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I’m back with more advice! On today’s episode: fights. How to write them? How to plan them?

I’m here to help! Wether your a plotter, a pantser or somewhere in between, here are three things you should establish before writing a fight scene.

1) Who wins?

It seems like fairly obvious advice, but when I was a much younger writer, time after time, I’d go into a fight scene with no plan regarding the outcome. Whenever I felt like the fight was over, I’d end it, and whoever came out on top was the winner, regardless of how it made sense in the narrative. 

Establishing a winner from the beginning allows you to build the fight up in a trajectory that makes sense. Once you know who wins, you can better choreograph the scene to keep readers guessing.

2) What are the stakes?

Once you know who wins, you must then decide what the stakes of the fight are. What happens if they lose? If they win? What is gained or lost? This can vary wildly, depending on what genre you’re in. Sci-fi and fantasy will commonly have world-ending stakes a la Avengers: Infinity War. Romance or contemporary stories are more on the ‘suspended from school’ end of the spectrum. 

Either way, you must know what the fight accomplishes for the characters — good or bad. Not only must you know, but you must make sure it’s known for the reader too. If we don’t understand why the characters are fighting, the fight will be confusing and there will be little to no emotional tie.

3) What are the characters’ fighting styles?

This is more secondary information, but I think it’s important for at least the author to know. Ask yourself: Do my characters have previous fighting experience? Do they prefer one style to the other?

A boxer will fight differently from a wrestler. MMA and Karate do not look the same. If your characters have experience in any discipline, put some time towards researching it so you accurately portray it. Even non-combat sports can impact how someone fights. 

If your characters have no fighting experience, they’re much more likely to be ‘scrappy.’ And no — someone with no combat background will not win against someone who does, unless they have untapped magic punching powers. Keep it realistic. 

I want to start researching how to become a successful indie author. Does anyone have recommendations for books, website, Facebook groups, podcasts, etc. where I can learn the trade?

First, what do you mean by successful? Do you measure success by sheer numbers of books sold? By profits made? By people reading your book? Or some other benchmark.

Being a successful Indie Author means treating writing like a small business and behaving accordingly.

Your first step is going to be defining what your goal related to being successful is. I use a writing plan to lay out my yearly goals. You can read more about my writing plan Here or read about how to make your own here.

Writing/ Business Related books:

2☆ Freelance and Technical Writers: Words for Sale – Camden Flath

3☆ The Essential Guide to Writing a Novel: A Complete and Concise Manual for Fiction Writers – James Stewart Thayer

3☆ Page after Page – Heather Sellers

3☆ Small Business Survival Guide – Cliff Ennico

3☆ The Call of the Writer's Craft: Writing and Selling the Book Within – Tom Bird

4☆ The Art of War for Writers: Fiction Writing Strategies, Tactics, and Exercises - James Scott Bell

4☆ Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success – K.M. Weiland

4☆ What’s your Purple Goldfish? - Stan Phelps

4☆ Silent Sales Machine 9.0 – Jim Cockrum

4☆ What would Google Do – Jeff Jarvis

4☆ How to make Big Money in your small business – Jeffery Fox

4☆ Invent it, Sell It, Bank It – Lori Greiner

4☆ No Plot? No Problem! – Chris Baty

5☆ The Pocket Muse – Monica wood

5☆ How to Write Mysteries – Shannon O’Cork

5☆ On Writing – Stephen King

Blogs:

TCKPublishing’s blog has some good posts.

I already mentioned EADeverall’s site, but it bears repeating.

ScribeMedia’s blog has useful resources, but they are trying to sell a service.

BookBuzz has a good blog, but again its trying to sell a service.

Kindleprenuer’s blog is full of info.

Bookmarketingtools.com has a blog on how to do book promotions.

Print Publications:

If you can afford it get a subscription to Publisher’s Weekly or PW magazine to keep on top of industry news.

general advice:

There is a large writing community on twitter. It’s where a lot of publishers, agents, and book enthusiasts are, however, the community is very much a numbers game. If all you follow are writers, and all that follows you are writers, then your target audience, - readers- aren’t actually going to be seeing your posts. I have yet to figure out how to work the writer demographic to my favor. I’ve gotten a couple book sales through twitter, but not as many books as I’ve bought from other writers on twitter. On Twitter I tend to follow the writing community hashtag. I follow too many people to think of any to recommend off the top of my head.

