I am finding myself seriously bored by long battle sequences. When the guns / knives / arrows / laser-shooting spaceships come out, I tend to click away from the show -- just leave it running in the background and check Facebook or some such, until the fight is over. Clearly, people must like those scenes, or there wouldn't be so many of them in tv / film. But man. I fell ASLEEP during the extended battle scenes in The Hobbit, a movie I was really excited to go see.
I am writing a war novel. One that I hope will be the first in a series. Obviously, there will be some fighting, but if I'm bored by it, the readers will be too, I guarantee you. And yet I'm feeling fretful that they're going to expect long fight sequences.
I'm going to have to resolve this somehow.
Oh, hey, I bet this is how all those people felt back when I spent my 20s writing erotica, and they said they didn't see the point of writing / reading sex scenes.
Well, Adrian, my mother and I hate the extended fight scenes too. Plus, despite early skepticism in my 20’s, I now feel that extended fight scenes probably do lead to a certain callousness and misunderstanding of the real trauma and cruelty of war. I feel our society needs to change. So…. make your war novel and make it about the people, not the fighting. Fighting is boring.
Tanya Huff does battle scenes really well in her Valor series if you need any inspiration!