Just recently I’ve been working on a chapter for my main chapters, Startüm Ironwolf, that has him being nursed back to life. When he wakes in the chapter he is being taken care of by a Wild Elf and is burning up with a major fever. I was struggling to get the 100% correct feel for the whole scene, but felt like I was missing something to the depth of the struggle he was going through with being sick. I’d been re-working the chapter back and forth several times to get the right feel, when suddenly I came down with a major flu with a burning fever for two days. Wow, let me tell you, there’s nothing like living the experience to be able to accurately write about it. Although in this situation I could have passed on the realness of the feeling to be honest.
For most of my writing I try to do two very important things. I try to picture each and every scene as if I were either there myself, or I do my best to picture the action as if I were watching it on a big screen at the movies. The reason I do this is twofold. First I want to make sure that the action going on is as accurate and realistic as possible. Even for my characters that are not exactly true to life. Startüm Ironwolf is extremely powerful and dense, so whenever action scenes are going on with I do my best to try to take into consideration the true physics of the real world in retrospect to his unique abilities and powers. The second part to this is that I want whatever rules I come up with for my world to be applied consistently throughout the story.
A good “bad” example of this is in the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Although I loved the visual eye candy and choreographed fight scenes, the main issue I had with the movie was that there was no consistency in the amazing feats that the fighters could do. During the major fight scenes the heroine was able to fly through the air, but when the hero, her lover, is dying. The heroine can only find a horse and take the long ride back to the town to get help. This lack of consistency in the rules of the world just made me really dislike an otherwise awesome movie.
A good “good” example of this is the Matrix, one of my all-time favorite movies. Neo is a hacker and he begins to hack the Matrix with his mind. The fight scenes, the upload of data to his mind the extra-physical skills of how the jumpers can bend everyday rules in the world. They all follow a steady theme that stay consistent with the rules that were defined within the world of the film. All of the “cyber-jackers”, the people that jump back into the Matrix, are able to hack the Matrix to a point. Their ability to “hack” allows them to bend the rules so to speak, but all within the overall rules that had been established within the film itself. For me this consistency of the rules of the world is essential in any story.
Maybe this is so important because so many of us like to try to guess what’s going to happen next. I know that’s what I’m doing whenever I’m reading a story. It’s always fun when the author comes up with a twist in the rules that saves the hero, and once it’s shown to me I’m like, “Wow, that was awesome!” On the flip side few things piss me off more when an author pulls out something from their ass that had nothing to do with the story or follows no established rules to save the hero or kill the villain. Even though I can’t think of any off the top of my head, I have no doubt there are a bunch of writers who are using this to good effect and are making money with their works, but no matter what it still just pisses me off whenever I run into a book that does this.
On another subject, I just sent Leo Black an email about getting Destiny’s cover completed. I’m going to do a whole set of blogs on this and the first cover art that I did for Flight, since I think it’s a good topic to cover, but I’ll save more on that for my next post. For now Leo really likes the concept I have for the book cover and things are moving forward.
For most of my writing I try to do two very important things. I try to picture each and every scene as if I were either there myself, or I do my best to picture the action as if I were watching it on a big screen at the movies. The reason I do this is twofold. First I want to make sure that the action going on is as accurate and realistic as possible. Even for my characters that are not exactly true to life. Startüm Ironwolf is extremely powerful and dense, so whenever action scenes are going on with I do my best to try to take into consideration the true physics of the real world in retrospect to his unique abilities and powers. The second part to this is that I want whatever rules I come up with for my world to be applied consistently throughout the story.
A good “bad” example of this is in the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Although I loved the visual eye candy and choreographed fight scenes, the main issue I had with the movie was that there was no consistency in the amazing feats that the fighters could do. During the major fight scenes the heroine was able to fly through the air, but when the hero, her lover, is dying. The heroine can only find a horse and take the long ride back to the town to get help. This lack of consistency in the rules of the world just made me really dislike an otherwise awesome movie.
A good “good” example of this is the Matrix, one of my all-time favorite movies. Neo is a hacker and he begins to hack the Matrix with his mind. The fight scenes, the upload of data to his mind the extra-physical skills of how the jumpers can bend everyday rules in the world. They all follow a steady theme that stay consistent with the rules that were defined within the world of the film. All of the “cyber-jackers”, the people that jump back into the Matrix, are able to hack the Matrix to a point. Their ability to “hack” allows them to bend the rules so to speak, but all within the overall rules that had been established within the film itself. For me this consistency of the rules of the world is essential in any story.
Maybe this is so important because so many of us like to try to guess what’s going to happen next. I know that’s what I’m doing whenever I’m reading a story. It’s always fun when the author comes up with a twist in the rules that saves the hero, and once it’s shown to me I’m like, “Wow, that was awesome!” On the flip side few things piss me off more when an author pulls out something from their ass that had nothing to do with the story or follows no established rules to save the hero or kill the villain. Even though I can’t think of any off the top of my head, I have no doubt there are a bunch of writers who are using this to good effect and are making money with their works, but no matter what it still just pisses me off whenever I run into a book that does this.
On another subject, I just sent Leo Black an email about getting Destiny’s cover completed. I’m going to do a whole set of blogs on this and the first cover art that I did for Flight, since I think it’s a good topic to cover, but I’ll save more on that for my next post. For now Leo really likes the concept I have for the book cover and things are moving forward.
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