Tag Archives: Getting Technical

Writing Fight Scenes With Movies: Part IV – Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

18 Apr

Before we begin, I just have to inform you that this post involves Christopher Plummer, and not just any Christopher Plummer, but Christopher Plummer speaking Klingon and shouting out Shakespeare on his way to sabotage the Star Trekkian equivalent of the Berlin Wall coming down.

…

I KNOW, RIGHT?

Man. Star Trek is some fantastic shiz.

So, moving on, this post concludes my series of posts about how watching fight scenes in movies can help us write fight scenes in our books. As I confessed previously, writing fight scenes is hard for me. I tend to get overwhelmed by all the individual elements that go into the scene instead of stepping back and focusing on the general. After all, audiences (well, most audiences, anyway) don’t want to hear a blow-by-blow description of who hit who where and how hard. They want to get caught up in the flow of the fight. They don’t want to have time to think about who’s hitting who, and with what technique, and all those little details. They just want to feel exhilarated; they want to be on the edge of their seats.

Watching fight scenes in movies helps me achieve this, and I think it could help you, too.

In the previous installments, I talked about Inception, The Matrix, and last week, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

This week, I’m going to talk about Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which holds true to the curse thing about the even-numbered Star Trek films being better than the odd-numbered ones by being really, really quite awesome.

When I was younger, I would sit in front of the TV and rewind/re-watch the finale of this film over and over and over. I couldn’t get enough of it. It made my little Trekkie heart race. I’d never before experienced such a rush of adrenaline (not even when Captain Picard and Doctor Crusher had one of their we-love-each-other-BUT-WE-CANNOT-ACT-UPON-IT-FOR-VARIOUS-INFURIATING-REASONS episodes, and believe me, that is saying something, because they were my first ‘ship, y’all, and it was intense). See below:

This is, by the way, from the second (or third?) episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation EVER, in which a virus infects everyone on the ship and makes them all act like they’re drunk. IT IS HILARIOUS. It is also called “Naked Now.’ …

BUT I DIGRESS.

So, back to the Star Trek VI scene — WHY did I experience this rush of adrenaline? Why did I sit there and watch this finale until I had even the Klingon lines memorized?

Now that I’m older and, as a writer, tend to analyze such things, I see exactly why: the Countdown Effect.

The Countdown Effect is a simple and ridiculously effective way to spice up any fight scene and make our audience sweat. Not only are our heroes fighting for their lives, but they are also fighting against time itself. Whether they’re facing a ticking bomb, a ticking clock, or the last moments of a loved one’s life, when our characters face the secondary conflict of limited time in addition to the primary conflict of the battle itself, we introduce a whole new level of excitement to our fight scene.

In this scene from Star Trek VI, we have a fairly conventional battle between three spaceships — the Enterprise, the Excelsior, and a Klingon Bird of Prey. (Of note here is that I dearly love how nautical this battle feels, just as in director Nicholas Meyer’s other Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan. There is no swooping or diving or crazy acrobatics here; just good old-fashioned submarine-style combat.)

However, what elevates this battle to unconventional and nail-biting is the fact that the filmmakers set it up as a multiple Countdown Effect. This is the film’s finale, and, as such, all the various plots are coming to a head via several ticking clocks:

  1. First, we have the Enterprise racing toward the Khitomer Peace Conference. They are pursued by and hoping to elude an invincible, cloaked Bird of Prey captained by a rogue Klingon politician trying to crash the Peace Conference. Countdown Effect: Will the Enterprise reach the Peace Conference before the Bird of Prey discovers them?
  2. Then, the Bird of Prey finds them and attacks. The Enterprise crew has to somehow find this invisible ship and destroy it before it destroys them. Countdown Effect: Will the Enterprise defeat the Bird of Prey before it destroys them?
  3. Meanwhile, the Excelsior, captained by former Enterprise crew member Sulu, is racing for the Enterprise, to even the odds a bit. Countdown Effect: Will the Excelsior reach the Enterprise in time to aid them in combat?
  4. MEANWHILE, a Klingon (OR IS HE?) sniper sneaks upstairs at the Peace Conference and prepares to assassinate the Federation President. Countdown Effect: Will the Enterprise make it to the Conference in time to prevent the assassination (and, subsequently, prevent the dissolution of much-needed peace talks)?
  5. THEN, the Enterprise crew figures out how to reprogram a photon torpedo into basically a heat-seeking guided missile, to sniff out the unfindable Bird of Prey and (hopefully) destroy it. Countdown Effect: Will Spock and Dr. McCoy be able to reprogram the torpedo before the Bird of Prey destroys both the Enterprise and the Excelsior?

So, as you can see, we have FIVE different Countdown Effects overlapping and building upon one another to create one monumentally suspenseful and edge-of-your-seat finale. Granted, we all know that Captain Kirk & Co. ALWAYS save the day (just as the Enterprise is ALWAYS the only ship in the quadrant), but the point is not that we know they’ll save the day; the point is that we don’t know HOW it will happen, or if everyone will survive, or what level of destruction will occur in the meantime.

