Fight scenes are not my thing.

I’m a conversation writer. I can do repartee with the best of them, and Calder puts emotion and actions around it. So when our characters talk it’s a reasonable mix of talking versus description (we think anyway). Get them into a fight, however, and it’s a different story. We’re both hopeless at that.

Late last year we put Potion up on Authonomy*. Or rather, I convinced Calder that she should put it up and do all the work promoting it and monitoring other people’s stories, which she did under our planned pen-name, Rowan Dai.

We got some excellent feedback which helped us improve the story a lot. One particular criticism that came up again and again was that the fight scene didn’t work. The thing was, we knew that we had glossed over it, but until so many people pointed out the same thing we—I won’t say we couldn’t see it as a major problem, because we knew it was—but we ignored it, and sort of hoped it would go away.

As all writers know, bad writing doesn’t go away. You have to fix it. We worked at it, and worked at it, and worked at it.

It took a lot of work just to get from:

“Hieyah,” Van Wallah yelled, and he charged the elf.

Blade jumped across, grabbed Van Wallah’s vest.

Van Wallah tried to wriggle free. Couldn’t. “Get him, men,” he ordered, and while Tegan watched, horrified, his men converged on Alun.

River charged forward to save him, but two of Van Wallah’s men jumped River.

Blade clubbed Van Wallah with the hilt of his sword. Tegan heard the crack. The bandit went down. Blade then grabbed a stool and bounded into the fight. Summer was close behind.

Katarina hesitated, looking around for somewhere to put her wine. Finally she handed it to Tegan and joined the fight. Tegan put the wine on the window ledge and started gathering a spell.

Her friend had turned into an impressive fighter. Showy too, not like Blade and Alun, who dispatched two men each while Katarina fought hers. River and Summer fought one each as well, but not as easily. Tegan’s holding spell kept another four on the edge until a blast of hatred distorted the spell and they converged on the elf.

She rebuilt the spell and Blade picked them off one by one.

A quick fight. Less than two minutes …

Potion (Not So Simple After All) by Rowan Dai Draft 3

to:

“Hieyah,” Van Wallah yelled, and he charged the elf.

Blade jumped across, grabbed Van Wallah’s vest.

Van Wallah tried to wriggle free. Couldn’t. “Get him, men,” he ordered, and while Tegan watched, horrified, his men converged on Alun.

River charged forward to save him, but two of Van Wallah’s men jumped River.

Blade clubbed Van Wallah with the hilt of his sword. Tegan heard the crack. The bandit went down. Blade then grabbed a stool and bounded into the fight. Summer was close behind.

Alun scrambled out from under the huddle of Van Wallah’s men and jumped at the two men attacking River. He dragged them off, raised a fist to one, who went down. Another fist.

Another man down.

The huddle of men suddenly realised Alun was no longer there. They turned to find him.

Katarina hesitated, looking around for somewhere to put her wine. Finally she handed it to Tegan and joined the fight. Tegan put the wine on the window ledge.

Her friend had turned into an impressive fighter. Showy too.

What spell could she use? If she was alone and was attacked she would use fire or fear, but if she used them here they would work against her own side. Maybe a holding spell, but it would have to work on individuals. She started forming the words.

Katarina used her long legs as weapons. She fought dirty too. Tegan winced at one kick.

One of Van Wallah’s men pulled out a sword.

Tegan didn’t think. It was instinctive to call the weapon to her. All the other swords came too and Tegan dived under the bench as they rattled down where she had been sitting.
The man whose sword it was lunged for it. Tegan gabbled a quick holding spell. He froze mid-lunge.

Blade clubbed another man with his stool. The man went down. Beside another Tegan hadn’t seen fall. Blade clubbed another. The stool broke. He tossed the stool away and followed through with his fists.

Tegan crawled out from under the bench, started composing her spell again.

Another two men were down over where Alun was fighting.

Blade hit another hard enough to push him back. Tegan’s holding spell caught him.