I do most of my book sales in person at things like craft fairs and local vendor events. Finding them takes doing some networking and you have to be looking for opportunities or you won’t notice them. Search for “vendor” facebook groups for your areas. Join those. Contact your local library and bookstores. Let them know who you are and what you’re doing.

Take advantage of your library read every book on writing and every book on business/sales/ marketing they have available. Join any local writing groups, contact any local book clubs. Etc.

Take advantage of local media. When you release a book contact your local papers/ radio stations and let them know, “hey I live in the area and I have a book coming out on x date, we’ll be having a book release party at [venue], would you be interested in attending”

Some posts:

3 Things that Make a good indie book cover

How to make a story file

My posts

Risk Tolerance in Writing

Writing Records to Keep

My post about the Writing Assessments I mentioned earlier

A lot of the indie publishing advice you’re going to find on places like reddit are going to be geared towards a specific method of publishing on ‘zon that requires you to be very healthy and write very quickly. So, I have some alternate advice.

I have 3 FREE PDF Guides on my Website that contain all my publishing advice. the first is “I Finished a Book, Now What? A Tongue In Cheek Guide to What Happens Next.” It covers editing, editing tools, traditional publishing versus selfpublishing, and social media. It has a large index of links of research from editing to lots of master writing tumblr guides.

The second guide is called “16 Signs Your Book Isn’t Ready to be Self-Published (And Other Things You Should Know.) It covers a lot of the issues I’ve seen in indie published books that are published too early. I’m not a believer in bad books, I believe there are books published too early. 16 things to look out for and some editorial advice on how to FIX THEM. Plus some hopefully reassuring advice about originality and focusing on your own work.

The Third guide is called “How to be Successful When You Don’t Want to Write to Market. Or Getting Out of the Algorithm Game.” It takes an in depth look at the ‘Zon Algorithm game and helps you decide if you want to try and play it or if you want to try serial publishing on places like Wattpad and Royal Road. Results may very. There is no true path to success.

I just want to say NUMERICALLY I’ve had more readers on Royal Road than I’ve had buy my books. And that is more success to me than money right now. (But I’m doing a fly by night experiment, just posting on those sites, and a link to twitter and running away. I do plan an audio book for Youtube too. Wordpress is it’s own little world if you want to blog your book. Wattpad’s AI still confuses me.) I’ve been publishing in fanfiction for 20 years, so I’m very comfortable with the serial method and you can finish a book before you publish it serially. (Strong recommend.)

I’m going to be the downer here about local media. Most of them aren’t going to be interested unless the book is about the local area. They don’t like taking indies because they’re going to be swamped. If you are selling something online, all your media marketing should be angled towards online and not newspapers and the library. (I have to remind my dad of this all the time.) There is the Indie Reviewers List if you’re interested in that. And you can look up book blog tours like Storytellers On Tour. Outside of tumblr, if you’re looking for good writing advice, there is Write Hive, they have discord and host a online writing convention. You can find them on twitter.

If you are doing a paperback book and you can get your hands on copies you can sell like through ingramspark, then yes, conventions and the flea market can be your jam. When we can have them again. But it’s expensive, like 400 bucks for a table at a convention, and you have to supply your own table and table cloth and chair and etc. So, figure out your budget if you want to try in person sales.

When you are looking for places to list your indie book, be wary. Many indie book sites can come and go very quickly. Or aren’t organized very well. Same goes for any type of “Book Awards.” I have seen so many people put “My book has won this award” in their blurbs (not where awards should go) and I’ve never heard of them and frankly, don’t care. (The writing doesn’t also back up an award.) Just really look into them and be wary because “USA Today Bestselling Authors,” thing too, those standings can be easily bought.

20 Books Vegas is an indie writing convention. They put up a lot of their panels on Youtube. This is the 2019 Convention.

As for a um book writing advice. I strongly recommend John Long’s Little Writer’s Book of Wisdom. It’s out of print but there were like 4 or 5 copies on ABE books last time I checked. Lots of great writing advice in tiny chunks, very helpful if you have ADHD or anything, like me! As I learned to write over a long period of time, I liked to take things one aspect of technical writing at time until I felt my writing was up to a traditional publishing standard. (It took other things for me to have an original idea I loved enough to write it. So, there’s that too.)

