Between the Lines "Write Fights Scenes" with Christine Haggerty

This episode is part of a series of book discussions on the art and craft of storytelling called “Between the Lines.”

Show Notes:

Special Guest:
Christine Haggerty, author and black belt, loves to create and share stories of strength and survival. Visit her author page on Amazon, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook. From the back cover of the book, "Christine Haggerty has a B.S. in Secondary Education and over fourteen years experience teaching both language arts and traditional karate. She is an expert in both writing and fighting and combines her expertise in these fields to bring you an effective guide on action scenes. She is also an award-winning author of dystopian and dark fantasy fiction and loves to spin fire on the weekends."

Key points from her book and our discussion:
Assess your audience
If you are including a fight/action scene, you are writing genre fiction, NOT literary fiction
Prewrite, this should probably also involve pictures and toys and maybe some movies or video games
Consider the amount of training and experience your character has, what is their relationship with violence?
"The point of the set-up is to create context for the fight so that the actual fight can be written as nothing but a nitty gritty sequence of action measure in heartbeats."
Emotional fallout is the point of a fight scene in a story.  How does this situation affect your characters?

Chapters
10:00 AJ Scudiere and the Author’s Combat Academy
15:03 customizing for the Young Adult and Romance novel genres
17:27 fight scenes v. action scenes
19:29 5 moves and John Wick and Ant Man and the Wasp
21:39 write according to the laws of physics, then add magic
24:19 accessibility and flare
25:22 character blocking and measuring it out
29:35 favorite fight scene that she’s ever written
35:04 from one character’s point of view
35:42 Adrenaline
42:18 emotional fallout
52:03 why readers like fight scenes so much
53:27 primal and universal

