Today I’m going to discuss a couple of prime culprits responsible for holding back writers from doing their best work. Most applicable to novice writers, but let’s walk through it and remind ourselves the wrong way of doing it.

The most effective story you ever write is the one you don’t write at all… the one you allow the story to write for you.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch touched on it when he said “Murder your darlings,” famously paraphrased years later by Stephen King, “Kill your darlings.” If refers to of course, having the objectivity to edit away the pieces of fiction you’re in love with, but really aren’t necessary for the narrative.

Ultimately, Quiller-Couch and King are talking about inflexibility; an unwillingness to change or compromise. And today I speak of it more generally than merely editing back parts of the narrative that don’t work… but rather, having the flexibility to write the pieces that do work, in the first place.

Approaching writing rigidly, with a distinct unwavering image in your mind, creates an environment where you’re trying to find (and often force) pieces to fit the puzzle.

Where as writing from a flexible mindset, allows the story to unfold, as you may here often, naturally or organically. Creating the puzzle as you go along, the story takes on a life of it’s own.

I always tell folks think of your job as a writer like a conductor of a symphony. It’s not your job to play every instrument, but to select the arrangement (choose what the story will express) and direct all the instruments toward that expression.

Article length: 3400 words (preview 800/wds)

In Fight Scenes that Resonate I break down a half-dozen basic considerations for scripting effective fight scenes.

Welcome to the Pro class where we go “a bit” further and break down, the ultimate fight (or battle) scene. In truth, it would be more accurate to call it the complete fight scene or narrative fight mechanics–I took a little creative liberty with the title.

Every fight scene can be measured on a scale, with one end delivering a complete, engaging narrative and the other delivering and incomplete or non-existant narrative.

Below are the narrative fight mechanics for a complete fight scene. I recommend building out as much as you can into the main fight of your issue. Though in a perfect world, you will also apply as much as you can to each and every fight in the story (discussed more shortly).

First, let’s define what a fight (or battle) is.

Fight: A violent struggle involving the exchange of physical blows or the use of weapons.

Easy peasy.

The Struggle is Real

Notice that by definition, a fight is a struggle–a pursuit of a goal through violence. If you reach (or are definitively denied) the goal right off, there is no struggle.

Watch any boxing match where the boxers come out at the bell, one throws a punch and the other is knocked out, and you’ll immediately feel robbed. “Hell, that wasn’t a fight!” But in contrast, watch those fighters go back and forth, watch the outcome teeter between the two, watch them earn it, and you’ll have a satisfying, engaging fight.

This begs the immediate question, how long does the struggle need to be?

For all intents and purposes, we can look at the struggle as the second act of the story–we’ll talk more on this in a second–so, just as you would not want a lopsided, out of balance act structure for your overall story, the same goes for the fight. As the second act, the struggle is larger portion and backbone of the fight, consisting of the most panels.

You can imply struggle with one panel, especially when supported by dialogue. Think of Thor holding the Hulk, “By Odin, I’ve never encountered such strength! Can’t… hold him… much longer.”

However, one panel gives no visual comparison of the struggle. So while we understand the one panel struggle logically, we don’t see it and feel it viscerally.

Two panels is better. It allows us to convey distinct change. Picture an extreme close up of Thor and Hulk’s arms, locked in an arm wrestling match. The first panel shows the arms upright, Hulk bending Thor’s hand back slightly. Let’s add the same dialogue, “By Odin, I’ve never encountered such strength! Can’t… hold him… much longer.” In the next panel, Thor’s hand hovers just an inch above the table. WE SEE THE STRUGGLE. We’re there in the moment, experiencing it as it unfolds.

Three panels is even better.

Arriving at our magic number of three, three panels allows us to break the struggle into a distinct ‘core narrative structure’, beginning, middle and end–introduction, complication, resolution. In turn this allows us to capture even more dramatic change and clearly, effectively express the struggle.

Of course, this 3 panel breakdown is really a minimum.

The best fight scenes have complex struggles, limited only by your imagination, skill as a writer,  narrative needs and to some extent, space.

* Running Panel Count: Focusing on minimums (to give us a benchmark), that puts us at 3 panels for the struggle–but we’re not finished with the struggle just yet:

We're just getting started building out the ultimate fight scene. Actions and consequences, complete fight structure, the role of tension, tri-turns and other key turns, incomplete fights and raw acts of violence are all in the discussion. Slam a Red Bull and hit the full access page! Ready?... FIGHT!

