In the meantime, your favorite Night Shade Books authors haven’t been sitting around idly! For example:

Richard Lee Byers is currently scripting the sixth graphic novel in the Basil and Moebius series and waiting for his cover artist to work her magic on The Imposter #2: The Blood Machine, the second volume in his post-apocalyptic superhero ebook series, and The Plague Knight and other stories, a collection of his heroic fantasy stories. Richard plans on being a program participant at Oasis 26 in Orlando, Fla., over Memorial Day weekend, so if you’re heading out there, go say hello!

Betsy Dornbusch is currently working on Emissary, the sequel to her novel Exile, which is due out next year…in theory, at least. In the meantime, she has a story coming out in the anthology Manifesto:UF later this year, and is busy editing the e-zine Electric Spec. Plus, she’s managed to find time to write a space opera series and another book because, as she puts it, she’s apparently insane.

Teresa Frohock‘s short story, “Naked the Night Sings,” has been accepted for Tim Marquitz’s Manifesto: UF anthology.

Gini Koch just released her latest book, Alien in the House, the seventh in her Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series. She’ll be at Phoenix ComicCon on May 23-26 and Arizona Dreamin’ from May 31-June 2. If you’re going to either, be sure to find her!

Ross Lockhart is busy putting the finishing touches on Tales of Jack the Ripper, an anthology due out August 31 from Word Horde. He also has a handful of short stories accepted in various venues, including the Current 93-themed anthology Mighty in Sorrow.

Michael J. Martinez has begun serializing a novella, The Gravity of the Affair, on his website. The story is set in the historical fantasy setting of his debut novel, The Daedalus Incident, and follows the first command of a young Horatio Nelson among the moons of Jupiter. Meanwhile, The Daedalus Incident awaits a new publication date, which is now expected in July or August should all go well with the acquisition deal. There have also been a couple of great reviews. Mike will be attending Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose later this week, and is planning to attend WorldCon in San Antonio in late August, so feel free to stop and say hi if you see him.

J.M. McDermott is wrapping up work on the third book of the Dogsland trilogy, coming in late autumn from Word Horde.

Courtney Schafer is working hard on the third and final novel of her Shattered Sigil trilogy, The Labyrinth of Flame. The release date is uncertain at this point, but she hopes to finish the book this year. In the mean time, you can keep with her online on her blog, on Twitter, and at the BookSworn author collective. You can also find her at WorldCon in San Antonio, MileHiCon in Denver, and the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold conference.

E.J. Swift has stories in two upcoming anthologies. The first is a reprint of a story first published in the January-February 2012 issue of Interzone magazine, titled “The Complex,” which will be included in The Best British Fantasy 2013 from Salt Publishing, due out this month. The second is a story in a brand new collection from Jurassic London title Pandemonium: The Lowest Heaven, due in June. Each story in the latter anthology is inspired by a celestial body in the Solar System, and will be published in partnership with the Royal Observatory. Her contribution is titled “Saga’s Children,” and is inspired by the dwarf planet Ceres. The gorgeous cover art is by artist Joey Hi-Fi. And if that’s not enough, she’s continuing to work on The Osiris Project trilogy, with book two, Cataveiro, scheduled for U.K. publication in September.

Carol Wolf‘s latest book, Coyote Run, co-authored with Eric Elliott, will be published May 29 by FastForeward.

Hopefully we’ll have some acquisition news soon. In the meantime, be sure to check out these and other Night Shade authors on their blogs, Facebook, Twitter, carrier pigeon, whatever. We’d like to thank everyone for all the support and good wishes we’ve received while all this has been going on. If you want to support Night Shade’s authors further, please go ahead and buy or pre-order more of our stuff!

If you follow Night Shade Books as a publisher, or closely follow pretty much any of its authors, you probably know that NSB has agreed to sell its assets to Skyhorse Publishing and Start Media. If you want some more info on this, I suggest Publisher’s Weekly and io9.com for coverage without a lot of angst or opinion-slinging.

So what’s this mean for your favorite authors and/or favorite publisher? A lot of that’s up in the air right now, because in order for the acquisition to go forward, Skyhorse and Start need a critical mass of authors to agree to have their books and contracts acquired from NSB. Honestly, the permutations of all this are too much to get into right now, and I’m the last guy who’s gonna dish on my own personal views — especially when I’m taking up server space on the publisher’s dime!