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

So I'm Christine Heggerty, I'm going back to my maiden name of Nielsen like next week officially. So, um, but all my current publications are under Christine Haggerty. I was, so I kind of had my professional start as a TA, a teacher at a private boarding school and I taught English and karate. That's a fun combination. Yeah. So writing and fighting was how I spent my day. So I um, and I did that for 15 years. And then in addition to that, I was also the principal of the school. What's your dog's name at CC? I don't know if CC was a nickname or just knowing she was named Coco when we got her in. It sounded too much like no, no. So, okay. We just shortened it to CC. Just the letters. Sorry. Back to writing. Yes. Back to writing and fighting. So, um, yeah, so I did that for 15 years and near the end of that career I, I'd always had a passion for writing. And it was just coming to the point with the internet that online writing community communities were becoming a thing. And I lived in Roosevelt, Utah, which is super rural and you know, very remote and didn't have the neighbor within five miles. So I joined an online writing community cause my kids were getting old enough that I kind of had time to do that, to do a little bit of writing, some shorter pieces. And it was called author stand and this was old school dial up internet kind of days. And the, the story that I submitted just just signing up for the community turn, like I didn't realize I had also entered it into the writing contest. Like they just kind of had a standing writing. Yeah. So I got, I won editor's choice. Nice.$250 yeah. So I was just like, Holy cow, maybe it's time to give this like a legitimate try. So that's how that started. So when I moved here to the Hebrew Valley, I got to do writing groups in person with people local. There was one that met at like a bookstore down in midway. And that's how I connected with my first publisher who found me and just said, Hey, you're really good. Do you have like novels you're going to write? So I actually had a publisher before I'd written my first novel. This sounds a little too, which me know, I know a lot of people are like, we're so jealous. So until recently when I've taken on my own, so I've had three different publishers and um, everything else I've written was commissioned. So I've never had anything that I wrote that I, I tried to shop out without already having a publisher. So I had, I even had a story that I submitted to Joshua. Bill miss, who is Brandon Sanderson's agent. I met him in person at gen con and we had, um, some, some good conversation. So I submitted that to him and he didn't pick it up. He said that his, um, assistant had left the agency, so he was not taking on any new authors, which is whatever. I had a chance for him to take a look at it. And that's Lucas and the house of lies, the middle grade horror. So I've, I had had a very, it, I can look at it two ways. It's, I've been extremely fortunate that everything I've written has had a home before it was ever done. So I don't have anything floating around that I've tried to get published or tried to have someone pick up. Um, and the second part of it is I, I also don't have anything sitting around. Like I don't have this backlog of like, I feel like I'm always behind because everything I've written is published. Yeah. So then I've kind of taken a step back the last couple of years to try and get some writing built up before I publish it. Publish it again. Do you, is that just because you, you want like, I don't know, that feeling of I'm ahead of the game or because you're just, um, a couple of reasons. One, I want to have a series come out that I can actually tell my fans when the next book is coming. There's a, there's kind of an unspoken contract between an author and the readers and, and the contract on the author side is I will get you the next book in the series in a timely way. I won't make, right. I'm not going to be George RR Martin. Yes. So he broke that contract. Right. And everybody's kind of heartbroken about the fact that he didn't really keep up with the F the expectations of the fans. And then the ones like, I mean that's a good problem to have I guess where people want, you're writing more than you're able to put it out. Yeah. But there was kind of, I mean that's kind of a promise that you make a reader with. If you start a book, if you put, if you publish a book that's part of a series, you're committing to writing the rest of it and if you don't put it, you know, if you don't produce in a timely way, you kind of break a promise. So I'm, I'm trying to be a little more organized about that so that I don't have to break that promise with, and I will finish all the series that I've started. I've spent a little crazy the last couple of years, so I am kinda just getting caught back up to having like regular writing time and, and everything. When you first started writing, um, you said your kids got a little bit older, like when did that time occur for you? Was it when they went to bed? Was it when they were at school? Like, you know, I, I never thought of myself as a morning person, but it, it turned out to be getting up at, you know, five 30 in the morning and having about an hour and a half every day. It really turned into writing everyday no matter when that was. But for me when they were going to school, cause my two oldest are out of the house and then I just had my daughter who's pretty independent even at 11. Um, so now it's easy. I have all the, all the time I could ever want to write in, in a lot of ways. But um, at that time in particular it, it turned out to be getting up at five 30 in the morning and writing for about an hour and a half before I had to wake them up and get them ready for school to get the bus to catch the bus. So you became a morning person. I did. And I'm super not a morning person, but it's interesting because I discovered that still actually works for me. If I get up and I start writing before my brain kicks in, I just, I kinda hit that flow and it's an actually, it's a very productive time of day, which is surprising to me. Yeah. But I'm going to give that a try and see if I can find flow before my brain wakes up. Yeah. So it the opposite. I think a lot of people do right after the kids go to bed. Yeah. But I found that, um, yeah, it was just, I was tired and in the morning I, I don't know that the editor hadn't kicked in yet. You know, like he didn't filter yourself. Yeah. So it was a little bit easier. I liked that idea at home. A little more flow. Talk to me about being a rental Ninja. I mean, I read, I read this in how to write fight scenes, but I really wish I need to kind of look at making that just a regular gigs. So I was, um, I wrote some part of writing and fighting, you know, back when to become an author, you had to have a blog and that was the way to reach your readers. Everybody said you want, you want to sell books, you have to blog. So in they tell you everything and really you just have to find what works for you. But, so I was like trying to be a faithful blogger and I wrote an article on how to write fight scenes and it was broken down. So I taught writing for years. It was high school, so you know, essay structure, all that very natural to me. And I was like, you know, writing, fight scenes have a structure. So I wrote an article on how to write fight scenes on my blog and it got around on the internet. It was on, I don't even know the places that it went. Like