All Write - Fiction Advice

Part 1 looked at the ways writers can come unstuck when writing fight scenes and the common errors they should avoid, particularly with clichés, stilted dialogue (and action), and info dumps. This week we’ll look at the ways to formulate fight scenes and “choreograph” them properly so that they appear dynamic, interesting and compelling for the reader. More importantly, they should appear realistic as opposed to unrealistic and completely unbelievable. The important thing to these kinds of scenes – or any with conflict – is the actions and reactions of your main character, based on his/her personality and character, which has already been established within the story. In other words, if your character is a mild mannered type of person who is rather laid-back and has no specialist knowledge of martial arts or combat, then his fighting skills should reflect this. With practice, fight scenes can be much easier to get to grips with than writers think. Creating realistic fig...

Not many stories pass without some heavy conflict or a fight scene or two to maintain some pace and action, and bolster the reader’s interest, but writers are not always sure how to write fight scenes, and if they do, the result often doesn’t work so well. When we think of these conflicts, we think of something that’s fast paced, dynamic, tense and full of action. This also means the characters have to be dynamic, too. But if fight scenes are not well written or don’t engage the reader, they may lose interest or they might skim read to get back to the story. The thing with fight scenes is that they either work or they don’t, and there are a number of reasons they don’t, such as being so contrived that they’re almost laughable, or sometimes they contain stilted dialogue more akin to something from an old black and white noir movie. Worse still, they’re rammed with clichés. That’s because writers have simply copied what they’ve seen in movies, so it’s best to cut these bad habi...

Last week, we looked at why we there are plot twists and the different styles of plot twist available to writers, so in this second part, we’ll look at how to set them up and how they work. We’ve already established that plot twists are important to keep the story dynamic and interesting for the reader, and it’s a good way of moving the story forward. Plot Twists Should Happen for a Reason There is a very good reason why writers use plot twists, other than to keep the reader turning the page, and that is to advance the main plot. If you use a plot twist, there must be a reason behind it, something that must be related to the main story and/or the characters in some way, otherwise they won’t work. The wonderful thing about them is that they are like the surface of the ocean – there are all manner of things going on at the surface, but somewhere beneath the waves something is stirring. Creating effective plot twists takes some practice because the idea is for the reader to ...

A story plot isn’t static – every plot has to have a few dramatic twists and turns in order to keep the story dynamic and interesting for the reader. Plot twists are a useful way of keeping the reader guessing; it keeps them invested in the story – they have to keep reading in order to find out what happens next. The plot twist is just that – it twists in another direction unexpectedly. They should be constructed in such a way that the reader won’t expect it, or predict it. It’s that element of surprise is what makes a plot twist effective. Not only that, they have to be plausible, which means they should be directly related to the plot, otherwise they just won’t work. So how do you even start to put a plot twist in place? That relies entirely on the kind of story you’re telling and the characters that inhabit the story. The most successful plot twists pull the rug from beneath the reader’s feet and catch them off guard, but in order to achieve that, you first have set up the...