I will go ahead and state what I feel to be the obvious: NSB is doing this because it feels like it’s the best option it has right now, and Skyhorse and Start see an opportunity to grow their businesses. We authors have a wide variety of opinions on the matter, as you can imagine; if you’re interested in reading those, I suggest you find the blogs/Twitter/Facebook of your favorite authors to see what they’re thinking. I’ll also note that SFWA has done an incredible job working with everyone involved, keeping everyone informed and providing a strong dose of perspective.

So…what can you, as Night Shade readers and SF/F fans do right about now? Sorry to disappoint you, but this won’t be a call for flag-waving on the battlements. Go watch Les Miz for that.

While this is a stressful time for the authors, and undoubtedly for NSB and Skyhorse/Start, we’re really just huddling with each other and our agents to figure out what’s best for our past, present and future works. It’s a business decision, and while some of it has played out online for all to see, it’s ultimately a personal, individual decision for each author. What’s best for me may not be the same as for someone else. We each have to do our best to look at things objectively and dispassionately and make the best decision we can.

The best thing you can do, I think, is to just let your favorite authors know that you appreciate their writing and are rooting for them, whatever they decide. Same goes for NSB. If you’ve been a fan of Night Shade’s books over the years, I’m pretty sure dropping them an e-mail to that effect would be a karmically good thing to do as well.

And that’s all I got. Like I said, I’m on vacation!

Michael J. Martinez is the author of The Daedalus Incident, which is due out in bookstores and ebook formats on May 7 unless someone tells him otherwise. He blogs at www.michaeljmartinez.net and Tweets at @mikemartinez72. Neither venue will contain a great deal of vitriol about this or, frankly, many other topics because that’s just how he rolls.

The opinions expressed above, few in number as they are, are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of anybody else involved in these matters, including NSB, Skyhorse, Start, any other author or party, etc.

Last week, Richard wrote that rules can be stifling, and I admit, I may have gotten up on my soapbox when I was talking about realism in SF/F. Richard is absolutely right in that writers should indeed be encouraged to bend, break, mutilate and spindle the rules in search of a good story.

My only addendum to that would be…so long as they can pull it off.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a pretty hide-bound writer when it comes to craft. Part of this is because I’m a rank newbie. I don’t have a desk-drawer full of practice novels; The Daedalus Incident is pretty much it, and I’m obviously excited and gratified that I managed to get this first effort published.

That said, I spent 15 years as a journalist and another five-plus in corporate communications, and I wrote a few non-fiction books as well. I think my craft is very much informed by that experience, which isn’t that conducive to rule-breaking. I remember writing a piece for the 75th anniversary of the 1929 stock crash; my big idea was to intersperse my article with wire reports dating from the actual crash. The approval chain to get that done was rather onerous, and certainly didn’t encourage further innovation.

I was very comfortable with using those reports, however, and I think the piece turned out well. I was confident enough in my writing to try it, fail if need be, learn from mistakes and try again. Obviously, my comfort level with journalism-style writing remains very high. Fiction less so, hence rules.

I’ve tried a few exercises in breaking and bending my own rules, and since you haven’t read such exercises, you can easily imagine how they went. As I do more fiction and get more experience under my belt, I may stumble upon some unique expression that totally blows convention out of the water. And chances are, when I’m comfortable enough with my own skills, you might see it in print somewhere.

I’m very much supportive of writers trying new things and breaking the rules. I think the key to doing it is to be exceptionally comfortable with it and to not be self-conscious about it. (I know, right? Here I am, making rules on breaking rules. Paradox take me!) I’m pretty forgiving of writers who really try something new but may not get all the way there with it, no matter where there is. It’s usually worth the effort. And if it’s a neat concept with a good effort behind it, I’m on board. Good effort, can’t wait to see the next.

If the rule-breaking doesn’t serve the story, though, or even actively overshadows it, well, then I’m not sure it’s a wise undertaking.

Then again, that’s me. When it comes to any and all rules, I’ll be happily proven wrong.