I hadn't even heard of Reddit. And somebody is like, I found this on Reddit. And I was like, I don't even know what Reddit is. And, Hey, so there's a gal, Eli, um, I'm trying to remember her last name now. I could look it up. She just got married, so she has a new last name anyway. Um, but her sister is a pretty, um, prolific thriller writer. Her name is Aja studio if you want to look her up. But anyway, so they together their concept, it was called the authors combat Academy and the concept was to teach T it was a little, it was a conference, but it was very specifically centered around um, like fighting and forensic science. Like how to dissect the murder scene. So they had detectives and cops and professionals in those areas kind of break down the information for writers to pick it up to be realistic. So because of my background in karate, cause, um, Eli's background is in, uh, a style very similar. So I do a traditional Japanese style called Shota con and they, they, she trained in a style very similar to show, to kind of like a sister style. Okay. So she said, Hey, do you want to come to Nashville to the author's combat Academy? And authors could pay, you know,$20 an hour or whatever to rent you to go through their fight scene and help them kind of perfect the physics or the the too. She's got a bike at the people, pass them back$20 an hour to rent to you. So I was, yeah, I was a rental n***a and I got to work with a couple of other cool people from their dojo. So what Eli had started to do was her, she would bring her sister into her dojo with a fight scene and the karate students would go through the scene for her and she could video the scene on her phone so that she could later describe like the sequence of action and the blocking and all that stuff. So she would, she would say like, okay, I think I want you to like punch this. You punch and then you kick. And then, yeah, you know, authors, I am not sure how Aja did it because I never did a scene for her. I did do a scene for Sherrilyn Kenyon who writes the books about Nick. I'm kind of a demon, a little bit in the vein of the shadow hunters kind of thing. Nick is like a demon half demon character. So Sherrilyn Kenyon, I did a scene for her. Um, couple of funny enough high-end romance authors came in to help with some action scenes, but um, they, they bring the scene and there, there are varying degrees of the detail that they already have figured out in the scene. Sure. So some of them are like, I have these two characters. This is what they're like, I need this one to win or I need it to kind of end up here. Or there was one where there was, um, there had been a kidnapping and they, they had, the bad guy had dragged a girl by her hair down into this lower portion of one of them museums in, or the, almost like an architectural dig in Italy where this lady had been. So she showed us the space on her phone and kind of mapped it out on the floor and just like, but from there to the end of the fight, she had nothing. Like, I don't know what this would look like. So you spend time with the author, not just going over the scene but like well what are the backgrounds of the characters? Did they have any fighting experience? Um, what are their moods or attitudes, what's at stake? And you kind of put the scene together and just working with another person and maybe some prompts depending on what space they have you in a, you go through like just the motions. Like if if somebody came at, we meet with a punch, like what weapons are around that I have access to? Did you put it in the scene that I, you know, can I pick it up and hit him with it? Did I pick it up knowing that there was going to be a fight and I got prepared. My like you process and so you process a lot of that. So most of the time we weren't even fighting or acting anything out. We were going through this kind of question. Yeah. Sequence with the author, like all these things that they still needed to figure out or, and they're like, Oh, I hadn't thought of that or whatever. And yeah, so that a lot of being a rental Ninja was just kind of talking the author through the sequence of events. Then we would act it out and they got to, they could video that the see the action on their phone or whatever they had and then take it home and they had that reference. I thought that in part we were writing seem so fun. It's a lot of fun. Then we had knives and fake guns and we got to borrow people if we needed, you know, different size humans involved. So it was, I did it for two years in a row and then due to attendance they kind of put it on pause. So I'm hoping it's revived but it's been a few years and they haven't done one. Again, I want to go back to, you said about some high end romance novelist because in right fight scenes you say that like look and in a romance genre it doesn't really matter the fight. So, except for, because the audience is not invested, the audience of a romance novel doesn't want the play by play of a fight. So the romance authors who had a fight scene, a lot of it, there was one situation where it really, it turned into comedy because it was more like he didn't, nobody needed to be to, to get beat up, but they needed to feel foolish or be very obviously the bad, you know, like you think about, um, a lot of the scenes of beauty and the beast with the ASCO gassed on it's character, character revealing. But there's not really a lot of actual aggressive interaction. Yeah. But he, but he's very obviously like a physical guy. He would get in a fight and then then the, the actual main scene isn't until the very end and that that is a fight team. Yeah. Um, so it's kind of that concept. So some of that is a lot of working with those authors is processing like, what is it your audience expects and what does the story need? Um, it's kinda the same with a lot of young adult novels where I probably one of my favorite scenes ever was where there was a, uh, a guy who was writing a scene where there was the main character, a teenager, a teenage boy was fighting a very large man in a Tavern. Right? So you think of the space, all the furniture, all the people[inaudible] yeah, the cups. I love Lincoln wins the size difference, all that. And what we turned it into was, well, if I'm that small, I'm going to be more agile. And if it's a young adult level, the job of the main characters is to make all the adults look stupid, right? Because the teenagers are the heroes. So he ended up pulling the guy's pants down and just kind of evading him more than there was an actual fight, if that makes sense. Yeah. So you, you do have, there's, there's a lot of ways to customize, um, what, you know, could technically be called a fight scene for a specific genre. So what, what does it have to be for you to call it a fight scene? You know what, honestly, um, I would call it an action scene more than I would call it a fight scene. Cause a lot of what's involved with sequencing and character blocking. Okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, and most of it, you know, if you be referenced, the book, two thirds of it is set up the fights really a pretty small part because what's going on around the context of the fight is what is important to the story. Um, but I've read some books where the fight, because of my background, I'm, I made the fight scenes pretty substantial and people who didn't know anything about fighting and kind of glossed over them because it didn't matter where you came up with the idea that like see you can do it in five moves.

