Fighting

For those who have read Jeremiah Stone, you are aware of the fight scenes within the story. However, I doubt they understand just how difficult it is to write a good battle, after all it doesn’t seem that difficult. Right? Well, maybe.

One-on-one fights I find pretty easy to write because it they are easy to picture within my mind and therefore easy to put onto paper, though it does take a knack to make it believable. As the number within the battle grows, however, it becomes more difficult. For instance, I take the initial fight between Eris and Jeremiah verses the fight between Jeremiah and the demons in the subway tunnel.

For myself, when Jeremiah fought Eris the only difficultly I had was remembering that Eris’ goal was not to kill Jeremiah, but rather to kill Zygi. It was something Jeremiah forgot during her initial attack and remembered just in time. The only other problem was dealing with how Zygi would deal with Jeremiah and Eris since he was the only one who had a gun. Its little details like this which get the writer in trouble during fight scenes. I mean the writer had to keep track of each person’s primary motivation: Eris wants to kill Zygi. Jeremiah wants to take Zygi captive. Zygi wants to see what Jeremiah is capable of, though not succumb to either Jeremiah or Eris. In this way the scene was difficult, though only three people were involved.

In the subway tunnel, Jeremiah took on six demons (if I remember correctly), though three of them he removed rather quickly. And from Jeremiah’s point of view, removing them quickly was a necessity. My problem was trying to visualize all of the demon’s movements with Jeremiah in the middle of it. Thankfully, a tunnel limits movement when dealing with numbers, which was to Jeremiah’s advantage. However, he also fought against three demons in the restaurant and was losing ground quickly. And in that instance, he would’ve lost altogether because it was a bigger, more open space. Had it not been for the sirens, he knew he would’ve died unless he could’ve retreated into the kitchen where space was more confined.

I guess the truth of it comes down to tactics, something I don’t see in every movie or read in every book. It is, however, something I’m aware of and try desperately to write toward in order to make the scene as realistic as possible. I hope you enjoy my efforts.

On another note, I’ve got the go ahead to write the story based on my friends idea as long as I give him initial credit for the concept. I’ve also come up with another idea for a book based on gypsy culture and astrology invoking powers within select people. Though I’m not sure when I’ll get to either, I think both might be fun to write.