Michael J. Martinez breaks a few rules here and there, most notably the speed limit on the New Jersey Turnpike and the “no refills” sign at various soda fountains. He does, however, recycle assiduously and pay his taxes on time. He’s also the author of The Daedalus Incident, coming out May 7. He blogs at www.michaeljmartinez.net and is on Twitter at @mikemartinez72, where he very occasionally flaunts the terms of service.

I sort of agree with all of that. It’s the way I try to write most of my own stories. Still, that said…

When we writers discuss our craft, we tend to proclaim The Rules. If we didn’t, it would be difficult to address the subject clearly and succinctly.

Yet almost inevitably, what the giver of such advice is really providing is tips for writing the type of story he turns out himself, and a good thing, too. That’s what he has to share that’s apt to prove helpful to others.

But there are different types of fiction. Stories strive for differing effects and employ differing methods to achieve them. In the genre of the fantastic, we have tales, some of them masterpieces, that deliberately embrace the inexplicable and preposterous and eschew that which is relatable in any conventional sense.

We even see some of this in high fantasy. In The Lord of the Rings, Middle-Earth impresses the reader as credible because the setting mostly operates like the real world. Supernatural phenomena like magic spells and spectral Ringwraiths don’t stir our disbelief because Tolkien keeps them within bounds.

But in The Silmarillion, things are different. The author chronicles a time when the sun and moon did not yet exist, but the Earth did. It even supported a thriving population of Elves thanks to the two magical trees that lit things up.

Even postulating the reality of magic, that’s crazy on a whole other level from anything in Lord of the Rings. There’s really no way to sell it with internal logic and realistic detail. Yet we buy into it because it feels right that a primordial age is defined in mythic terms.

It’s horror, though, that exploits unresolved mystery, blatant absurdity, and the unfathomably strange to greatest effect, most famously, perhaps, in the tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft proposes that human reason and perception are incapable of comprehending the terrifying entities and forces lurking behind the façade of mundane existence. We can catch glimpses, perhaps in our hubris imagine we understand, but if we really get hip to even a little bit of What’s Out There, we’ll go as bananas as the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.

It’s a premise that largely frees authors from the constraints of plausibility because an assault on our common-sense notions of what’s possible is the point, and those who follow in Lovecraft’s footsteps continue to exploit it to eerie effect. In W. H. Pugmire’s stories of the Sequa Valley, certain mystical phenomena make the stars flit around in the sky like fireflies. Like Tolkien’s Two Trees doing the work of the sun and moon, this really ought to be make us cry, “Bullshit!” But served up in the proper style and context, it doesn’t.

The context doesn’t always have to be cosmic terror in the Lovecraft tradition. Some horror stories that dispense with realism work on a psychological or existential level. In “The Town Manager,” Thomas Ligotti doesn’t spend a word trying to convince us the events he describes are plausible. The resulting surrealism creates the feeling of nightmare.

Ligotti’s work also demonstrates the extent to which a fine writer can sometimes get away with a piece that isn’t relatable as the term is commonly understood. “The Red Tower” literally has no characters. It would be tough to get less relatable that that. But the story’s chilling.

You’ll notice I said “fine” and “sometimes.”  That’s because it’s unquestionably easier for the average writer to create an effective story if he shoots for a realistic effect. Still, it’s worth knowing that the various components of realism are only some of the colors in our crayon boxes. From time to time, it may prove worthwhile to break out the others.

No matter whether you’re writing about wizards or aliens or eldritch horrors, stories have to have at least some degree realism — truthiness, if you will. The stories need to make sense, to be told with authority, and to be relatable. That can be hard, especially when you start getting into a very involved, very detailed setting and plot. But it has to happen.

First off, the reader is going to know when you’re cutting corners or getting lost in your own work. A genre setting needs to make sense in order to further the suspension of disbelief. Do you have flying cats? Well, you have to show the reader not only why that’s important, but also how the little furballs took flight. If you have a magic system, it has to work according to well thought-out rules — Peter V. Brett’s rune magic comes to mind. Faster than light travel? How do you do that, exactly?

This comes from logic and research. If you’re writing fantasy, you have to really come up with a reason for why things are the way they are, and you have to think through the chain of events and history to ensure there are good reasons. For example, The Daedalus Incident has sailing ships in space. OK, fine. How’d they get there? Alchemy, because in this setting, alchemy is a Mystic Science, not mere puffery. How was this discovered? One of Columbus’ ships literally took a wrong turn en route to the New World…and ended up on the Moon. What has that done to history? The colonization of the New World was replaced with the colonization of the Solar System.