Speaker 2: 17:50

Yeah. Well, but that's also real. Like if you, if you are in a fight, they don't, you can even watch John wick. Like consider how many boobs super loud. Right. Well military for three days. What's, what's going on at cheaper than you guys military helicopters. But it's massive, right? Flying really low and it's been all over the Valley for the last three days. So I don't know what they're doing with it. Like some secret manhunt that they're not willing to be cool signs or something. I don't know. Maybe they found aliens that would be even better. I feel like if you're going to find aliens in Utah, that Hebrew is not where I anticipate that happening. And maybe that's what makes it interesting, but maybe, maybe that's where

Speaker 1: 18:45

are they? That's why they show up. There's plenty of space. Then they can hide a ship in the mountains and it would take us to take us forever to find them. Hey, would just come and blend in. Just blend. Okay. So take me back to five moves cause so five moves. So, so watch, if you watch a movie like John wick, um, watch how many, like just count the number of mood in every interaction that he has with a single opponent. When, when there's actual engagement, it's only one or two moves. One, if he, if, and that's determined by, um, a balance or imbalance in the skill set of the characters. Sure. Right. So the more equal they are, the longer and the longer the last and the more of a skill set or, or, um, it has, it's more than skill set. There's a lot of factors involved, but the, the larger the gap between the two, the shorter it'll be somebody's just gonna win. Yeah. Um, so F five moves, it just, if you start watching fight scenes, if they're longer than five moves, like if you count the number of moves I watched, what did I watch just recently was one of the, we watched, um, at man and the wasp. Oh yeah. So watching ghost and some of the fights with those characters, um, you could count the number of interactions and then typically there was a retreat. Yeah. There's nobody, it was like we're too evenly matched. The only way for this to end is to go, okay. I mean, five, five moves would be a gauge. Some of the movies that are all based on action, it's more gymnastics than fighting some of it or whatever. Like it's still fun to watch, but it's not very realistic in an actual fight. Yeah. So there's, I kind of argue for realism because I know I'm watching like, you know, Cirque de Solei when they start doing backflips to kick someone, it's like, okay, really I don't, I don't know how often you'd actually see that anywhere. It's too much effort for the same end result a little bit. And you think about the space that they're trying to backflip in. Like what? I don't know. That's all. That's definitely for show realism. I liked this piece of advice that you give in, right? Fight scenes where you say, okay, write it out realistically according to the laws of physics on this planet. Right. And then if you want to add magic or levitation or whatever, then do it. How, how did you come to that? Um, some of it was from actually working through fight scenes that involve aliens on spaceships and I've worked out fight scenes that involved angels that had certain powers and it's like, well, if they can fly, why don't they just fly off? So then you have to give them an injury that keeps them on the ground, like things like that. But the reason that you would write it according to the physics of earth is because your audience, that's all they're going to understand. So if you're going to bring in like I'm an alien planet physics system, you're going to have to do a massive amount of world building just for that to make sense to your audience within that context. Yeah. Cause right in the middle of throwing the punch, it's not the time to be like, and by the way, gravity is only[inaudible] in here. Yeah. It's a very, so that's always something to consider. Um, and if you read your fantasy and scifi books, they, uh, they're basically based on some version of earth or a spaceship whose, um, you've got RF environment is created to mimic earth. So it's just, it's who you're communicating with. So if your fan base is aliens, you, you know, and you want to make up an entirely different

Speaker 2: 22:41

world with different laws of physics. Like, go for it. He's back. Sorry.[inaudible] it doesn't seem quite as loud though. It's flying higher. Just not directly over us yet. Probably not on there yet. Yeah,

