The guy from the historical fiction mail list wants action in a book to read
the way it appears in the movies. He is asking for the impossible. Describing
the action in a fight scene in a novel can take many pages (and several minutes
for a reader to read). The same scene may only take seconds when played out
on a movie screen. The experiences are completely different for the reader/viewer.
I think the answers to the questions you pose at the end of your e-mail are
obvious.
How much violence is needed in a combat scene, and how do we describe
it?
The simple answer to both questions is that the amount of violence needed
and how said violence is described depends completely on the on the type
of story you're telling. Everything depends on the response you are trying
to elicit from your reader. You need just enough violence in a fight/attack
scene to get the desired reaction from the reader and no more.
Sometimes you can get the biggest response (physical or emotional) from a
reader by being very concise in your descriptions. Quick, cold and brutal
action often has a more chilling the effect on the reader than overblown
action that is violent simply for the sake of being violent. The simple slicing
of a character's throat is often more terrifying (and gratifying) for a reader
than an extended scene of a killer hacking a body to bits (although a good
hacking can be nice too).
The use of violence/combat in stories is an art. It looks easy, but if it
is not done well it comes off as cartoonist and amateurish. I doubt of the
guy from the history mail list has ever tried to write a combat scene (much
less a novel full of them). If he had, he would realize how bad his suggestion
is.
Myk
Kent Graham wrote:
[log in to unmask]">
A member of the historical fiction mail list posed this question --
in part -- yesterday. I can think of several responses, ranging from philosophical
to technical
"If there is anything in our [human] history, that is always
present, is combat. Wars, fights, quarrels are
something never gone. But how do you describe this
kind of violence?"
<snip, in which he complains about how few pages Tolkien uses to
describe combat, as opposed to how many he uses to describe walking around
and climbing mountains>
" I think readers want to read about details when
it
comes to fighting. If I were to write something
similar to The last Samurai (which is a movie, I
know), I would describe every move, every gesture,
every thrust of the sword. I wouldn't do something
like Shakespeare in Hamlet: "Hamlet and Laertes
fought."
What do you think? How much is needed? Is it desirable
to describe "...every move, every gesture,
every thrust of the sword"? And if so, how do we
describe it?
Scribite!
kent