And so on. You have to follow that chain of thought to get the big questions answered. Same goes for science-fiction. At least we have futurists and research to help us envision what things might be like, but we have to do that homework, and we have to think it through.

That’s where authority comes in. If you leave something open-ended, have a good reason, likely one that can inform future plots. Don’t hedge. Own your setting and show you’ve thought it through. You don’t have to bog the story down with exposition, but you can work on building that setting gradually as the story develops. When I plan out a novel, I make sure to note possible setting elements to introduce throughout the work. Even if they’re throw-aways that don’t really come back later, they illustrate the amount of thought and research that went into the book, and that adds to my authority as a storyteller. Plus, they might make nifty hooks later.

Finally, you have to be relatable. Why do you think SF/F is populated with (mostly) humanoids? Because writing about quad-sexual amorphous sentient algae with telepathy and a quantum-based thought process is pretty much the most confusing thing you could tackle. (Not that I’ve tried.) Stories are, in the end, about ourselves, no matter how we dress them up. I believe SF/F allows us to explore some of the most extreme aspects of the human experience, because no humans have really faced the plots and settings we devise. But the reader still needs to empathize with the characters and believe that they, too, could be part of these worlds.

So while SF/F is about as unreal and surreal as you can get, there has to be some “real” in there to make it memorable.

Michael J. Martinez is the author of The Daedalus Incident, coming May 7 from Night Shade Books, and he did his best to keep it real while writing about mad alchemists, sailing ships, Martian mining colonies and ancient aliens…all in the same book. Want to read more? Enter the Goodreads giveaway for your chance to win a copy of the book before it comes out. Mike blogs at www.michaeljmartinez.net and Tweets at @mikemartinez72.

The fact of the matter is, though, that this is another subject I already covered in a blog post back in 2011, and I find I don’t have anything new to say. So with your indulgence, I’m once again going to take the lazy way out and repost a lightly edited version of that little essay here. I hope you enjoy it.

HOW REAL DO YOU WANT IT?

People sometimes lose bladder control when they’re terrified, and going into mortal combat for the first time is surely terrifying for many. When someone has just been killed or mortally wounded, he sometimes evacuates his bowels.

Bearing these facts in mind, remember the Company of the Ring in the Mines of Moria, with the orcs, trolls, and eventually the Balrog closing in. The hobbits have had some close calls before this, but this is the first time they’re going to draw their blades and fight for their lives.

Now, my question to you is this: Would you have enjoyed The Fellowship of the Ring more if Tolkien had told you Frodo and his buddies from the Shire peed their breeches, or that a thick stench filled the air as dying orcs took dumps in theirs?

How about Star Wars? Would the movies be more fun if dying Stormtroopers were crapping in their armor on all sides?

Taste is an individual thing, so I hesitate to generalize. But I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that for most of us, the answer is no.

My point is that a writer needs to consider the tone and dramatic effect he’s going for, include details that will support them, and omit details that will undermine them.  In real life, killing a foe up close and personal is a brutal, nasty business even if it’s a master like Miyamoto Musashi doing the slaughtering. But if you’re writing a lighthearted story about a daredevil hero who cracks jokes as he swashbuckles his way unscathed through peril after peril, that’s not the way you want to play it.

And there’s nothing wrong with writing that swashbuckler. As long as you succeed in entertaining, it doesn’t matter that your depiction of combat isn’t realistic. In fiction, which is untrue by definition, realism isn’t an end in itself. It’s an approach. It’s one tool in the writer’s toolbox.

Of course, in a different kind of story, it’s a tool you can use to good effect. In fact, if your tone and general subject matter have conveyed to the reader that by God, he’d better fasten his seatbelt and have his barf bag on his knee, because this is going to be gritty, you have little choice but to deliver on that. Otherwise, your audience will stop taking the story seriously.

My impression is that few modern fantasy writers actually deliver either the squeaky clean violence of an Errol Flynn movie or the uncompromising gruesomeness of a splatter flick. Most of us work somewhere in the middle.