Speaker 1: 23:06

the block. It's like a black Hawk or something. It's a massive black helicopter like it is big and loud. Yeah. And they're flying really low. So I am a little bit curious about what's going on, what they're doing here. Taking off from, I dunno if he's coming all the way from what Dugway or whatever. I don't know if they're[inaudible] who knows. Sorry, I've got, you know, I feel like I should feel my posts on Facebook and like what was happening. Anybody have Intel? Yeah. Watch my Facebook account. Get shut down by the CIA or something. We flew over to Hebrew cause we didn't expect you all to just post violates Facebook community. Yes. A helicopter. Okay. So writing it, writing it according to like what your reader understands, right. You're partly just, you're writing to an audience. Somebody else has to read it and understand what you're talking. The thing about, so it's, it's about reader accessibility. Like you need to make the scene accessible to your readers and so following the laws of physics on earth to start with and then adding in the flair, that's your best chance. I think of of reaching the greatest number of readers. I like the use of the word flare. I was thinking this is like icing on the top. It kind of is. It's I re yeah, it's definitely icing because fighting is still fighting. Gravity is still gravity. Whether or not there's magic, I'm aggressively doing something to you and defending or, well in physics are physics. You know, you weigh at some amount, you have X amount of force. You, there's a nurse, Shia, there's um, it's science, it's science. It really truly is science. And I really believe in finding, you know, space to block out the scene. If you're not sure how far to describe something, you know, how far apart do they start? If anybody, you know, does any pistol shooting? You know what, if you're pulling out your pistol, they're only 20, 15, 20 feet away, how will, how far is it 50 20 feet? Well, it's way too far to punch somebody. It's really close to shoot somebody like that almost feels too close to shoot to shoot somebody. But, um, so, but do you know how far 15 feet is? And amazingly enough, a lot of people have no idea how, how, what that distance looks and feels like you say pistols and I instantly think of like that iconic idea of a cowboy right in the middle of that deserted street. Yeah. Everyone's hiding in the saloon and those shots cinematically, to me, they always feel so far away. Right, right. But no, that's not 15 feet. Right. It depends if they're shooting well in different, different weapons have different distances. Sure. Of accurate. Like so that part of that's a choice. But they always like what they take, like how many paces, 10 paces away from each other or something. And so they're like, that would be these two, 10 20[inaudible]. It's probably about 30 feet right from each other. So they have a greater chance of missing cause of your shooting. Accuracy would be different. But another, another detail about physics is missing is missing. If you, you can miss something by a tiny, tiny bit, but you still miss it, whether it's by that little bit or by a watt. So angles, a lot of geometry involved. That's why it's like get, get out of your little basement writing, you know, your little writing cave door outside, measure it out, get some friends. Um, get some Nerf guns, Nerf guns. I if I, if I need to, you know, you could people who like to do any kind of D and D if you have to map that out and you can kind of gauge ratios, usually little DMD figures or your Lego figures in it to kind of give yourself some scale for the scene and, and positioning and character blocking. And um, I and I argue that the more characters you have involved in the scene, um, obviously the longer it is, but I think the more critical it is to like find a way to kind of stage that in a 3d keep track of your people, keep track of your people because it, I, I have a person, I have enough spacial orientation, um, from my own training that if, if something doesn't[inaudible] okay. If the author doesn't track something correctly in the scene, I will notice. How did Steve get over here? He was over there. And where did he come from? Yeah, a what happened in between or you know, he was this far away. It took, it should have taken him way longer or there is no way, you know, to get to point B or what route did he take? Cause there's nowhere else to go. Didn't fly this, this guy suddenly like anyway, Steve teleport. Yeah, those details there is good. We should name it. Okay. Part heart. The helicopter. Yes. Yes. Maybe fuck yeah, maybe they're doing something for the high school. I doubt it. I have no idea what that is. But it's dif, it's Def. It's different. Yeah. I've never seen it before. This is not normal, right? We can, I mean you see them practicing in the Plains, we get formations over us and things like that. Like that's kind of normal. But this is very not normal. Huh? Very abnormal. To have that helicopter flying like it is over the Valley. I think it's exciting. So I just want to take a ride. I get down here heart because of food. I know. Maybe they're doing two hours like hot air balloon. Yeah. Like hot air balloon rides until it's helicopter season. Yeah, I would totally go. Yeah. Tell me about one of your favorite fight scenes you've ever written. So my very first series, um, the one I wrote for the guy who just found me in that writing group, it's a dystopian, and I, I'm going to take it kind of back and rewrite it and do it justice because I've discovered I'm not a young adult writer, I'm really an adult writer. So was that a young adult? So it was my, it was an attempt at young adult dystopian. Um, and the premise was kind of, it's kind of a futuristic mashup of like the black plague and the children's crusade and some other like those kinds of things for in the gladiator, Spartacus for history. So if you mash all those together and you put them in the future, that was kind of what I have. So these are bio engineer, it's with a bio engineer plague. And you either died from it, you just became immune, or you became kind of a mutant superhuman. So there's this, the, there are these mutants and they're kind of, there are few enough people left on earth that they are collecting them and kind of trying to bring them into one place where I'm sitting and survived. Yeah. Okay. Well obviously there's some big dark plot and dah, dah, dah. But anyways, so there's, so I ha, I created this gladiator arena and it's, which is the hunger games. All of that is a recreation of the gladiator arena from Rome. So you've, you put these there, they're divided in these, they're taken over to this city called salvation. They're tr sort of trained. Um, so the main character, they're divided into houses and they compete for the, ha ha, the head ha, whoever wins gets to kind of rule salvation for a year. So they, they get to be in charge. But there was one. So my oldest, like I mentioned before we started, he did theater tech and I've created this very in, it's almost like they're in a horror Funhouse in the arena, fighting at night, trying to find and defeat each other and picturing it is kind of like more underground rather than this open kind of fighting type of arena. More like thinking like, well there was an underground, they created a maze. So each, each house, there are nine houses of salvation in each house, gets to create a, um, I want not a game board. Like I went to death traps. Yeah. So this, I forget which house did it for this one, but they had like the, they made the fog, um, the smoke or whatever. So I had, my son helped me with kind of all the special effects for this, but it turns into be this like sort of almost like they're in a horror Funhouse trying to find each other and, and fight each other. But they, they go in with no weapons and they have to kind of find them and salvage them and they have to get through these, whatever. So there are some, it's, it's interesting that this is my favorite one because the, the interactions are very brief and then they kind of disappear because it's almost like you're not sure if they're real or if you're whatever. And then they all start hallucinating just from the stressors that are like something in the, there's something in the fog which there should not have been. So that's like, you know, but anyway, yeah, they start hallucinating and they're all kind of living out there, their worst nightmares. So there's some times fighting something real and sometimes fighting something that's just in their head. But psychologically it's same stuff. It's all the same. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know, that was my favorite one. It's not even between like two characters necessarily, but it's somewhat against the character in their worst fear. So did you lay that out with action figures? Like how did you prep writing that? I like Legos. Um, I, I drew, I have, I could almost get them out, but I have actually done a lot. I had a lot, I'd researched the arena in Italy and it wasn't in Rome. It was um, starts with an N Naples I think. Anyway, where the was the hub of that gladiator culture. And I researched the way the arenas were because they kind of rebuilt one. But then what I did was I made it the one of the main soccer arenas, so I modernize it a little bit, but then they had built structures around it to kind of mimic it. But I was, it was a lot of drawing, sketching, Legos, um, for the character blocking. Legos are hands down my favorite. I have more than Legos though. I have little mini, I have a mini Obi wan Kenobi and Darth Vader figuring and then I have some Dungeons and dragons figurines and I would just use dice or whatever to kind of track the flow. But, but also a scene that that's that complex. I was writing from one character's point of view. So, I'm not trying to track where everybody, I was tracking where everybody was, but from the person, but to the readers from the perspective of that character. Yeah. So I tracked where everybody was just to make sure that when they showed up somewhere it made sense. Yeah. But ultimately you're not giving all that and I know what direction the character would hear something from or whatever. But yeah, you can S you can definitely, like when you're doing a full scale battle scene, you know, like this Epic fan, these Epic fantasy battle scenes, narrow it down to the experience of, even if you rotate through characters, just narrow it down to what's going on for that one character Y uh, you can't, you just can't track it. And the reader can't either. It's chaos. So, and that, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what is going on in the big picture. It matters what the characters you care about are dealing with. So if, if you narrow that down, also when you're fighting, this is very human. Adrenaline does really interesting things to your peripheral senses and your world kind of goes numb. It's, it's really, it really becomes small. You're focused on, you're unfocused. So in karate they say mine, like the moon or mine, like water, you kind of give up trying to hyperfocus and you let kind of all of it come in, but it's all going in. But then it becomes background noise and chaos. And you see this and you see this and you see this and you respond to this and it, it's very interesting because it both numbs and sharpens your senses at the same time. I took a class in college called Eastern theater, or you'd liked it Kabuki and stuff like that, but it always started with, um, meditation and, um, mindfulness and awareness. So the idea that like, it's not like you're trying to shut out the sound that happens, but you don't clean to it item. Like it just passes through your awareness, right? Yes. There's an interesting flow. So in karate we would train in what was called circle sparring. So you'd put one person in the middle and you'd have, you know, any number, creating a circle around them and one at a time. You don't, fortunately in an Epic battle, you don't have, people don't take turns to come and attack you, but at least the training in circles, sparring, you were aware of who are, who you were fighting and then everybody else around you at the same time. So you could respond here and then somebody coming from behind you. And it was a very, in a truly is a flow. So when they say mind like water, that that really is how it goes. It's like I'm here and I'm present, but I'm also kinda here outside of myself and I'm present. So what it does is it keeps you from focusing on one fist and following it, you're like, okay, I can see it and I'm tracking it, but I can also see this over here. So you, you kind of soften your vision in a way and you live with your peripheral kind of exist in the peripheral, but adrenaline is the opposite of that. But well, adrenaline is really short lived. It is surprisingly short lived. Um, you know, it, it's really only about a 32nd burst. And then everything after that is training your, all the endurance after that is training. And if you fight for a straight three minutes, you are exhausted. Three minutes is an eternity when you're fighting. So if you're going to create a believable fight scene that lasts more than three minutes, whoever's fighting is either desperate for their life and they're not running on adrenaline. Like it really does kind of come and go regardless of the situation. It's just that then it becomes that characters, they're just determined and pulling on it, pulling everything out that they have. But it's more believable if they've trained to have that endurance or we give them these, these are superpowers or like can kind of make up for some of that. Yeah. You said retreats earlier, like little ways to hide or delay or obstacles that prevent them for taking you taking breaks or, yeah, retreating is always an option. Being smart weapons. Um, if your, so that's another kind of thing that you learn when you train in martial arts is called Zanjan and that just means awareness. So it's like, okay, I'm walking home.

