Bonded Novellas Now Available Separately + Buy One Get One Free

The Innocent Flower: Bonded Novellas Now Available Separately + Buy One…:

Don’t worry! Bonded is still for sale in collection form, but Rhemalda Publishing has also decided to split the novellas up so they are for sale individually. Have you wanted to readBonded, but you’ve already read Cinders and didn’t want to buy the entire collection? Or do you want to try one story first to see if you like my writing style? Whatever the reason, you can now get the novellas in Bonded separately on Kindle.
CINDERS, A Cinderella sequel
THIRDS, A One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes retelling
SCALES, A Sleeping Beauty prequel
Purchase for $2.99 Each on Kindle
(Don’t have a Kindle? Email me at michelledavidsonargyle@gmail.com)

Guest Post: Writing Sword Fight Scenes 101

Rayne Hall has published more than forty books under different pen names with different publishers in different genres, mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Recent books include Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel), Six Historical Tales Vol 1, Six Scary Tales Vol 1, 2 and 3 (mild horror stories), Six Historical Tales (short stories), Six Quirky Tales (humorous fantasy stories), Writing Fight Scenes and Writing Scary Scenes (instructions for authors).


She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic and more. 

Her short onlineclasses for writers intense with plenty of personal feedback. Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians, The Word Loss Diet and more. 

For more information about Rayne Hall go to her website. 

Readers love swords, especially in historical and fantasy fiction. Even if you’ve never wielded a sword, you can write a great sword fight scene. 

How much realism?
Real sword fights are short and violent, with blood and gore. Fictional fight scenes don’t necessarily reflect this reality. They can be more entertaining: The fighters clank swords for a long time without spilling a drop of sweat, let alone blood. They perform acrobatic feats, swing from the rigging, slide down banisters, dangle from balconies, and leap across gorges – and all the time, they exchange taunts of sabre-sharp wit.
You may choose to reflect gory reality, or to entertain the reader with a sanitised skills display. You can also mix elements from both. This depends on the genre you write, as well as on your personal taste. Often, our task as writers is to create not reality, but an illusion of reality. If you inject enough realistic elements, the readers can suspend their disbelief about the rest.
Where does the fight take place?
To make your fight scene entertaining, choose the weirdest possible location: How about a duel in a wine cellar, in a cow shed, in a kitchen, in a lady’s boudoir, in a steam bath, in a rowing boat, in a bakery? Let your fighters jump onto tables, duck under hurdles, leap across gorges, dangle from balconies, balance on standing stones, climb masts, and somersault across hedges. You can add a measure of realism by having them pant for breath.
Stairs are a popular location for sword fights. The fighter who stands higher up and fights downwards has the advantage, so your characters probably jostle for that position.
For inspiration, watch the famous sword fight scene from Scaramouche(highly unrealistic, but entertaining, and full of creative location use).
What are the spatial restrictions?
To keep your sword fight realistic, consider the space, especially for indoors scenes. Is there enough room to swing the sword? Is the ceiling high enough to raise the weapon overhead? If there isn’t room, this can actually make the scene more interesting – but you have to write it accordingly.
Medieval castles were designed for defence, and the spiralling staircases wound in the direction which favoured the defenders. The right-handed fighter facing downwards had room to swing his sword – the right-handed fighter facing upwards had not.
Can they talk?
In a real fight, the fighters don’t waste breath on conversation, and are too focused on the action to think out witty repartees. However, readers love dialogue, especially in entertaining scenes. Create the appearance of reality by using very short, fragmented sentences. This conveys the breathlessness of the action. Cut every superfluous word. Delete any utterance which isn’t funny or profound.
This sword fight scene from The Princess Bride is famous for its entertaining dialogue. The fight is highly unrealistic, but this doesn’t stop audiences from loving it.
Creating excitement
Here’s a psychological trick for making a scene exciting: use sound effects. In a sword fight scene, this is easy. Insert sentences like >The bladed hissed through the air.<, >Steel clanked against steel.< or >Metal chimed.<
Speeding up the pace
The sword fight is probably the fastest-paced scene of your novel. Adapt your writing style to the pace of the action.
Use short paragraphs, short sentences, and short words.  Instead of >Immediately, he endeavoured to take measures to prevent the occurrance by executing a blocking motion<, write >At once, he tried to stop it with a block.<
Use adjectives sparingly, and try to avoid adverbs.
.
How technical?