“Behind you,” Tegan said, as another man attacked him from behind. She’d lost track of the others.

Blade dropped low, and pulled the attacker over his shoulders. The man went crashing into the pile of swords.

One man was down near Katarina, who was fighting another. River and Summer fought one each as well, but not as easily. Tegan’s holding spell kept another four on the edge until a blast of hatred distorted the spell and they converged on the elf.

Tegan pulled the spell back into place and Blade finished them off two-by-two, by cracking their heads together.

A quick fight. Less than two minutes …

Potion (Not So Simple After All) by Rowan Dai, Draft 5

Obviously, we still have a long way to go to fix up our fight scene. But after we changed even this much we noticed one thing. In the critiques that followed, no-one commented that the fight scene needed fixing.

 

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*I have seen a lot of writers ask about the value of Authonomy and lots of different answers from “It’s a sales job” to “absolutely brilliant” to “absolutely useless”. I’m definitely in the camp that says don’t expect to get published through it, but if you use it properly and work at it then it’s a great critique group. It helps not just with improving your own novel but also with seeing mistakes other people make. Analysing other writers’ work can really help you pinpoint the same mistakes in your own.  

It’s an old truism that if you hold onto your clothes long enough they will come back into fashion. They might be different colours, or made in different fabrics, but they’re still basically the same style.

You wouldn’t be seen wearing the ‘new’ fashions, of course, but your kids love them.

It’s the same with books.

If I had to pick a fashion in the science fiction world at the moment I’d say steampunk. If I had to pick a fashion in the fantasy world, I’d say urban fantasy. Werewolves and vampires reign supreme, and have done for so long now that we’re ready to move on to the next big thing.

When we first came up with the idea for Potion, high fantasy was at its peak (and yes, this story has taken a long time germinating). Epic journeys, heroes, quests and discovering new powers were the order of the day. By the time we had finished it, high fantasy was well and truly on the wane.

We put the novel onto Authonomy, and the reactions fell into three broad groups:

• Traditional fantasy readers who liked the story.
  This was a small group, and sometimes the comments were tempered with, “Despite that fact that this story (has elves, is done to death, etc.) …”
• Traditional fantasy readers who didn’t like the story.
  These were the people who were so over elves, journyes and bar-fights that they automatically hated it. There were quite a few more in this group.
• People who don’t traditonally read fantasy but enjoyed it anyway.

(There was also a fourth group, those people who flat out won’t read fantasy, but I’m not considering them here.)

I fall somewhere between the first and second groups. I read fantasy. Every time I pick up a fantasy novel I want it to be good, and I want it to be different. While I don’t mind a traditional fantasy, there are a lot of stories I pick up nowadays and don’t get that far into because I know the story. I’ve read it dozens of times before, in one guise or another, and I’m sick of it. It only needs one thing to keep me reading, mind you—a quirky or interesting character, something slightly new in the way the story is written, or even a new take on an old idea—but so many of these books are so similar they run together for me. That’s when I put the book down.

The second group took us to task for writing a traditional fantasy that wasn’t ‘traditional’. Our language is more modern, and faster paced than your traditional fantasy. Our writing style is fast, wheras many traditional fanstay novels are considerably slower. Even so, our story is probably as traditonal as they come—swordsman and mage hire on as bodyguards on a rescue mission. There’s lots of fighting, evil enchanters, magic, and so on.

It was the third group that really interested me. Their comments were almost all along the lines of, “I don’t normally read fantasy, but I like this.”

Their feedback reminded me of an agent’s comment on a query for a fantasy novel. (I think it was on Miss Snark’s now defunct blog, in the Crapometer series.) I read the query and thought, “No way, this story has been done to death”. The agent, however—who did not represent fantasy—said really positive things about it. “This idea sounds interesting, I like it,” and so on. I was surprised, and I have always remembered it because at the time it made me realise just how important it was to get an agent who knew the genre you wrote in.