Speaker 3: 38:53

You're it.

Speaker 1: 38:55

It's still like the mind, like water. So you're aware or not aware at the same time, um, you soften your mind enough that you pick up a broader area of stimuli. Stimuli. Okay. But then in track then your mind also can start tracking patterns in the stimuli. So if you're walking down the street and there's a car that really just seems to be pacing you, you're going to pick that out of the rush of the rest of traffic. And that's without having to be hypervigilant about just not being hypervigilant. And then you pay attention to that car. And like, so I lived in salt Lake for awhile and I, you know, I would walk places if I could. And I was walking down state street one day and there was a car kind of pacing me. So I took a picture of his license plate and I was aware because it's pasted mashed the rest of traffic, but a mashed mind. And I did. I walked, I took a turn down a road and the car, as soon as I did that other car pulled over and the guy was trying to talk to me and I was just like, I just took a picture of the license plate, I'm about to send it. And he was like, yeah, never mind. I'll go. But it's like, it's little. There's a lot. But that's in training and fighting. If you panic, people who are untrained tend to focus on one thing. So somebody, they're fighting someone in front of them, somebody coming up from behind them is going to kick their ass. Like you have to. That's why you just, you have to set up something that's more believable than a prodigy fighter. That just doesn't happen. No, it doesn't. It, it, and it's really hard to buy. And if you, if you set, like I talked about as an author, you make contracts with the reader. So if you're promising me an Epic fighter, will you give to deliver an Epic fighter? You can't just, people aren't born that way. Yeah. He doesn't just happen. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Alien. I don't know what, so I have like the Sarah, the throne of glass books, you know, I, I picked that up and I'm promised this character who's the, the best assassin in the kingdom and I'm halfway through the first book or felt like it, I think I was like five or six chapters in, nobody had died yet. All that had happened is this main book, this main character, this is greatest acid. And the only thing she had done so far was have a tantrum over having to wear a dress. And I'm like, I'm out. You broke your promise. There's no, and I heard in the series that she does plenty of killing, but I'm like, you kind of needed to establish, even if, even if he just added a scene at the beginning where she, she pulls off some awesome killing spree, like, I don't know, but it was just like, yeah, I'm just not into the dress. Like I need blood and guts, I guess. I dunno. Alright. I wouldn't have picked up a book or write an assassin. Yeah, you made the promise to me and didn't deliver. So, you know, P power to the people who stuck with it past that point. But that kind of killed it for me. Talk to me about emotional fallout cause you're, you talk in the book about how really the purpose of the fight scene isn't the fight itself. It's all the rest there. There is a purpose to the fight as far as, you know, sometimes you have to kill somebody or somebody has to win or whatever. But there's emotional fo, my God, this is such a massive broad, there's a lot of possibilities here, but this is, this is so fights should either really further the plot or end or make a significant impact on, on character development. So emotional fallout or development. Part of that is the character. So think about like Batman, right? Think about what created Batman, his parents dying, his parents dying and, and, and the experience of that and how he takes that re so he now has a relationship with violence and that, that is the crux of that relationship that he has with fun. So think of all of the, the back, like it's kind of a trend the last few years to do all these backstories of all these comic book characters or whatever. What is one common theme in all their backstories? It's some major violent experience then, you know, then the following PTSD or whatever. But you can really do a lot with character alliances or division with a fight because in, in that hyper emotional moment, does somebody betray you? Do they have your back? So people who aren't getting along, like all of a sudden they're, but they trust each other just simply because of this like three minute experience they had where they had to make like those gut decisions. It's going to be really revealing or transformative. Yep. Exactly. And um, also, even if it's not explicitly in the story, if you process your characters and what, what led to their current feelings about, you know, violence or physical force,

Speaker 3: 44:11

um, you[inaudible]