Even if you’re knowledgable, avoid getting bogged down in technical details. Blow-by-blow accounts are boring.
Describe the first few movements of the fight, and make sure they are feasible for this type of sword and the space.
After that, focus on the direction of the fight e.g. >He drove her closer and closer to the cliff.< >Simon’s strength seeped away, and he struggled to block the blows.< >She moved fast, using her speed against his size.<
The moves which end the fight need to be specific again.
Do they carry shields?
Sword fighters often carry a shield in their other hand, to deflect their opponent’s blows. This is especially important in battle scenes.
What kind of sword?
If you have experience of sword fighting, use it to make your fight scene ooze authenticity. Write about the type of sword you’re familiar with. You can even create a fight in which the opponents wield different swords.
If you’re not a sword expert, you can bluff your way. You need to avoid three gross blunders:
1. Inventing a fancy-shaped sword. Most swords invented by writers wouldn’t work in reality.
2. Using a sword which didn’t exist in that historical period.
3. Using a sword which can hack, slash, cleave, stab, slice, pierce, thrust, cut through armour, split bricks and whirl through the air. Different swords can different things. No single sword can do everything.
To make your sword plausible, simply base it on one of these three types:
The thrusting sword
This sword is straight, often thin, maybe lightweight, always with a very sharp point. It is a good choice for entertaining fight scenes, duels, non-lethal fights, non-gory deaths, and swashbuckling adventure, especially in Europe from the rennaissance onwards. The typical user is slim, with good aerobic fitness, and may be female or male. It’s best for thrusting, piercing, stabbing. In a lethal fight, the aim is to pierce a vital organ. The typical injury involves seeping blood, and blood stains spreading across garments. It cannot hack through skulls or slice through or armour. Examples: the rapier, the gladius.
The cleaving sword
This sword is broad, straight, heavy, solid, big – sometimes it’s so huge that it needs to be held in both hands. Both edges are sharpened. Choose a cleaving sword for historical novels set in medieval Europe, for brutal fights and for battles. Its main actions are cleaving, hacking, chopping, cutting and splitting, and it can cut through armour. The typical user is a tall brawny male with broad shoulders and bulging biceps. The main type of injury is an amputated limb, and the aim in a lethal fight is to hack off a leg or to decapitate the opponent. The disadvantages are its size and weight. It’s too big to carry concealed, too heavy to carry in daily life, and too slow to draw for spontaneous action. Examples: the greatsword, the claymore.
Watch in action:
 
The slashing sword
This sword is curved, often slender, with an extremely sharp outer edge. It’s a good choice for shipboard fights, cavalry charges, and Asian or Middle Eastern settings. The typical user is a pirate, a sailor, a mounted warrior, a cavalryman or an executioner. This type of sword excels at slashing, cutting, slicing. The typical injuries involve lots of spurting blood. In a lethal fight, the aim is to slash a vital artery (e.g. on the thigh). If you want a sword which serves the hero in non-combat situations – slashing rigging, zropes, fabric and leather fetters – this is the one to choose. However, it can’t cut through armour and it won’t split bricks.
Examples: sabre, cutlass, saif
Watch in action:
 
In reality, the lines are often blurred: Some slashing words can also stab, some slashing swords can cleave, and some cleaving swords can deliver a thrust. To avoid blunders, stick to one main function.
Questions?
If you have questions about writing sword fight scenes, just leave a comment. I love answering questions and will respond. 

Too Much of a Good Thing: Over Plotting Your Novel…

The Other Side of the Story: Too Much of a Good Thing: Over Plotting Your Novel…: By Janice Hardy

Showing All Sides, But Still Needing More 
Layers are good, but adding plots to show another side or perspective because you feel the reader just won’t get it if you don’t should make you pause. Your instincts are in the right place – you know you need more to make the story work – but you’re looking wider, not deeper, and adding things that likely only explore the idea. Are you: 

  • Focusing only on the premise aspect of the story and ignoring the characters and their problems?
  • Adding characters whose sole job it is to get one point across?
  • Getting caught up in really cool backstory for one (or more) of your secondary characters or antagonist and feeling they deserve their own character arc?
  • Trying to tell everyone’s story?
  • Pulling your protagonist in so many directions you lose narrative drive because it’s hard to tell what the story is about anymore?

