It’s pretty dark in the shed at night, and when I say night, I mean 4:30 p.m., because it’s that time of year around here. Chugging along on the Wild Cards story — I’m up to about 5000 words, which is good progress. Or it would be good progress if I weren’t so far behind. I just e-mailed George and said he might get the draft tonight, but if not, DEFINITELY tomorrow morning, so that is my deadline, come hell or high water. You don’t want to break promises to George R.R. Martin. That’s surely bad juju for writers!
I just finished writing a midway-through-the-story fight scene, which honestly, I sort of dreaded drafting. I think it came out okay; I’m just not used to this kind of action-adventure writing. I am much better at writing people angsting about their lives and not talking to each other while they silently simmer. Bodies in Motion was basically an entire book of people doing that!
That doesn’t work for Wild Cards, though, and in general, I’d like to learn how to do more commercial-ish fiction. Tobias Buckell and Paolo Bacigalupi were talking at World Fantasy about hiding the broccoli in the brownie, and the problem is that I totally know how to write broccoli; I’ve got that part down. Brownies, though — they bewilder me.
Still, if I can write an action-y sex scene (and trust me, I can), I really OUGHT to be able to write action-y fight scenes. Right?
But, um, I’m a little lacking in real world experience of the latter, which might be part of the problem…
Anyway. The next scene is a fabulously emotional betrayal scene, and that’s something I do know how to write. Sucker punch to my character’s gut, coming up. In a strictly emotional kind of way. Sorry, buddy. (Not sorry.)
There’s a BIG fight scene coming at the end of the story, though. Sigh. Well, I’ll deal with it when I get there, I suppose. But every time you read a fight scene of mine, know that I worked really really hard to give it to you!
Bam! Bang! Pow!
(The comics folks knew what they were doing. I could TOTALLY write that.)