Speaker 1: 44:14

it's amazing how much of that backstory, whether it's explicitly detailed in the story or just simply plays into the context of a character. Um, it has a major impact on how you write that character and how that character responds, um, in, in violent situations. That's what it's like. I'm trying to think of a example to kind of narrow this down. I think the backstories are a pretty good example and if fairly universally accessible, cause we all love comic book characters. Yeah. So think of all of them. Joker, Harley Quinn. Like how do they all turn into who they are and how do they have their value system that they do? Um, almost all relating to that, that kind of situation. But one of the things I think, I'm pretty sure you laid this out for me, and this is not an original thought that, um, like mid fight, something reminds Batman not reminds me of him. Batman's having a fight with somebody and it's going to trigger something about his parents and his emotional past. But mid fight is really the time for the author to be like, and Batman realized, Oh, here's a flashback moment. Oh my gosh. Oh, there was one. It was, you know, was a rookie author moment. Um, but you shouldn't put, yeah, that's before, after, yeah. That's if anything like that is happening in the middle of a fight, the fights over because they've got, you're going to pause and has you pause or hesitate. There's a, there's a consequence. Yeah. So if, if that is part of a fight scene in that main character has that moment or that memory, like if Batman remembered like had a huge hit emotional hit because something more directly reminded him of his parents, which the reason it doesn't happen is because he trains. Right, right. He has trained himself past that point. So that's going to happen at the beginning of training mostly. Um, or you know, there are, I mean, obviously in a fight there could be a moment where somebody pulls off a mask and all of a sudden there's some, and so if that's going to stop the fight, any which way exactly what it does. So, yeah, and if you so, and, or have an impact, but in the middle of the fight or whatever, but it should really be in the flow. And then the, the, the thought process or the emotional processing of that should come after. So I don't wanna like not in the middle of fighting. Yeah. I don't want to oversimplify a craft, but it seems like the idea is if it's going to be important to the fight emotionally or physically in any way, you have to mention it beforehand. You have to set it up, but then you're not going to, you're not going to tell me how important it is or it's consequences or it's effects until after. Yes. And it's, it's both in the context of the setting and in the emotional makeup of the characters. So there, there was one scene that I worked out for an author as a, when I was there being, you know, as a rental Ninja. She, so she had a main character female who had had a traumatic past of being, um, raped, I believe. And she's going to her apartment and it's the lead up to a guy who'd been following her and comes into her apartment in tax, in her apartment. But she needs to win and she needs to get away. So I'm like, okay, I've, I'm a female, I live alone. I've been attacked before. I can imagine this. Right? Yeah. I have thoughts about this. Well, so I'm like, when I walk, you know, put myself in the place of the character, I'm going to have things set up in my apartment and be hyper aware of where certain things are in my apartment. I'm going to have things placed in certain places in my apartment on purpose because I need them to be accessible to me. I'm going to know how I can get out of my apartment if somebody comes in the front door. Um, and that is, that is the followed of having gone through this IM, this trauma before. So I sent like the characters. So you have to set all that up. Yeah. This character, this moment way before this even happened. Yes. So then I'm like, Oh gosh, this is what she's doing the first time the character go through her apartment. Where does she say? She says her keys on the counter. She feeds, she's aware of where her cats dog dishes are. She has a something, a coat rack by the door or whatever and she knows that her fire escape, you know, is the windows always unlocked or it's always locked or something like you're going to be aware of your space. Yeah. Anyway, so we had to go through quite a bit of setup in the physical space of the apartment and in this character's habits that needed happen throughout the story. Cause you know you don't want to info dump that. Right, right. But she's so she was like, Oh I'm going to go back and I'm going to pull this in here and I would pull this in here and I would pull this, this. So once we created the space, then we actually did the scene. I'm like, but this w this woman in her own apartment as we're all these weapons are, this guy shoves his way in behind her. She's going, first thing she's going to do is pull that coat rack across and create obstacles and how far is it between there and this window that she has to unlock and open and right. Cause she's going to need a certain amount of time. Like what else could she, you know, is there a cow she can pull? Like what and how big is she? Does she have the physical, there's a lot going on. And she'd been training, she had this character, the author had this character training and problem Mcgon things I'm like, and she and this person would, that would make sense for her character profile to have that. She had just started those classes and that kind of thing. But um, yeah there ha there you will spend so many more words on setup than you're going, the fight should be the fight and that's it. Nothing else, nothing, nothing else. And all I have them, you have real time versus psychological time. So real time, a lot of fights or one good paragraph, right? Yeah. But psychologically so much happens that you feel like it took three pages to describe that fight. But if you step back and look at the writing from a more, you know, an authors editorial perspective, we're getting all this cool sounds out here from that person. If you step back, there really is a pretty solid ratio of with just right around that fight scene, you're going to spend twice as many words setting up the situation as you are going to be spending on the actual description of the action. And then you have all the, the fallout, the after, um, the mess after the injuries that you have to track. Um, I just was reading, um, like Cassandra Claire who writes the city of bones, those series, so her new, her new trilogy, I don't know, the middle one, queen of Aaron Aaron darkness for something like that. Anyway, it drove me insane because one of the main characters Emma was, she's spent a good number of words describing this massive cut that she got on her forearm. It disappeared. There was absolutely no follow up for this cut on her arm. And I, little things like that drive me crazy. And when you have somebody who, if you can pull a reader in and they're going to be fully immersed in your story, that's the stuff you have to track and you have to spend the, that's what you spend your words on. Honestly. You spend more words on that than you do on the actual fight, the tracking of it, then that justifies it in the context. Yeah. The before and after the fight is really just kind of a, it's a, it's just like a blade that you slip in between. Tell me, I don't think I've asked you yet. Tell me why readers like sightseeing so much. Um, well I think that they accomplish a lot in a very little amount of time or space in the story. They are. Hi there. There's a lot of emotional intensity if you do it right. So like I said, that real time versus psychological time. Um, it's, I think there's a catharsis to it where you don't really want to go get in a fight. But I, I'd really like to know what that would be like if that happened. Um, I think we all have that kernel of, of survival instinct in us where we, we want to have some of that experience, but we don't really want to have to get hurt to get it. Um, but they also, like they really pack a punch for the space that they take up in a story and you talk about the highs and lows, but you just, that character development or that plot development that you can accomplish on that at that level of intensity, you can't, and I mean, you can maybe accomplish some of that in a sex scene, but there's gotta be some balance in the story. So I'm just thinking of the physical interaction and the emotional content, um, and how else to accomplish that. Like it's, it's hard to accomplish the same degree of intensity in a, in a scene that doesn't involve like a fighting or sex really. I think it's interesting that you put those side by side because they're both very primal, very, they're primal. They're universal. Like we talked about, you know, writing and physics because of the accessibility to the reader. Because we live on earth with these physics. Um, yeah, very primal, very universal sex in sex and fighting sex and survival I would say. