Wednesday and Thursday were fairly productive writing days. Friday and Saturday were not. Sunday and Monday were slightly more so. I am beginning to get back on track, but I definitely have issues with focusing-- any advice? (Apart from getting off the internet.)
We'll see if I can't make the playlist and the headphones work for me a little better this afternoon.
Today's post is brought to you by the letter "B", for "battle scenes".
They are the bane of my existence. The very idea of the battle scene terrifies me, and I know that is the main reason I've not been as productive as I should have been the past couple of days (apart from, of course, being easily distracted and just plain lazy). I suppose it's just that everything I know about battles from the era that my novel is set in (sort of a mashup of Medieval and Renaissance type eras, with tweaks of my own making because I can) comes from novels that I've read and some side research that I've done.
In the first book of this series, I managed to avoid having to write any actual battle because the theme of Book 1 was intrigue (actually, the theme of the entire quartet is intrigue, but I digress). Book 2's theme is, without question, war, and avoiding battle scenes would not only be a cop-out but also wouldn't make sense in the slightest, nor be at all fair to my story. So I can't avoid these scenes-- in particular, there are two scenes that I like to call BIG BAD BATTLES (mostly because the capital letters make me smile), but there are also a couple of smaller skirmishes that happen "on camera", so to speak.
The skirmishes, oddly, are what terrify me the most. With the BIG BAD BATTLES, the main events/outcomes involve lots of emotional reaction and so I am counting on the character's viewpoints of the battle to carry me through. With the skirmishes, the point of the first one (the one I am avoiding) is for the characters to be able to learn the fighting style of their enemies.
I suppose that's my problem. I don't know the fighting style of their enemies.
Perhaps I should work on that little worldbuilding detail and then try to write the scene. It may just make my life that much simpler.
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