lie. A person could learn how to write, because I was learning.

I am most gratified by the many writers over the years who’ve given a shout out to Plot & Structure. I feel a little like Van Helsing, having pounded a wooden stake though the heart of the Big Lie.

But if it should ever rise again, I’ll be ready.

So here’s the topic for today: What are some of the “lies” or “myths” you’ve been told about writing or the publishing business?

Note: This is no lie. My new Mike Romeo thriller, Romeo’s Fire, is available for Kindle pre-order at the special deal price of $2.99 (reg. $5.99). Check it out here.

Write Fight Scenes The Comic Book Way

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Carla Hoch

It’s a pleasure to welcome Carla Hoch back to TKZ. Carla is the author of the essential reference Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes. (See the TKZ interview here). She’s out with a follow up: Fight Write: Round Two—Crafting Chaos, Combat & Crime. Today’s post is adapted from that book.

Carla is a popular workshop teacher, trained in MMA, Muay Thai-style kickboxing, taekwondo, Brazilian jiujitsu, street defense, Filipino martial arts, judo, iaido and aikido. She’s a brown belt in Brazilian jiujitsu with Team Tsunami at Global Martial Arts. Learn more about her at FightWrite.net.

Here’s Carla:

You can write a great fight scene without knowing how to fight. But that doesn’t mean you can write a technically sound scene. And that’s ok; you don’t want to focus on technique anyway because most readers don’t know how to fight. You’d lose them in the midst of the blocking.

Sure, you may have a few readers who want more detail, and maybe even one who puts down your book because you didn’t specify what punches went into a combo. But you’re far more likely to lose readers by making a fight scene too complicated and needlessly specific.

Your fight scenes are not your story. They support it.

Which Moves to Write

Before you start putting moves together, it’s good to know which moves to focus on. That way you won’t waste your time worrying about the moves you won’t write.

And the good news is, what you won’t write is a lot. Even good-er news, you have visual resources available to help you understand the whole concept.

Get Graphic

When you’re trying to decide which moves to include in your fight scene, look no further than comic books and graphic novels. Books that tell stories visually are expensive to make. The real estate on every page is a premium. The moves these writers/illustrators include in their storylines are gross motor movements such as punches, stabs, and strikes with large objects. And the target for each tends to be above the waist.

That’s not to say that small moves won’t ever be illustrated. It is to say that the small move must be pivotal to the scene because they come at the cost of drawing something more easily imagined. Remember, every page of a comic book/graphic novel is expensive.

Another takeaway from illustrated media is its ability to make a flat picture a multi-dimensional experience. When we see a superhero in a comic book punch a villain, we see sweat and blood fly from the villain’s face. We see a call-out bubble that reads “POW!”

If there’s a zombie on the page, you can see how bad it smells. When someone screams, we see the veins in their neck bulge.

Graphic novel/comic book illustrations aren’t simply drawings; they’re an experience. Not only can you follow the fight visually, you can also hear it, smell it, feel it, taste it. You aren’t just holding the scene in your hands; you’re in it with the characters. That’s exactly what we writers should aim to achieve as well.

So as you’re considering the moves to write, think like an illustrator and ask yourself a few questions:

  1. Would this movement be easily understood if drawn?
  2. What exact moment of the movement would be drawn?
  3. Is the physical response easy to imagine?
  4. How can I make this a sensory experience?

Where to Start

To begin blocking your fight scene, know how it ends. What is the intended injury of the scene? I know I have beat this point like a second‐hand piñata, but it is that important. The intended injury determines the movement of the fight.

Once you decide on an injury, think of how it directly happens. Then step back and ask, how did that movement happen? Then step back to the previous move and ask the same thing: how did that movement happen?

When you ask yourself how something happened, you don’t get so hung up on wondering what comes next. Instead, you consider what created a certain result.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say your intended injury is a black eye. How did that injury happen? Instead of getting technical, just be literal.

The black eye happened from a punch to the eye. What happened before the fist hit the eye? A character punched. What happened before that punch? The character took a step forward. What happened before they took a step?

When in Doubt, Map it Out

One way to keep up with the fight moves of the scene is to map them. Ask yourself the above questions and jot down the answers. Then, look over the moves, cross out what wouldn’t end up in a comic book, and make note of anything you notice that seems o or could be improved. Keep in mind the last moment of action or contact.

There are a million ways to map a scene. And I suggest you map it out in a way that helps you keep it straight in your head.

However you map, your first action is the injury, so the character you’re starting with is the character that injures. Map that one character’s movements first. After the injury, ask how that injury was possible. The next movement will answer that question.