Of course, there’s more to realism than how graphic and disgusting you get with the blood, guts, and excreta. One staple of vintage swashbuckling movies is the protracted duel between the hero and the main villain, both of whom are master swordsmen. On and on it goes, as the combatants fight on tabletops, up and down staircases, kick furniture at each other, swing on chandeliers, etc. For an example, check out the climactic fight in the theater in Stewart Grainger’s Scaramouche.

I’m a fencer, and I’ve watched many other fencers, some of them extremely accomplished, play our game, and I’m pretty darn sure this kind of thing rarely if ever happened. Once somebody starts attacking in earnest, either he scores or his opponent scores in under a minute. Often, within a very few seconds.

Now admittedly, sport fencing, where you’re only fighting for fun or a medal, is different than fighting for your life. The great fencer Aldo Nadi fought one actual duel and wrote about it in his autobiography. Dueling required him to abandon flashy, explosive attacks and employ a more cautious and basic form of swordplay.

We can assume other real-life combatants might well take it slow at first. They’d stay out of the distance, circle, feel each other out, and look for openings. Still, once someone decided to make his move, either he or his adversary (or both) would likely draw blood shortly thereafter.

Does this mean you should never write the protracted duel? No. It means you should recognize it’s swashbuckling romanticism, not realism, and if your story has been realistic up until now, the shift may put readers off.

Speaking of protracted, a writer also needs to evaluate how many moves to describe in detail. If your hero is standing in a shield wall fighting wave after wave of onrushing goblins, it’s probably a bad idea to lay out, cut by cut and shield block by shield block, how he slays every one of the critters that end up heaped in a bloody mound before him. You risk turning what should be thrilling into tedium. The sequence is likely to work better if you only go into detail about killing the first one or two goblins, one or two critical moments in the middle of the battle, and how it all works out in the end.

Finally, let me note that there is a kind of realism that’s important in any action scene, no matter how swashbuckling or flamboyant the story. The fight choreography has to make sense on its own terms.

I recently read a James Bond novel written by one of the writers who continued the character after Ian Fleming’s death. On one page, Bond is handcuffed. A little farther along, he isn’t.

The novel is full of glitches like that. And in a story where the action scenes are critical to the reader’s enjoyment, they absolutely ruin it.

So don’t write a scene where the hero is in front of his enemy one instant and then behind him the next, with no explanation of how he got there. Don’t have the hero and villain grappling and then say one of them runs at the other. It won’t work. You have to visualize a fight and be sure the sequence of moves actually could unfold in the way you want.

If you doubt your ability to do that, the other option is a less detailed, more impressionistic style of writing. Just tell the audience the hero cut down the ogre with a whirlwind flurry of slashes and let it go at that.

So… in the comments, just state your guess by next Wednesday (March 27th), and if you’re right you’ll be entered into the random drawing! You may — MAY! — get an extra pass into the drawing if you say something amusing or simply insulting in defense of your choice.

Here goes…

Which one of the following ten statements about me is true?

1. My pet capuchin monkey has not one but two third nipples… which I guess would make only one a third nipple and the other a fourth nipple. Still. I like saying that he has two third nipples. It’s, I don’t know, cuter or something.

2. I don’t celebrate Christmas.

3. In early 2008, I wrote a short story about a little girl with a strange power that gave her control over crustaceans. It was called “The Girl What Oystered.” It won the Nebula Award for Best Undersea Story, a category only offered that year.

4. I’m an absolute idiot for sitcoms from the 80s and 90s. I’ve seen every episode of Cheers and Frasier dozens and dozens of times. I often eat a 6,000 to 10,000 calorie meal while watching an hour of television I’ve literally seen on 40 other occasions.

5. Since the age of 19, I’ve only held two jobs. From 1999-2007, I worked for a company that sells edible mushroom-growing kits. From 2008-on, I’ve been an insurance salesman, selling piece of mind to people who fear what the apocalypse will result in massive flooding of their basements. With blood.

6. When I was a kid, my brother shot me in the thigh with an arrow. It got infected and I was in the hospital for about two weeks, nearly losing my leg in the process. As a result, I have a deathly fear of arrows and any other long pieces of wood with feathers attached.

7. No Return is actually not my debut novel. I’ve written several others under my real name, Nathanial Penisburg. They are all about mutants with three nipples who get shot by arrows. Grim, grim stuff. Also, unicorns.