An excellent post on red flags for a novel trying to go in too many directions at once. Read the rest. 

Help! I Didn’t Finish My #NaNoWriMo Novel!

November is over…is your novel still out at sea?

I did win NaNoWriMo and finish my draft for the time being. However, suppose one did not. There’s two things you could do at this point: stop cold and wallow in depression, or consider that four weeks isn’t long to write a novel (especially if yours is closer to 100,000 words than 50,000) and keep going.

As it happens, there IS an unfinished (sic) novel that I have to finish, and of course that is Blood, book 6 in the The Unfinished Song. I set it aside for November, but I’ve been cogitating about it in the back of my mind and now I think I’m ready to tackle the final third of the book.

There are several difficult challenges I need to meet in the climax:

– a “comic” dual
– the unexpected reappearance of a character from an earlier book (Svego and Gremo–who did you think I meant?)
– a War
– the confrontation between Dindi a major villain

The end of Book 6 represents the half-way point of the series. You can see this on the Three Act Beat sheet as Problem Bring Them Together, but it’s even more obvious if you use Four Acts, where you can actually label this the False Victory:

Act I:
1. Teaser or opening conflict.
2. Problem is introduced
3. Point of No Return—Opportunity Accepted.
 
Act II:
4. Entering the New Situation.
5. New Allies and Enemies
6. False Victory

Act III:

7. Problem Drives Them Apart.
8. Crisis Hits
9. Terrible Secret Revealed – Final Attack Starts
 
Act IV:
10. All Seems Lost
11. Self-Sacrifice or Symbolic Death
12. Final Showdown

This Four Act structure is often used in television and is helpful for series. (That’s why Problem is Introduced is there instead of Protagonist shown in Daily Life, but either works.

I’ve found that in thinking about my 12 book series as a whole, this beat sheet is just as useful as for a single book. You’ll notice if you look over the first trilogy, that the first three books, Initiate, Taboo and Sacrifice, are Act One of the larger series.

At the end of Initiate, Dindi’s problem is introduced (“The conclusion was definitely a cliffhanger,” as one reviewer noted wryly), in Taboo it is developed, and in Sacrifice she finds a solution which is actually the Point of No Return, when she accepts the goal which drives the whole series… to help the Aelfae.

As you can see, Book 6 will end with a significant achievement, but it will only buy Dindi and her friends a little time to prepare for the true Final Showdown. Every book in the series ends with a fight or better yet, battle, of some sort (it’s part of the Series Template) but this one is particularly important, since it involves some Big Baddies that haven’t shown up in person before. (There are three major villains in this series: Umbral, the Bone Whistler, and Death herself.) Even without that pressure, I always find battle scenes tricky to write, and I consult some military minds in my extended family to help me nail the strategic aspects.

Although I don’t want to give spoilers for Blood, I had such fun blogging about my NaNoWriMo project that I’d like to see if I can keep it up. I’ll discuss the general techniques for things like How To Write Action Sequences as I go. Also, my friend and terrific writing adviser Rayne Hall will be doing guests posts every Sunday in December.

 

Tips To Write a Novel in 30 Days

Tips #1 and #2: Plant a Seed Scene and Set Pieces

Tip #20: Scene Helper
Tip #23: Writing Order

I Won #NaNoWriMo! Now What?

It’s the end of the month, I’ve met my NaNoWriMo quota and I have the rough bones of a novel complete. Now it’s time for me to step back and evaluate the novel I wrote as well as the way I wrote it.

Here’s my evaluation about the novel itself:

State of the Draft: I have about half-scriptment and half draft. I would have been fine with just a scriptment, but that would have been only 20,000 words (about one third of the final word-count), so I drafted some of the scenes more fully. The first third and some of the second two thirds are done, pockmarked with scenes in between that are still just outline plus dialogue. About four scenes are outline only.

My Feelings About the Novel: During the month, I read three types of books to help me write the novel. I read books on How To Write Mysteries, books on How To Write Comedy and autobiographies by heroin addicts because of the heroin subplot in my book. I also spent a night staying up late watching both Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream, one after the other. I’d never watched either movie before because I feared they would depress me.

They depressed me.