Basically, the Countdown Effect is an easy, fun way to transform our audience’s mindset from “Ah, I bet I know what’s gonna happen” to “Oh CRAP, how is this gonna work??”

If you have a fight or battle scene that’s troubling you, consider implementing some sort of Countdown Effect. How can you up the stakes for your characters by not only making them fight for their lives, but making them fight against a deadline?

Also, I must point out that, just as in last week’s scene from The Two Towers, this scene very effectively does the humor-in-the-face-of-certain-death thing. These people are about to get blown the crap up, but McCoy still takes the time to spout off wisecracks and poke friendly fun at Spock. And everyone loves a good Vulcan joke, amirite?

Thank you for reading my Writing Fight Scenes series! I hope it was helpful and, most importantly, entertaining.

Also, don’t forget to check out this great post by the lovely Susan Bischoff, which also addresses violence and fight scenes and all that good stuff, and how best to write them. Really interesting points in the comments!

Writing Fight Scenes With Movies: Part III – LOTR: The Two Towers

11 Apr

There is a lot of PUNCTUATION in that title.

In other news, today I’m (finally) continuing my series of posts about how watching fight scenes in movies can help us write fight scenes in our books. As I confessed previously, writing fight scenes is hard for me. I tend to get overwhelmed by all the individual elements that go into the scene instead of stepping back and focusing on the general. After all, audiences (well, most audiences, anyway) don’t want to hear a blow-by-blow description of who hit who where and how hard. They want to get caught up in the flow of the fight. They don’t want to have time to think about who’s hitting who, and with what technique, and all those little details. They just want to feel exhilarated; they want to be on the edge of their seats.

Watching fight scenes in movies helps me achieve this, and I think it could help you, too.

In the previous installments, I talked about Inception and The Matrix.

This week, I’m going to talk about Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Specifically, I’m going to talk about the Battle of Helm’s Deep, which, even after multiple viewings, never fails to give me goosebumps.

The thing I love most about this scene (besides the fact that there are ELVES and ARROWS and HOT NOBLE DUDES WITH SWORDS and it ends with A WIZARD CHARGING ON A MAGICAL HORSE) is its incredible depth.

Our fight scene here is not between one hero and one villain, but rather between one army and another army. Each army numbers in the thousands, and in our heroic army, we’re following the progress of not just one, but several characters: Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Haldir the Elf, Théoden the King, and Éowyn (who here is just chilling in the caves, but in the next movie kicks some serious arse).

This multi-character focus is pretty impossible on the page, unless we’re writing from multiple viewpoints (or, as Tolkien does with this exact scene, with an omniscient viewpoint, but I’m not going to discuss the omniscient perspective here, especially because I think it tends to make for aloof prose). But most likely, if we’re writing a huge battle scene, it isn’t spread across multiple viewpoints. Instead, it’s more likely that we’re focusing on the battle through the eyes of one character in particular.

So, how can we recreate that sense of motion that we experience when watching a battle onscreen, when we’re stuck with that rather static perspective?

In my opinion, the answer to this question is to keep that character constantly on the move.

In this scene from The Two Towers, we hop back and forth between Aragorn, who’s directing the Elven archers; Legolas and Gimli, who begin side-by-side and get separated; Théoden, who’s directing his forces from above; Éowyn, who’s taking care of the women and children below; and even the Uruk-hai, the villainous army. This head-hopping keeps the battle fresh; the scene is never the same for more than a few seconds, and we, as the audience, get to see what’s happening to all our favorite characters in the midst of this awful situation.

Of course, we can’t really head-hop like that in our writing, so we’ve got to make our characters move for us. Whichever of our characters is our window into this battle, we’ve got to make him/her as fluid as a film camera would be. We need to use him/her to take us through all this battle’s different areas, moods, and scenes, so that we can see the true depth and understand the true stakes of the conflict. We must give our POV character the mobility of a camera and the vision of a wide-angle lens.

If I were writing a battle scene like Helm’s Deep (and I am going to write many such battle scenes for several of my books), I would write from the perspective of my main character, and I would keep her on the move as often as logic permits. Obviously, she can’t be everywhere at once, but she needs to be written so that she can at least see most of what’s going on around her. Even if she can’t be with Aragorn and the Elven archers, she needs to pass through a vantage point from which she can pause and look at them, to remark on their progress to a compatriot, to think to herself that Aragorn is sure acting suspiciously kingly these days, to pray for the safety of the elderly man who shouldn’t be on the battlefield but was forced to fight anyway.

Then, she moves on to axe the heads off of Uruk-hai with Gimli, after which she stops at a rampart to signal to Théoden that they need some effing backup and to stop being so fatalistic about everything.

“I’m Théoden. I’m mopey. We’re all gonna die. Boo-hoo.”

