: Re: Can a fight scene, component-wise, be too complex and complicated? Okay, there is some preliminary information for you to be able to answer this question: There is a sword of great power, a

@Welton431

Vote Up Vote Down

Can a fight scene, component-wise, be too complex and complicated?

In general I don't think so. If what you mean by "component-wise" you mean the motivations and back-stories of the people fighting it, the only limit on that is the capacity of reader's memory to absorb and remember distinctly that many characters before the fight.

But you only have 10 "gangs", and the human capacity can easily absorb that, IF you have devoted enough story-time to each of them and made them distinct emotional characters.

I don't know about your family, but I had several siblings and twice as many cousins, most of whom now have children, spouses, friends and lovers. Generally I go to my brother's rather large house and yard for Christmas Afternoon and Dinner, I have counted forty people there; and known every name, profession (at least previous profession, sometimes they change), and legal trouble they might have. And that's just family and their close friends, it doesn't count the professors and staff I know at the university, and students I learn the names of every semester. Or, for that matter, the names and life stories of my neighbors and friends outside of family or the university.

The human capacity for new and memorable people can easily handle the characters you propose, for the span of time it takes to read a book.

The First Difficulty part is finding the space to make them memorable individuals instead of cardboard props without any depth.

The Second Difficulty is the technical aspect of writing an epic battle, which is already covered by Galastel and others. You probably need to jump from POV to POV, or pairs of POV, and accept that not every decision and move will be represented.

There are ways to handle that. Pre-Battle, strategies can be discussed by generals, so the reader is aware of what each expects to happen; this can also create tension if the reader becomes aware that what sounded like a good strategy from John is then anticipated by Kevin's strategy, which may well defeat John.

A second way to handle it is, when you switch POV, Larry has been distracted but given a chance to assess his situation realizes some other things have already happened; e.g. Larry looks up and realizes his ally John has lost more than half his men to Kevin, and will never break Kevin's defense, thus Larry is screwed and must regroup. This approach is "showing" Larry in action and thinking but also "telling" the reader about what happened to John.

So between pre-strategy and post-assessment, we feel like we know the outcome of John's battle, without having seen a single element of it.

These things take time to craft; you need to fully imagine the whole battle from every POV and why it turns out the way it does, but then figure out the shortcuts you can use to convey information pre-Battle, and then specifically which POV should report each turning-point in the battle, and what that POV can tell the reader about what we did not take time to show the reader; what has happened off-screen.

But these are mechanics, the number of components and their inter-relationships is not too much at all.

(0)

Login to post a comment!