: Re: How to write montages in prose? (fantasy novel) cue Team America song Okay, now that you know I like to have fun with my writing... I'd like to write a montage in prose fiction. It would

@LarsenBagley300

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So there are three types of montages that we could do and I'm going to give three classifications based on montages in works that were widely seen. In each case, the montage relies on basic principles. First, the teacher sucessfully accopmplishes the task of the training, and steps the student through the the task. Then the student performs the first iteration of the montage, in which the student fails (in a funny way). Each iteration after will show only the point of failure and the reaction to the task. The Montage goes on until the student finds the way of success.

The Bargain of Doctor Strange : In which I break the rule as this isn't a training montage so no master shows the successful task first, though the set up is pretty simple. In the film "Dr. Strange" the titular Doc goes to offer the extradiminsion entity Dormomu a bargin. Strange will lift the time loop he placed both of them in, if Dormomu promises not to destroy Earth. Dormomu laughs at Doctor Strange for his arrogance and kills him in a rather painful way... only for Doctor Strange to come in and make the exact same demand, confusing Dormomu who kills Strange in a different way. The cycle repeats, and each iteration cuts the sequence of extra material until it's just the first line Strange says when he enters ("Dormomu I've come to Bargin") and another egregious death (the deaths are always different, and are increasingly painful and complex each time, and there becomes a point where the audience is laughing from just "Dormomu I've Come to Bargin dies"). Here, the "student" is going to train with only one task and it's implied that we aren't going to see all iterations but the few we are shown were especially good failures. Time need not apply, but it's generally accepted that large parts of the training were skipped. It can be easy to port as the narrator needs to only set the goal and the first failure and then describe the student's myriad of failure results.
The Ridiculous Bogart : This is similar to the "Bargin" montage, but instead of one student, there are many masters. The scene lending the name is from Book 2 in Harry Potter where the Defense against the Dark Arts class takes turns practicing how to fight against a Bogart, which will take the shape of the thing it's attacker most fears... and the counter is a magic spell that will make things look silly because the way to defeat fear is laughing at it. Here, there can be multiple sucesses or failures, and the interesting thing to montage and thus reduce each sequence too, is based on individual characters, not bizzare failure results. Again, the first interation will show the student being talked through what's happening, the spell being cast, and the silly results. The remaining scenes will show the student, the fear, and the results. Often this will stop when the hero takes his/her turn and not have a flashy or personalized way of dealing with the problem.

3 Be A Man Like the Bogart in that there are more than one students, unlike the Bogart and Bargin, it's going to show different tasks as well. Each task will fail as a result of one of the students after being demonstrated. Usually, each iteration features a unique student failing a unique task, and the tasks need little set up by the master after the first few show he is demonstrating correctly. The student's success is usually over the next iteration, which plays out in ways that show off unique ways to complete the objective. The name comes from the "Be A Man" sequence in Mulan, where Mulan and her friends are all shown being terrible at their tasks (with some being incapable, while others are a result of mean spirt-ness). It contains a bogart and bargin in set ups, as the "Retireve the Arrow" at the start is failed uniquely by each student, and then repeated by one student failing multiple times until success). Again, here time can pass and usually is assumed to pass longer, as each task is assumed to be failed by everyone, and multiple times too. (I debated calling this "Dead Bunny" after Judy's training montage in Zootopia.).

In all cases, montoages rely on repeated cues for set ups followed by unique failures or successes in each attempt. Occasionally, you can have a similar task with a new added item to help overcome, but this isn't necessary. Depending on the task, in written word, the idea is to descrive things going on and various different things that happen. Start with the most common failures (nothing happened), then move on to uncommon failures, then to extremely notable, and finally, a failure that even the master concedes he honestly can't tell what the hell caused it.

If you want to take it to meta levels, you can even have the master set it to flashy montage music (usually 80s... and usually fast, upbeat, and very much something you can dance too). Think "Eye of the Tiger" or "Holding out for a Hero". In real life, First Aid classes will often deliberately set their CPR lessons to "Stayin' Alive" or "I will Survive" as not only are both very fitting mindsets that reflect CPR, but the song's rhythm is identical to the parts that contain the title lyrics.

And of course, if you want to deliberately call to the mind you're doing a cliche montage, perhaps have the student, on first failure openly state it's "80s Montage time* and request that the master play some 80s music... at which point the master chooses songs that are not good for Montage... after all, 80s music includes "Acky Breaky Heart" and "Uptown Girl" which are well known songs of the era... but aren't something you would train too. Alternatively, have the master start with a proper montage song, and as you describe the continued training, acknowledge the student can't get the song out of her head and how annoying it is hearing it for the umpteenth time... only for the end of the montage to reveal the entire training from failure to mastery took place over a single play through of the song.

Either way, in books you want to set up with a very descriptive sequence for sucess and first failure, and pick out strong cues that will be repeated and be creative in the results of each iteration. If you want something like Rocky Training, you might want to do chapters for each task, or describe the typical work out routine and the monotony of training and when milestones occur.

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