Basically, we can’t allow ourselves to get so wrapped up in what’s happening to our POV character that we forget to show our readers what’s going on around this character.

Making our POV character as observant as possible during our battle scenes, and forcing him/her to cover as much ground as possible, allows our readers to gain a sense of just how chaotic and scary and layered the conflict is. This mobility also allows our nail-biting readers a chance to keep tabs on what’s happening to the characters they’ve come to know, and allows us to, if we insist on killing someone off MWAHAHA, give that person a proper, ONSCREEN death.

I’m looking GLARING at you, Rowling.

Other important things this battle scene does well:

  1. HUMOR – In the midst of all this bloodshed, Legolas and Gimli are comparing body counts and axing Uruk-hai in the groin. These moments are awesome both because they are accurate (even in the darkest of times, people crack jokes) and because they allow the audience a chance to breathe for a millisecond before OH CRAP THE NICE ELF DUDE DIED AGHHHH.
  2. WEAPONS – When in doubt, diversify your arsenal. In this scene, we’ve got bows and arrows, swords of all shapes and sizes, battle axes, battering rams, shields, spiked flails, wall-scaling ladders, and a GIANT BOMB that comes out of NOWHERE. Each new weapon we see ups the stakes and the oh-god-I-can’t-look factor, fraying our nerves and increasing our fear that not everyone’s gonna make it out of this scene alive.
  3. THE OH-NO-HE-DIDN’T FACTOR – Because every good battle scene needs a good OMG WHY DID HE SAY THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER SAY THAT moment, i.e., King Théoden forgetting he’s in the second part of a trilogy (i.e., the part of the trilogy in which EVERYTHING GOES WRONG) and proceeding to say: “WHAT, Saruman, this all you GOT? PSHHHHH. And they call you a WIZARD? …Oh. I should not have said that. OH DEAR GOD SOMEONE JUST BLEW THAT WALL RIGHT THE CRAP UP.”

Check out the Helm’s Deep battle scene on YouTube by clicking below:

Stay tuned for next week’s Fight Scenes installment, in which Klingons quote Shakespeare. Also, you can check out previous Fight Scenes posts here (about Inception) and here (about The Matrix).

Also, check out this great post by the lovely Susan Bischoff, which also addresses violence and fight scenes and all that good stuff, and how best to write them. Really interesting points in the comments!

Writing Fight Scenes With Movies: Part II – The Matrix

21 Mar

Today, I’m continuing my series of posts about how watching fight scenes in movies can help us write fight scenes in our books. As I confessed last week, writing fight scenes is hard for me. I tend to get overwhelmed by all the individual elements that go into the scene instead of stepping back and focusing on the general. After all, audiences (well, most audiences, anyway) don’t want to hear a blow-by-blow description of who hit who where and how hard. They want to get caught up in the flow of the fight. They don’t want to have time to think about who’s hitting who, and with what technique, and all those little details. They just want to feel exhilarated; they want to be on the edge of their seats.

Watching fight scenes in movies helps me achieve this, and I think it could help you, too.

The scene I picked for this week is from The Matrix. When it was released in 1999, this movie revolutionized a lot of things, especially in the visual/special effects arenas. But beyond all of that technical stuff, what it has in spades is a lot of really cool fight scenes.

This one, from close to the end of the movie, centers on our hero, Neo, facing off the primary villain, Agent Smith. The thing I really like about this fight scene is that it’s painful to watch. Most of the “beats” of this fight end with Neo crashing into a wall, spitting blood, or otherwise…not doing so great. He holds his own in spots, but mostly he’s, well, getting the crap kicked out of him.

This particular cut of the scene, which you can watch below, ends with Neo triumphing, but the scene ends before we see what really happened–not even a speeding train can get rid of Agent Smith. The fact that Neo went through this long, exhausting, debilitating fight and still didn’t get rid of his nemesis communicates a couple of really important things:

  1. This villain is hella powerful.
  2. This villain means business.
  3. This villain will not be conquered easily.
  4. The hero could lose.

That last one is the kicker: The hero could lose. It’s so important to include a scene or two, like this one, in which the hero displays his obvious talent and power, but still ends up the loser. Fight scenes can be used very effectively as tools to up the stakes, to drag our hero down into the dirt again and again. Making sure he gets the crap kicked out of him a few times–literally–ensures that his ultimate triumph will be that much more satisfying for our audience.

I mean, come on; who doesn’t still get chills when Neo goes all “The One” on Agent Smith with those bullets at the end? I know I do. But would I if it was the other way around, if Neo had successfully and heroically kicked the crap out of Agent Smith at every encounter?

No way.

Stay tuned for next week’s Fight Scenes installment, in which there are many Orcs. Also, you can check out last week’s Fight Scenes post, all about Inception, here.

Also, check out this great post by the lovely Susan Bischoff, which also addresses violence and fight scenes and all that good stuff, and how best to write them. Really interesting points in the comments!

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