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Topic : A written action scene, interrupted? My comic novel has a scene in which the hero is battling a monster. And at a moment of tension, where he's losing badly, there's a scene break in which - selfpublishingguru.com

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My comic novel has a scene in which the hero is battling a monster. And at a moment of tension, where he's losing badly, there's a scene break in which the narrator goes into a brief digression. After the break, we return to the battle, where more stuff happens and the hero wins.

My readers don't like the digression. They say it "takes them out of the story". I must be doing it wrong, because I'm sure I've seen books do this well.

How can a digression in the middle of a tense battle be done well?

I'd like to have a brief break in the written action scene that comes off more like a cliffhanger and less of an interruption.

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It sounds like what you want is a narrative structure similar to the recent Deadpool film, where the main character frequently breaks the fourth wall, has voiceover narration of ongoing events, flashes backwards and forwards in linear time, and generally metas all over the place.

If you establish this kind of Moebius strip narrative from the beginning, your readers may be more accepting of it happening in the middle of the big boss takedown. But if you do it for the first time at a crucial moment, then no matter how funny the rest of the novel is, you're breaking the suspension of disbelief.

So do it early and often, and teach your reader that at any point you might interrupt the action with narration, flashback, poetry, or random jokes. Whether the particular fight works will then require fine-tuning, but the effect should be less jarring.

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