Another day, another battle scene 6/22/2004 7:33:32 PM
So I'm thinking I'm going to use this as my "trainer" blog. So far only 12 people have looked at it (and I think 3 of those were me), so even if I slip up and spill those blistering secrets the White House asked me to keep "in the black," I figure, what the hey?
WRiting a book--perhaps any book, but especially a novel--is like selling your soul. You just have to give everything you've got to it, nothing held back, nothing in reserve. What did that one writer say? Oh yeah. Writing is easy...all you have to do is pull up a chair to the computer and slit open your veins.
Hardy har har.
So today I slit my veins over a battle scene--big beasties, screaming enemies, dark lords, power power power flinging about madly everywhere, and in the center of the maelstrom my main character gasps, all fazed and dumbfounded. Perhaps even a tad flummoxed. No, okay, very flummoxed. Anywho, I'm seeing the whole thing through the main character's eyes and, him being all very flummoxed and fazed and such, he's not being particularly attentive to ALL that's going on. But some of that stuff I (meaning I, the author, lord of the book allegedly) need to tell the readers about. So how do you get a character to notice everything? Well, let me tell ya. You don't. Unless the character is God. Which, in my case, he is not.
It's really not all that horrible, actually. I mean, I realize the reader is living the event through the character's eyes just as I am. So the important thing--the real important thing--is staying with the moment. That's where the life is, for both the character and the reader.
Now that I think about it, that sounds like great advice for all of us.