Even as I was finishing my draft, therefore, I was beginning to re-think a huge subplot in the novel, and feel like I couldn’t include it without either (a) dragging down the novel into a really bleak zone, or (b) making light of a subject that deserved a heavier treatment. The humor was supposed to balance this… I wanted a Dark Humor effect, but the humor wasn’t coming out strongly enough yet (because the jokes are at the sentence level and I hadn’t gotten to them), so I wasn’t satisfied with the project.

I had a larger problem too, because the tone for this novel would determine the tone for the other novels in the series I planned (such as September Knight, which I’d also outlined.)

In short, I hit the Hating This Novel stage, and hit it hard.

Does this mean the whole novel needs re-writing, drastic revision or even the trashcan folder? Not necessarily. What it means is that I need a break from this novel. I’ll put it aside and read it again in January. Maybe I’ll realize it’s not as bad as I thought.

Things I Still Like About the Novel:
I will definitely return to this novel and this series. I like the world-building, the ability to use modern slang freely because it’s contemporary fantasy (aka “urban fantasy”). I like my character and I want to complete his story.

My Goal:
My goal is to have this series (of either 3 or 4 books) finished by August next year. If I don’t (it will depend on when I finish The Unfinished Song series), I will push it back another year. I won’t make the same mistake I made with the Unfinished Song and start publishing it before it is completely finished, so if I say I can publish a new book in the series each month, I can keep my word.

Here’s my evaluation of the process of writing the novel:

Outlining Works: 
I admit I was nervous going two weeks into NaNoWriMo with a big fat Zero (0) wordcount. It really paid off in the end though, as I was able to write quickly and even reached one day of 10,000+ in a day (albeit, that was more than 8 hours of work…I worked 6 hours during the day and then six hours during the night). I hope my Tips helped other writers. They definitely did help me.

New Writing Techniques:
I learned a lot about writing a mystery. In the end, I ended up writing about 10,000 words from the point of view of the murderer Off-stage in between the scenes On-stage which will be in the actual novel. I need more practice with mysteries, but this was a big step for me.
Same goes for comedy writing. I always wanted to know how to write “funny” but bought into the belief that it had to be innate. Turns out that comedy, like most things, owes more to hard work than natural talent. Yay! Score another point for the naturally talentless!

Reading While Writing
I also read a lot of books during November. I read about 15 nonfiction books and 5-6 novels. (I should write a list.) This is surprising to me, since up until now, I’ve found it hard to write and read heavily at the same time. I think the secret is that I read a lot early in the month, when I was outlining, and what I read composted nicely in my mind to help me during the writing itself. What didn’t work as well was reading during the heavy writing days… especially not reading heroin addict autobiographies. Although perhaps there’s never a “good” time for that.

Blogging While Noveling
I was also pleased that I was able to keep up my blog while writing my novel. The secret was that I was writing about writing, so I always had something to say. I still don’t think writing about writing is probably the most interesting thing to blog about from a readers’ perspective, but if it turns a blog from a distraction into a helpful tool of inspiration, the trade off is worth it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up 2 blog posts a day, but I will not dismiss blogging as “goofing off” anymore. What worked best was writing the blog posts ahead of the day I posted, however, not rushing to get a post out on the same day. (As I’m doing with this post!)

Here’s What I Plan to Do Next:

Same Thing, Different Book
Here’s the thing…I’ve been writing professionally for two years now. That means I do NaNoWriMo every month. Now, I don’t always write 55,000 words a month, as I did this time. Sometimes I write more. Sometimes I write nothing at all, especially if I fall into a really deep depression. (Annual January-February Funk, my nemesis, I shake my fist at you!) Depression is a soul-sucking ninja that slashes the throat of the Muse and leaves inspiration bleeding to death on the bathroom floor, next to an empty bag of cheesy poofs. This year, I’m going to try to fight back! I hope you’ll help me….

Anyway, I have a busy December planned. We are driving half-way across the country for the week around Christmas, and I feel that deadline hanging over me like a guillotine blade. (As much as I am also looking forward to it.) So I have, I figure, only half a month to do a whole month’s work. There’s a certain book I took a break from to work on October Knight, and now, freshly enthusiastic, I intend to get back to Blood, book 6 of The Unfinished Song. I hope to apply some of the same super-writing tips that helped me during NaNaWriMo. And perhaps I will blog about them!

By the way, keep your eyes peeled. The Cover Reveal for Blood is coming soon!

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