Article length: 1,860 words (preview 553/wds)

Ok, so you’ve got a futuristic, dystopic, anime-inspired, story idea for a script, with male and female MC leads… They start off cold towards each other and eventually fall in love with one another. You’ve got that much and the overall concept in your head, so you figure you can get to writing.

Lots of folks take this approach.

If you’re a bit more organized, you may even throw together a spiffy comprehensive outline and nail down a few specific scenes that capture the relationship.

But what if you’re not exactly sure how it needs to play out… what if you’re having trouble developing this love arc when you sit down to write the outline?

This is where handy dandy throughlines can really help organize and pull together a story.

If you’ve read Storycraft For Comics, you’re familiar with the term Throughline;

“Throughline is originally a theater term developed to give actors a broader understanding of their motivation at any given moment in a performance… not just looking at the present moment, but looking at the decisions and materials that lead to the moment, and the repercussions afterwards.”

In essence a throughline is a mini-outline.

A closer look at a specific element, tracking its changes over the course of the entire story.

At its most fundamental level it consists of a beginning and end, but since it always benefits from something happening in-between to showcase (or lead the reader through) the transformation, we through in a middle as well, reminiscent of classic three-act structure.

(As it turns out, I used this story setup above as the sample story in Storycraft, so I’ll run with the concept here.)

To capture the core of our love interest I might jot down;

* Kai and Molly hate each other.

* Kai and Molly warm up to each other.

* Kai and Molly openly confess their love for one another.

Notice that all three of these throughline beats are non-specific. Kai and Molly hating each other could be expressed in a million different ways. When a throughline beat is general direction I bold them in my bulleted list, as they often become a heading, with more specific, expressive beats supporting them immediately below it (more on that in a second).

Sometimes inspiration will come at you generalized like this, other times, it will come more specific:

* Molly tries to arrest Kai, the two have a knock down, drag out fight.

* Kai and Molly share noodles with one pair of chopsticks realizing they have more in common than they originally thought.

* Kai gives up his chance for freedom and riches and faces certain death to save Molly from the killer robot.

Generalized beats help define the bigger picture and give overall direction.

Specific beats express that bigger picture and give distinct points to build toward (or away from).

Though ultimately in the script everything will be expressed specifically, both types of beats are good for throughlines. Having a three part generalized throughline, is better than having no throughline at all…

Of course, the most effective throughlines will have more than a basic beginning, middle and end… In theory a throughline can have as many beats as it needs, as long as they all serve the narrative. Let’s take another look at our love arc here:

// The full breakdown of the Robot Kids example follows, showing you first-hand how to implement throughlines in your work. I also discuss using throughlines to pace your narrative. Hit the full access page to join up and read the rest of the article!  //

In the Working Writer’s Guide to Comics and Graphic Novels I have a section dedicated to pacing. I cover the basics there, discussing the relevancy of panel counts, word counts and the content itself. One of the things I didn’t discuss is the more advanced concept of Decompression vs. Compression.

Whether or not you’re familiar with these two terms, if you’ve written any comics, you’ve already been implementing them.

As comics are not a complete look at an entire narrative, but rather glimpses of the most important (and hopefully entertaining) parts, comic scripting at its heart IS compression. Taking ten pounds of story and stuffing it into a one pound container.

Let’s look at the following scene breakdowns (not panel breakdowns).

Scene 1:

Our cop hero is transporting a criminal. The criminal gets loose in the back and has a wicked fight with our hero. The car crashes, the fight continues outside. Our hero gets splattered with acid, burnt with a flame thrower and his clothes are mostly torn from his body, before the criminal escapes.

Scene 2: Our hero now cleaned up and bandaged, walks into his captain’s office where he’s quickly chewed out for screwing up big time.

There are distinct visual changes between the scenes. Our hero is no longer covered in acid (it must have been washed off somewhere). He secured bandages and applied them to his burns. And found (bought, stole or by some other means procured) a change of clothes. None of which is shown to the reader. The reader (who’s paying attention) knows this all happened because the elements have visually changed. From scene 1, to scene 2, the story’s been compressed.

Technically, any time you condense story you’re compressing and anytime you lengthen story you’re decompressing.

Think of it as a sliding scale with compression at one end and decompression at the other. When you’re in the middle, creating “standard scenes”—3-5 pages, 3-5 panels per page (see the Scene Sizes article) you’re writing is balanced. Creating shorter scenes pushes you over toward the compression end, whereas, longer scenes send you over to the decompression side.

Pacing in a comic is NOT governed by one aspect alone and content has a lot to do with it. But as a very general rule, we can say, Compression speeds up, Decompression slows.

Closer to the ends of the scale, in the more extreme cases, there are some specific situations we can recognize and pay attention to.