8. I hate taking baths, especially with a glass of wine and a book. Soaking in my own filth? Sooooooo not me.

9. My least favorite author in the world is Roger Zelazny. Despite a few comparisons that have been made between my own work and his, I find his prose to be pretentious and his characters to be entirely lacking in originality. I’m insulted immensely by the comparison, in fact. Now, if someone thought I wrote like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., I could die a happy man.

10. I think that books with explicit sex scenes should be labeled. And then burned.

Let’s talk action. Fight scenes are a nigh-universal topic for genre writers, and given that I’ve written a wide variety of battle scenes in The Daedalus Incident, I feel I’m on firm ground here. After all, the book includes two separate ship engagements in the Void and one upon the seas of Venus, a full-scale boarding action, several gun battles and sword fights, a Martian sand beast and 22^nd century astronauts with microwave emitters trying to contain rioting miners.

And that’s before the climax.

There’s a lot of moving parts in battle, and unless you’re dealing with a particularly key duel between two people, it’s tough to cover every single bit of the action. As Betsy pointed out, a detailed analysis of every parry and riposte would become tiresome. Furthermore, realistic combat takes very little time. If you caught the Olympics this past summer, you might have noticed the speed at which the fencing matches took place, with each point determined in probably ten seconds or less. Cinematic sword play and firefights have their place, but unless you have a good reason for drawing out that tension, they can bore quickly.

When writing action and battle sequences, I adhere very closely to a single character’s point-of-view. Getting into the heads of multiple combatants can result in a lot of thinking and words spilled over less than a minute of narrative time. I also tend to build the tension well before shots are fired and steel meets steel. People who have experienced combat have reported immense tension heading into a potential battle situation and incredible stress afterward – but during, they’re just on, allowing their training to take over. Building up tension before, and the shakes after, can be very effective.

When it comes to the actual melee, I tend to be economical with my writing. Nobody wants to read about crimson droplets of spilt blood streaming down the sides of pitted steel as the barbarian, with a wicked smile upon his horrible mien, reaches back for the final, mighty, killing blow.

See what I did there? I described a split second of action in a sentence Twitter would reject as too long. Action is fast. The hero dodges, backs up. Enraged, the barbarian swings blindly. Ducking, the hero swipes his blade across his foe’s abdomen. Another scream. Another wild swing. But the barbarian’s tired now, clutching his midsection. The hero knows. It’s time to end this.

Again, see what I did there? Staccato sentences – even sentence fragments (gasp!) – can build tension. That’s not to say you have to go Full Hemingway, but it’s a neat little trick.

Now, the nice thing is, you can focus on your hero defeating the barbarian, then when said baddie is dispatched to his final reward, you can draw back and give a fuller accounting of the great battle in which this duel took place. You could even pull in and out, from micro to macro, in the course of a long battle. Perhaps the general glances up to see his left flank collapsing, and shouts for reinforcements before diving into the fray once more. You get the idea.

My ship-to-ship engagements have run pretty much the same way, because in the end, you’re down to one ship against another, with the hundreds of souls on board each vessel working in concert. I stick with my POV character in these as well, because not only can you see the battle from a human perspective, but you can understand the carnage as well.

Now, I may play with all this in the future, but this is what worked for me in Daedalus. Especially with the sand beast. Terrible creature, that. Huge, sharp, nasty, pointy teeth.

Michael J. Martinez is the author of The Daedalus Incident, coming May 7. If you’d like to win an advance galley copy of the book, and see what all this business with the Martian sand beast is about, be sure to enter the Goodreads giveaway before March 28. In the meantime, you can check out Mike’s blog at www.michaeljmartinez.net and his Twitter feed at @mikemartinez72.