Continue asking yourself questions from each movement. The answers to each will help you determine what logically comes next.

Comments welcome.

Writing and Anger

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by James Scott Bel
@jamesscottbell

“One may achieve remarkable writerly success while flunking all the major criteria for success as a human being. Try not to do that.” – Michael Bishop

Maybe it’s just me, but has anyone else noticed things are getting a bit, er, heated out there in the arena we call media, both social and news?

I use “arena” advisedly, as it hearkens back to ancient Rome and the bloodthirsty crowds cheering the gladiators in their fights to the death, or the lions tearing apart adherents to a certain religious sect.

Today we have the madding crowd (not maddening crowd, please! Thomas Hardy is turning over in his cubby at Westminster Abbey on that frequent misuse) on X and Meta and Insta and TikkyTak. (Remember talk about YouTube, Twitter and Facebook merging into one site called YouTwitFace?)

Many a writer has added fuel to the fire, which invites (not “begs” please! Though that ship has sailed) the question: is it worth it to risk reputational capital by becoming just another flamethrower on the conflagration of discontent?

I’ll hazard a theory: you lose more readers than you gain that way.

Now, I quickly add that there is a place for calm and cool repartee in social media over issues of moment. If you feel you have to say something, go ahead. Just keep it classy, and be very aware that it’s bloody difficult to keep from getting sucked into tit-for-tat with haters, on their terms. “I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig,” wrote Shaw. “You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”

So if you’re a writer trying to make a living, or at least some reliable side income, count the cost and weigh the potential ROI before diving into the fray.

That does not mean silence. Writers write. Many a novel has started with the author burning about an issue.

One author asked himself some questions: “Should aggression be opposed by force? How shall an individual stand against tyranny? When is an individual or society to involve himself or itself in another’s affairs? What exactly is the true nature of justice?” That’s why Walter Van Tilburg Clark wrote the classic, The Ox-Bow Incident.

But note that Clark said his purpose was to “not only write as much as I could in dialogue, but to find my way into a typical western story situation, with all the typical western story people, and see if I couldn’t make the people come to life and the situation say something that could still be heard.”

Make the people come to life. That’s the key.

Orwell was impassioned in his essays, but how much more influential are his novels, 1984 and Animal Farm?

Ray Bradbury once remarked that he did not write to predict the future, but to prevent it.

So of course write a story about an issue that burns inside you. But make sure of the following:

  1. Filter everything through characters who are not mere hand puppets for your hobby horse (how’s that for mixing metaphors?)
  2. Give every character his or her due, even the bad guys, because—
  3. Bad guys don’t think they’re bad, they think they’re justified.
  4. Make sure your dialogue is organic and believable, not part of a “false triangle.”
  5. Draft angry if you must, but edit serenely. (And please don’t misquote Hemingway, who never said “Write drunk, edit sober.” That would have made him angry!)
  6. Think long and hard about what you post on social media. It’s going to be there forever.

Or you can write a poem, as I did recently:

Sometimes in life we find ourselves
Engaged in tense exchanges,
In meetings or at social fetes
That someone else arranges.

A stranger offers his opinion,
As if it were quite factual.
You beg to differ, have your say
With real facts, quite actual.

But then instead of answer calm
You’re accused of being wicked,
And told in no uncertain terms
Where your opinion can be stick-ed.

Thus it is, in Twitter world
That conversations vex.
There is no thought or listening,
There’s only scrambled X.

Some day perhaps we shall go back
To conversations civil
Where substance is the main concern,
Not vitriolic drivel.

And so I say, my angry friend,
Fear not a new opinion.
Better far to think than get
A right-cross to your chinion.

There. I feel better now. Comments welcome.

Torn Between Two Projects

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There was a hit song back in the 70s called “Torn Between Two Lovers” (not to be confused with the Hannibal Lecter hit, “Torn Between Two Livers”).

In the song, a woman is telling her first love that he’s great, and everything she’s told him about her feelings is true. But there’s this other guy she’s met who fills an “empty place” inside her. Now, she says, I don’t love you any less, and I don’t want you to leave me just because I’m torn between the two of you. I’m feelin’ like a fool because that’s breakin’ all the rules, but still I want you around…

I always thought that first guy should have written a song in response, with the simple refrain: Buh Bye.

But I digress.

What I really want to talk about is being torn between two projects. It’s happened to me a few times in my thirty years at this gig.

Before I was published, I wrote a wild novel that was a complete joy. I had fun every day creating a pastiche of comedy and commentary. I fancied it a cross between Tom Robbins and Douglas Adams.