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's kind of been a really interesting learning curve for me because um, I've started with that dystopian series that is going to become an Epic dark fantasy. Um, and then I've written horror, which is almost kind of on the dark fantasy side, the my grim Chronicles because they um, they're in a little bit of a fantasy world so they're not modern horror but they're more of like your dark fantasy horror and now I'm writing erotica and it's those horror and erotica share. He's so much language. You were prepared well by your Prairie well experienced but it's so yeah, they, they are definitely those two intense high points partly because of what they do to our, our bio biology, like our biological response, chemical reaction, chemical reaction. Yeah. So you actually experience that reaction reading about it. Not quite at the same level as experiencing it, but you are, that is that catharsis. You are, you are riding that high and low a little bit to make my heart race. And what happens to you physically, physiologically with a really good sex scene? It's the same. Make me a little bit and compare the language. It's really kind of fascinating because in horror you can, you can talk about some things being tied up and being poked and things like that. And then you put it into a more of a, a sex scene, slightly different contexts. It's a different context, but the language is very similar, you know? And, and it's really kind of been an interesting way to play with the language. It's like, Oh my gosh, I see. And it, it's funny because I hadn't even written any erotica that came up between me and a friend of mine. I was writing horror and she was writing erotic and we're kind of at a little writing retreat, very just there were three of us there, but we took breaks to kind of walk and talk about here's what I'm trying to process through in my story and whatever. And we realized how similar the language was. So I have this girl who's tied up, it's like, okay, well she gonna die or she bought, I have a girl who's tied up to, yeah. And that's kind of how that came about. I was like, okay, that's really interesting how, uh, we're S we've written the[inaudible] exact same sentence, but in the context it's a completely different thing.[inaudible] different stories, but yeah, no, but it's the sensation you, you will have the same physical response to the, like somebody does, does a good job of describing having your risk tied. Your body will create that sensation for you. So fight scenes and, and I'll put sex things on the side, but that's what happens in fight scenes. Somebody gets punched in the face and you're, you have a little bit of that physiological response where your body creates that sensation. So I think that's why they're so effective. It's your, you have a physical, you physically will to some degree. We'll experience that, that fight scene. Well, I would say, yeah, you're having, you end up with a, a sensory experience out of what is fundamentally a cerebral activity. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So that's pulls you in. I normally end my interviews with an improv game rather than it being like some traditional whose line is that any way kind of game. I want to take our current setting which is the balcony porch of your condo with the helicopter. Yeah. Harvey's not about Harvey. The helicopter doesn't get to be around, but we have like a hanging flower pot over here petunias and then like the really cool patio lighting and a grill and a glass coffee table and two like patio chairs and the sliding glass door is shut and in five moves I want you to improvise real quick. Our fight scene and we're not going to act it out because I don't want to dye your, when you talking about experience and training. Well I was about to get up so, well, so who's who's fighting like so the pre-stuff the setup. Okay. Okay. Let's talk. So you would consider your weapons. Okay. I have like, should I say I'm to say out loud? I have like a no, you just described it all. You have it. Okay. You have a pen? I have a pen. In my pocket. I have keys in my pocket. I don't marry. Phone is a weapon, but it's absolutely, I have chapstick and I have, but you also just described we have two patio chairs. Oh yes. I will have a table. We have a sliding glass door that is not locked by the way. True. Okay, good. So you can totally slam that on somebody's parts. The patio door. We've got the glass table. Yeah, that's a big one. All of this is very movable, right. So none of it's so heavy that that an average woman couldn't just pick it up and toss it or hit somebody. I say even the grill is probably fair game. Um, flower pot. It would be easy to knock down the dirt would be very distracting. You have the potential for strangulation, right, with the, the wire with the lights, with the patio. Um, this is really, this part isn't, but this itself is, is actually pretty heavy for the grill. Yeah. So that wouldn't be something I would pick up to, to throw at somebody. But you could definitely shove down the internet and do some pretty good damage. Okay. So our throw somebody over the balcony, we can definitely go over the edge of the balcony. Um, so one of my favorite fight scenes, so if you pull that, you gotta be aware that anything that you grab as a weapon is also a potential weapon use against you. Sure. So don't you have a gun? Somebody legitimately could take that away somehow and end up shooting you with your own den and knife. Same thing. All the weapons are everybody's weapons. So your best chances to use a weapon that I don't know about, but also be aware that it could become a weapon for me for some reason, which we have said. You also have a cord right there. True. I know, I'm like really prepared to be strangled by yes you are. Yes. Yep. That's pretty handy. Yeah. Attached to my headphones. Yeah. With very strangulate[inaudible] cord. But it's going to pop out of the Jack pretty easily, I think. So. I feel like that's going to work for you for not long enough to actually accomplish well, unless I yeah, but there's not, not if I left it as is. So, but you, you have experience of training, it would be a two handed. Okay. Because I wouldn't wrap it around you. You're just gonna have to go. No. What's your first move? My first move would be to grab the bottom legs of your turn to me over your back. Yeah. Okay. Um, this is where not experience and training comes in. I'm going to throw my pad of paper at you because it's in my hand and I need to get it out of my hand. And it seems like not a very effective weapon. Only work if you were right behind it. So if you throw the pad of paper at me and I got to fill out a rubric, gotta be right something I would be up out of the chair with your whole, yeah. Get his a yes. You got to be right at you for, you know, what am I going to do? I'm going to try to slam you so, and I agree. I'm going to go back. Okay. I use my, you're moving, you're gonna drop that and you're probably gonna slam my head right there. That's one of your better options for sure. What do you do? Well, I would, this would be mine. Okay. So you're going to kick me back. I'm probably going into my patio chair and back the other way and then I would cause the wall, probably try to grab this and keep on the patio Cheron right at. Yeah. And I feel like I am and I would hopefully do enough damage that I could run inside a lock. The patio door. That would be my move. So yeah, that one here. That's kinda how that would probably go if you started with the notepad. I, um, I feel like if this was one of those, choose your own adventure stories that I, I chose, I went and I followed the pages and then I died. Yeah. So my goal would, would be to get away from you. So it's something I trained for really. So, um, in the, where the, where I taught the school at which I taught was a residential treatment center. So one thing, you know, we talked karate, which is actually, um, very calming. It's a lot like yoga. There's a lot of meditation events. Um, so despite creating violence, it actually reduces violence very effectively. But, and what we were trained, um, in what was called PCs, but it has a lot of different names depending on who, you know, like there's a lot of different styles of karate, but they all kind of have the same source. We were trained in restraining, but we are also trained in deescalation. And so one of the things that we always heard was like gain the release. So if you're not trying to kill somebody, you're trying to get away. Okay. Really it's one of the other, right. Trying to do damage, serious damage or you're trying to get away. So it was always like gain the release and it would be, I would have your wrist, but I would be trying to, how do I gain the release? I let you go. So in that interaction I be trying to gain the release. Interesting. Right. Because I don't know that a fight on a patio would be to my advantage. I would want, I would want to choose a context that was to my advantage. And this is not it. If that makes sense. I will not enough space to get away. And I'm gonna fight you later when I have the high ground. Yes. Okay. Exactly. Christine, I have had so much fun talking about gun violence with you. It's one of my favorite topics. Thank you so much for letting me interview you today. Thank you. Yes.