#writingadvice — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #writingadvice, aggregated by home.social.
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Short, skillful exercises that allow you to build a novel #amwriting #writingcommunity #writingadvice #writer #inventingreality www.amazon.com/Minutes-Your-B...
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How To Identify And Fix All The Places Where Telling - Or Exposition - Rears Up In Your Writing #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/194887234X
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How To Identify And Fix All The Places Where Telling - Or Exposition - Rears Up In Your Writing #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/194887234X
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How To Identify And Fix All The Places Where Telling - Or Exposition - Rears Up In Your Writing #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/194887234X
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How To Identify And Fix All The Places Where Telling - Or Exposition - Rears Up In Your Writing #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/194887234X
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How to Create Your Story's Characters #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/1948872404
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How to Create Your Story's Characters #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/1948872404
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How to Create Your Story's Characters #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/1948872404
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How to Create Your Story's Characters #writingadvice #writinglife #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity www.amazon.com/dp/1948872404
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Join Us In Italy in 2027!
Join us in Italy in the spring of 2027 for another week-long writing retreat, plus more from Writer's Digest!
The post Join Us In Italy in 2027! appeared first on Writer's Digest.
https://www.writersdigest.com/join-us-in-italy-in-2027#Resources #writingadvice #writingcompetition #writingretreat #writingretreat2027
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Join Us In Italy in 2027!
Join us in Italy in the spring of 2027 for another week-long writing retreat, plus more from Writer's Digest!
The post Join Us In Italy in 2027! appeared first on Writer's Digest.
https://www.writersdigest.com/join-us-in-italy-in-2027#Resources #writingadvice #writingcompetition #writingretreat #writingretreat2027
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Deep Third Deep Dive
Look at what sets deep third apart from other points of view, plus more from Writer's Digest!
The post Deep Third Deep Dive appeared first on Writer's Digest.
https://www.writersdigest.com/deep-third-deep-dive#Resources #POV #writingadvice #writingcompetition #WritingCourses
@indieauthors -
He's some #writingadvice: Writing a fight scene (and to a certain degree a sex scene) is not about describing the movement of limbs, jaws, and bodies. You are not writing choreography. You are writing about people who are attempting to do something with other people who have a totally different idea of the outcome they want.
First and foremost, describe what your POV sees, feels, hears, and if applicable tastes and smells. Blood has a distinctive ferric taste and smell, and no one appreciates the range of scent perceived having their nose mashed into a sweaty chest.
Remember there's propriosception. Humans or beasts move through space, making or missing contact, sweeping limbs, snapping nasal cartilage. Keep in mind the physics of launching oneself or limbs through space. Vectors. Momentum. Expected or unexpected trajectory changes.
Impacts on armor and flesh sound totally different. So does the whistle of sweeping swords, the hiss of javelins in the air, arrows springing from bows, or the metallic click of gun misfiring. If you plan to use armor or weapons, play with objects and fling them around for yourself, bashing and banging with abandon. Make your reader be there.
Contrary to Hollywood, a good hit can be fatal or knock an opponent down. Prizefighters make contact and defend well. Regular folk miss a lot, stumble, bounce off when they make glancing blows (which is most of the time), and have lots of trouble managing momentum. Defense often means taking damage like cracked bones, cut skin, or bruises; nothing is clean.
Damage always hurts, and different people have wildly different pain thresholds that have no relationship to gender. Expect screaming and crying, grunts and hysterical laughing. Or silence, painful and ominous. The bruises and bashes, along with torn clothing, will persist into subsequent scenes. A little blood goes a long way, and it doesn't take much to make it look like a horror scene. Worse, it is hard to clean on the spot, and really hard to hide. After just a few minutes, damage interferes with movement, the bounce in one's step, and makes further fighting more difficult and more dangerous.
On the highest level, there's the aspect of what the character thinks they are doing, admits that happened, and how they justify their choices of strategy or running/not running. Most people don't fight and don't want to; that's why it is what fascinates readers most: The why and the how? Is it fun? Or is the fighter deluding themself? What does the fighter fear: loss, the opponent, or weakness? Do they deride the other, making fun, or do they have a running horror movie playing in their head as they rocket toward dismemberment? Everyone has an opinion, and being able to effectively fight requires judgements that the reader should hear, will want to hear. Make them snarky or zen; just don't make them ordinary.
Describe judgements and opinions, feelings, more than any "move"—and certainly never name a move! Naming a move is like calling a milkshake a dessert, or worse, food—instead of a reward earmed as a child specifically for knocking down the quarterback to win the football game. Sticking with the sports theme, a good fight scene is what happened, the history it evokes, and the prize (cup or ring) that inspired the announcer go on and on about.
Physical description has a place, but eluding and implying by giving meaning is the key to greatness—for the fight scene or the sex scene. In both cases, it is animal. Aim for the book of poetry, primal or sublime, not the book of anatomy.
(Boost if you like to share it with others.)
#writing #fightscene #writinglife #character #battle #adventure #sf #scifi #mystery #action #fantasy