Other than the fact that it tells us that we’re probably targetting our book to the wrong audience, I wonder if it means the next new fashion in fantasy will be a return to epic fantasy but without the heavy, Tolkeinesque language that characterised it in the past.

A lot of sites lately have talked about the Penguin and Amazon Breakthrough Novel and Authonomy. While I can’t speak for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel—there’s a good discussion about it on Nathan Bransford’s blog—I can talk about Authonomy, as both Calder and I have been on Authonomy since the start of the year.

This is how we did it, and what we hoped to get out of it.

There are two of us. We generally write together. We weren’t sure how two authors would go, so we decided that Calder would ‘own’ the book. We were in it not so much to get a book published by Harper Collins (although that would be a nice bonus, of course), but to garner feedback from readers. In particular, we wanted to see whether a story like Potion would still work, or whether it was so old hat (elves, a journey) that no-one wanted to read it.

We both registered as Authonomy users. I registered as myself, CabSav, while Calder registered under our pen name, Rowan Dai. It was an easy decision. She had a lot more time over January and February to devote to it. Plus, she’s more outgoing and enjoys the forum chats. (The author name doesn’t have to be the same as the users, but that’s the way we planned it. Even so, if we did it again she would use Calder.)

The book we put up was Potion, only on the forum we called it Not So Simple After All. Potion has always been a working title. We’re trying out Not So Simple, but we’re still not sure it’s the final title.

Calder has spent considerable time on the forums and reading other people’s novels. She probably won’t be able to do it for much longer, but for the moment she has been doing a lot of work.  It has been a really interesting marketing exercise. I recommend that everyone try it, just to see how much difference it makes by having a visible (and non-negative) presence makes.

One thing the commenters on Nathan Bransford’s blog said about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award was that they met a lot of really nice people. Other writers like themselves. It’s the same with Authonomy.  There are a lot of really nice people out there, and they all have the same interest as you. They’re all writing novels. How good is that?

The feedback we have got to date on Potion (Not So Simple After All) has been fantastic.  We have learned so much about where the problems are in the first few chapters. People have said the same sorts of things—in general—too many characters, certain spots are confusing, and so on. Not only have people said what doesn’t work for them, they have also offered suggestions as to how we might fix the problems.

In fact, it’s been so good we’re going to put Barrain up too. Just to see how we can improve it.

I have spent time on the Authonomy site lately.

When I first heard about Authonomy I wasn’t sure it would work. I’m still not convinced it will work long term, once the initial momentum dies down, but for the moment at least it’s doing a reasonable job of picking the better stories—sort of.

I imagine it would be somewhat like your average slush pile.

Authonomy is a Harper Collins site that allows writers to post part (minimum 10,000 words) or all of their novel and have other users vote on it. If the story garners enough votes it makes it into the top five for the month and someone at Harper Collins will pick it up, read it and, if they think it’s good enough, purchase it. I haven’t seen any purchases yet.

From my observations:

• Networking obviously helps. If you provide feedback on one person’s book they will usually reciprocate by looking at yours, so th emore active you are, the more likely you are to garner votes.
• In the stories I have read and commented on to date, there appears to be a reasonable level of responsible voting. That is, readers won’t vote for the book unless they feel it warrants attention. Harper Collins encourages this by ranking responsible voters higher. If you consistently pick good books (and better still, pick them early), your book gets to the top of the list faster.
• As you would expect, there is an enormous range of quality in the books placed on the site.
• There are some brilliant stories out there, but a lot of them really need another rewrite (or two) before one could say they were finished.
• The general level of writing is above beginner. These people (and I include myself in these people) are serious about writing, but they’re not quite there yet. Some of them are very close.
• There is some good writing out there—a small number of books are very close to publishable.

I have found in reading stories that the blurb is important. This would effectively be the pitch in a query letter and it does make a difference. And I usually also have a good idea by the third page whether or not I want to keep reading.