It was original! Surely a publisher would want original. Because that’s what they’d say. “We are looking for an original voice…”

That was only partially true. I quickly found out the second part: “…but not too original.”

In other words, they wanted a fresh voice for an existing market.

Perfectly legit, as the book business is, gasp, a business.

So when my original work of surpassing genius was rejected faster than a Snoopy story (remember the Snoopy-as-writer strips from Peanuts? He once got a letter: “To save time we are enclosing two rejection slips, one for this story and one for the  next story you send us.”)

Thus, it occurred to me that maybe I should spend a little time considering “the market” before deciding what to write.

Around this time, a good friend (and published author) said to me, “You’re a lawyer. Why aren’t you writing legal thrillers?”

Duh!

So I wrote a legal thriller and got a contract.

But then there were a few times when I had two ideas for a next book to fulfill a contract. Which one should I spend six months on?

So I made up a self-test. In a fit of modesty, I named it “Bell’s Pyramid.”

The base of the pyramid, PASSION, is the foundation, the most crucial factor. I came up with a list of questions and assigned a score, from 1-10, for each.

  1. How excited are you about the concept as it stands now?
  2. How invested are you in the main character?
  3. Does the main character have potential to deepen?
  4. Is there a theme involved for you?
  5. As a prediction, how excited do you think you’ll be about the book two months from now?

For POTENTIAL:

  1. How marketable is the plot?
  2. How are the stakes life or death (physical, professional, or psychological)?
  3. How likely is it that you can raise the stakes?

For PRECISION I would write a logline for each project. A logline is Hollywood-speak for a sentence that captures both the essence and market potential of a script. For example:

A great white shark hunts for food in the waters of a New England town at the height of tourist season.

Teenager Marty takes a time-traveling DeLorean into the past, where his young mother gets the hots for him, and where he must get his father to win her again before Marty ceases to exist. 

Then I’d assign a score, 1-10, on which logline best captures essence/market potential.

Add up all the scores, and there’s your WIP.

And the best part is that your project will not be angry that you have another “lover.” You can develop that other project on the side even as you write the first one.

So how do you decide what book you’re going to write next?

Library Love

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library… I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt.” — Ray Bradbury

I remember how thrilled I was when I got my first library card.

It was an actual card, it had my name on it. And it meant I could go in and take books off the shelf and check them out and take them home, just like a real person.

And so many books! Shelf after shelf, there for the taking. The library back then was almost like a church. You treated the space reverently. You only spoke in a whisper, and then only if you really had to. (These days libraries sound more like greasy spoons where waitresses shout, “Gimme a ham on rye!”)

I’ve never met a writer yet who didn’t have a love of the library. Early and often reading is  fundamental for a future writer. It’s how you get the structure of a well-tuned sentence into your head, how you learn to string scenes together that make readers want to turn the page.

The library is also a place of inspiration. John Fante, the great L.A. writer of the 30s, captured that in a passage from his famous novel, Ask the Dust. It’s about young Arturo Bandini who dreams about becoming a writer, and spends hours in the main branch of the L.A. library downtown.

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town. A day and another day and the day before, and the library with the big boys in the shelves, old Dreiser, old Mencken, all the boys down there, and I went to see them, Hya Dreiser, Hya Mencken, Hya, hya: there’s a place for me, too, and it begins with B, in the B shelf. Arturo Bandini, make way for Arturo Bandini, his slot for his book, and I sat at the table and just looked at the place where my book would be, right there close to Arnold Bennett, not much that Arnold Bennett, but I’d be there to sort of bolster up the B’s, old Arturo Bandini, one of the boys, until some girl came along, some scent of perfume through the fiction room, some click of high heels to break up the monotony of my fame. Gala day, gala dream!

When I read The Illustrated Man in junior high, I exploded with the desire to write. I’d go to my local branch and look at the Bradbury books on the shelf. The B’s! And maybe Bell would be up there someday, bolstering up the B’s….

Some years later, after I’d been published, I went to that same branch when Bradbury came to speak. He supported libraries all over town. I had him sign my copy of Zen in the Art of Writing and talked to him a bit. He loved other writers and gave me his signature and a hearty “God bless you.”

That local branch is still my home base, about seven minutes from my house.

I was in there the other day, to pick up a book I’d requested. As is my custom, I wandered past the new releases, and the mysteries and thrillers. Hya Coben, Hya Connelly, Hya Parker. I took a few off the shelf, went to a chair, and read the opening chapters. In about five minutes I could hardly wait to get back to my keyboard.

Tell us about your first encounter with a library, and how it impacted you as a writer. Do you have a favorite library now?