First a bit on my philosophy in employing action and fighting as a device:

• Action and fight scenes are primarily OBSTACLES. They often aren’t even indicative of the major conflict but are there to stand in the way of the protagonist getting what s/he wants.
• Thy often are FORESHADOWING. In a book I just finished, there is a fight scene between my antagonist and protagonist early on. That foreshadows their conflict and what is to come. It does a bunch of other things, too, actually: makes the antagonist and protagonist curious about each other and gives them a reason to resent each other. It builds tension between them. They don’t know each other and sparing puts them in conflict, even vaguely friendly conflict, right off. This doesn’t work with every character, but with my particular characters, this fight was the best way to launch their relationship.
• Fight scenes need lots of other things happening to work as the CLIMAX. I think it’s fine to use action and fight scenes as climactic scenes, but it’s worth noting that at the end of the climax, most of the other issues had better be resolved.
• It’s boring when your fighter is SO GOOD s/he can’t be beat. It’s not a crime for your hero to run away in the middle of the book.
• Real fights are quick and deadly and messy, especially close fights, like with a knife, especially if your fighter is good. If a fight goes on longer than a page or two, I’d better have a damn good reason.

Keep the fighter’s skill commiserate with their practice. Even Neo had to download the apps.

As far as actual blocking of scenes, don’t write every blow. First, you’re probably not competent enough to describe every blow, all the feints, defensive maneuvers, shifting of weight, balance, forms, etc. (I’ve certainly never fought with a sword though I’ve seen lots of fights in the SCA and on film). But mostly, writing every blow is as boring as writing about each button when someone gets dressed. Like in sex scenes (also action scenes, btw) too much specific action kills the tension.

That said, the specific blows and actions you do employ had better count and they had better be right. Well-placed detail lends credence and guides the reader, so get up and move. Block scenes out with someone. Use Barbies or  kids or whatever. Make sure your choreography is physically possible. Fights involve a lot of physics, especially a sword fight. If someone is outreached, they have to work out ways to work around it. If the opponent is taller or heavier, how does your protagonist defeat him or her? Everyone makes mistakes; is your fighter good enough to spot them? Or will s/he miss opportunities?

It’s also a  good idea to get some help from a professional. I have two reference people who know fighting: one who is a swordsman and another who is a fight expert. They are my go-to when it’s time to write action and fighting. You’ll see me ask the hive mind from time to time, especially when it comes to weapons. I take it for granted that I don’t know. And if I do know, then I’m probably re-purposing an old scene without realizing it.

I treat action scenes as learning opportunities.

(Really, that’s how I treat all of writing.)

(Which sounds totally pretentious, y’all. My apologies.)

Action is…active. It’s heavy breathing, adrenalin, and roaring blood; grunts and cries; sore muscles; fear and its close cousin hate; blood and sweat. Fighting is messy and loud. Hurt and dying people scream and beg. If you cut someone’s throat from the front, there’s no escaping the blood. You’re going to taste it. When someone dies their bowels and bladder void.  The scent of too much blood and bowels makes us physically ill. Action stinks. It tastes bad. It makes even hardened warriors throw up. And if they do, or if they don’t, what does it mean to your character? I think action scenes work best when they concentrate on CHARACTER. I approach fights and action scenes with MOOD, which is driven and shown by SENSATION and REACTION, which is intrinsically linked to your character. It’s a neat little circle there…

The piece was inspired by the Tim Burton movie Dark Shadows and talks quite a bit about it. In fact, on one level, it’s kind of a stealth review of the flick. Now, I realize that at this late date, it’s unlikely that you, Gentle Reader, are jonesing to read anyone’s opinion on this particular subject. But I hope the essay says some things of general significance with the Burton movie simply providing helpful examples of what I’m getting at. Anyway, onward!

HOW TO SPOOF (AND HOW NOT TO)

The first SF-related parody I recall experiencing was “Superduperman” by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood in the fourth issue of Mad. I’ve read or watched many others over the years, including Quark, the Adam West Batman series, Love at First Bite, Young Frankenstein, Galaxy Quest, and Seth Rogen’s The Green Hornet. Evidently I belong to the target audience for this type of material, and I proved it again last weekend by catching Tim Burton’s send-up of Dark Shadows. Parts of Burton’s movie are hilarious and parts fall flat, and that got me thinking about what works in this kind of story and what doesn’t.

As usual, this is a topic I can’t discuss without tossing in some spoilers. If you haven’t caught Burton’s movie yet and want to do so uncontaminated by any revelations or opinions from me, I recommend you do that and then check out the rest of this little essay at a later date.

If you’re contemplating spoofing virtually anything, the first thing to know is that some fans of the original material are apt to despise your project and clamor to see you horsewhipped no matter how clever it may be. There are Batman fans who still can’t forgive the Adam West show for making fun of the Caped Crusader, and months ago, I heard from a Dark Shadows devotee who regarded the idea of a send-up as inherently deplorable and disrespectful. He didn’t need to see the movie to get an early start on hating it.