By metatext I mean like tagging, summary, and authors notes (especially initial authors notes at the beginning of a fic). The means by which we communicate to our readers what they’re getting into.

Because we kind of all have to learn it by osmosis and there are conventions but nobody’s really taught them at the start, so there’s inconsistencies and misunderstandings or people just not knowing things through no fault of their own.

This ends up breeding frustration and confusion and in the worst cases resentment, hurt, and aggression.

I’m severely tempted to make such a handbook and get it circulating.

Go here for the PDF, or here to view the whole document as a tumblr post.

I recommend the PDF.

There’s also this series on how to tag and use AO3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25584613

How would a fighter class fight in a war? Especially if their main skill set is brawling.

If their main skillset is brawling, they’re going to need to learn a new skillset. Knowing unarmed fighting can be a useful skill for a soldier, but, it’s never going to be their primary fighting method. The biggest problem is the lack of reach, and the lack of natural weapons.

If you’re trying to wage war by punching people, and the other side has a bunch of spears, you’re out of luck. They just poke you to death before you can land a single hit.

The problem persists even if their armed with shorter weapons, like swords or axes. You still need the ability to close the gap, before brawling will become a viable option.

It is important to understand, there are applications for knowing how to throw a punch, even in the middle of a massive battle. Times when your character may not be able to use their weapon for whatever reason. A good example of this is if enemies are too close for a character’s primary weapon, which can occur in melee. However, it’s never going to be a soldier’s first choice, and even in very tight quarters, as a knife or dagger would be preferable.

It’s also not particularly viable to strap blades onto your arms, to augment your punches. Weapons like bladed gauntlets, wrist blades, and (worn) cestuses may look cool, but they’re wildly impractical in warfare. If the weapon is damaged, it cannot simply be discarded, and you’re stuck with a weapon you may not be able to use.

Beyond that, these styles of worn weapons will be slower than a carried blade. Because you need to put your entire arm into the strike, you cannot match the speed of a weapon that pivots on the wrist. That will impair your ability to block or parry incoming strikes, and quickly end with your death. There are very real reasons that worn weapons never caught on or saw widespread use; they’re impractical.

Now, having said that, there is a specific place where these kinds of weapons are ideal. Gladiatorial combat. It’s important to remember that, from a structural point of view, any kind of arena combat will be entertainment. That can be modern sports matches or Roman(-style) gladiators. In cases like those, having “non-viable weapons,” like wrist blades strapped to the participants is entirely legitimate, because it’s not about efficiently killing the enemy, it’s about having inefficient, and bloodier, combat for the crowd. While I can’t remember the name off-hand, I’m pretty sure there was a Roman gladiator variant who was armed with a pair of cestuses, and nothing else. You wouldn’t want to take that to war, but it would produce a bloody spectacle in the arena.

Fighter classes tend to be combat generalists. For most RPG systems, if you’re wondering what the infantry of that setting looks like, the answer are low level fighters. If you’re wondering what the elite units are comprised of, also low to mid level fighters. Who’s commanding? Probably a fighter. What about the city guards? Probably fighters. What about the gang enforces the guards scuffle with? More fighters. What are the gladiators in the arena? It’s yet more fighters.

Now, that’s not all RPGs. Some will break apart the fighter into distinct classes (or sub-classes.) So, it’s possible you’re looking a game where, “Fighter,” refers exclusively to a kind of gladiator, and there’s a warrior or solider class for characters with a more militant focus. I’m not familiar with any RPGs which do that, but it wouldn’t surprise me. (My first suspect is The Dark Eye, but I’m not familiar enough with that system to know for sure.)

Many RPGs encourage hyperfocusing on a single weapon for your fighter. Even D&D does this through the Weapon Focus and Specialization feats. While having a character who is a master of one weapon, but otherwise mediocre is a reasonable character concept, it’s not particularly realistic, or at least, it should be considered as a serious character flaw and/or limitation.

Being an effective combatant is about knowing how to use all your available tools, and a single weapon fighter can’t do that. They have one option, and only one option. All weapons are situational, and an unarmed fighter in a war is a long way from any of the situations that benefit them.

-Starke

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