But some fans are willing to give a parody a chance, especially if the treatment, however barbed, bawdy, or outrageous, communicates affection for the original. Young Frankenstein, perhaps the best SF-related parody ever, accomplishes this in every scene, in part with its black-and-white cinematography and faithful recreation of Colin Clive’s lab. The new Dark Shadows manages it too with such details as the madly overblown Gothic magnificence of Collinwood, a Widow’s Hill perfectly formed for long, long, suicidal plunges into rocks and crashing waves, Johnny Depp’s spit curls, and, cameos by Jonathan Frid, Kathryn Leigh Scott, David Selby, and Lara Parker.

Love of the original, however, is not enough. A spoof must also be funny, and the humor is likely to derive from two sources.

One is exaggerating elements manifest in the original. Clark Kent acts “mild-mannered” to keep others from suspecting he’s Superman. Clark Bent, Superduperman’s alter ego, is an absolute crawling worm of a human being. The Batman of Silver Age comics is a paragon of every virtue, and TV tweaks this characterization into Adam West’s homily-spouting model citizen. And in the original Dark Shadows, Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas Collins is in theory a tragic antihero forever pining for his lost love Josette and wracked with guilt over his vampiric misdeeds, but over the course of the series, he gets busy with lots of babes and runs up quite a body count. Johnny Depp’s Barnabas is the same breed of bat only more so, flipping suddenly from melancholy gentleman to horny cad or bloodthirsty monster as best suits the moment. Allegedly, this is the dark, uncontrollable side of his nature getting the better of him, but by the end of the film, we’re entitled to wonder how much he really minds.

A spoof can also generate humor simply by directing attention to aspects of the original that are inherently absurd. Galaxy Quest addresses the alarming truth that red shirts are mere cannon fodder, and Burton’s Dark Shadows mines comic gold from an idea that seems obvious but which the original show ignored: supernatural powers or no, a man from two hundred years in the past has some catching up to do.

Burton makes this element of the movie even funnier by popping Barnabas out of his coffin not in 2012 but in 1971 when the original series aired. Forty years later, aspects of the 70’s seem quaint and amusing in their own right, and the movie combines them with its befuddled 18^th Century aristocrat to good effect. I may never again hear the Carpenters without thinking of Dark Shadows.

Unfortunately, as I indicated earlier, the movie also demonstrates ways parody can go wrong.

One is stuffing in too many elements of the original without doing them all justice and without melding them all into one cohesive plot. The spine of Burton’s film is the love triangle defined by Barnabas, Angelique, and Josette/Victoria. But we also get David’s ghostly mother, a little random lycanthropy, and Dr. Julia Hoffman’s effort to cure Barnabas’s vampirism with modern medical science. Admittedly, we can take this hodgepodge as a satirical acknowledgment of the fact that in the show, there were always several demented things going on in Collinwood at any given time. But a movie is different from a daytime soap, and generally speaking, this scattershot approach doesn’t satisfy.

It’s even more of a misstep when a story changes elements of the original without a perceptible reason or payoff. In Dark Shadows, the victim of such a change is Roger Collins. In the soap, he’s a stiff, pompous, self-important man, but decent withal and devoted to his family. Burton’s film turns him into a sleaze who only cares about himself without making him either funny or necessary to the resolution of the plot.

Worst of all, perhaps, is when the parody leaves beloved characters in a place unworthy of them. On the Green Hornet TV show, Cato, as portrayed by Bruce Lee, is a more compelling hero than the title character. This disparity provides the comedic engine for Seth Rogen’s Green Hornet movie. In the film, Cato is spectacularly competent and at first, the only reason any actual crime fighting gets done. Brit Reid starts out as a dolt. By the end, though, the Hornet is growing into a genuine hero in his own right, and the movie wouldn’t work if this were not the case.

Sadly, Dark Shadows falls down in this regard, too. If you liked the original, it won’t please you to see Elizabeth, Carolyn, David, and the Great House itself left as Burton leaves them.

It’s still worth checking out, though. At those moments when it does parody right, you may even feel like “you’re on the top of the world, looking down on creation.”