Action Scene from “A Spark of Heavenly Fire”

November 26, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Here is an action sequence from A Spark of Heavenly Fire. I worked hard on this particular scene. Rewrote it about a dozen times. Took out all extraneous words. Removed most of the character’s thoughts. Condensed the descriptions. Shortened the sentences. I wanted the action to zing! And maybe I accomplished my goal. Today a woman told me that A Spark of Heavenly Fire was so intensely emotional and so tightly written that she had to pause to rest while reading it. She said was glad of the breaks because it stretched the book out longer. Made me feel good to know the book meant that much to her.

Pippi watched the two boys come nearer. With their eyes alit with laughter, they looked young and innocent, like children playing a game.

The larger boy stopped, raised his rifle to shoulder height. All at the same time, she felt something whizzing by her face, heard the crack of the rifle, and saw a piece of bark flying off the tree next to where she stood.

She stayed rooted to the spot. She knew she should run, wanted desperately to run, but her body refused to cooperate.

Jeremy grabbed her coat and yanked her behind a thicket of bushes, where they stood ankle-deep in leaves.

“Listen,” he said urgently. He tugged at her coat. “Are you listening?”

With robotic jerkiness, she turned her head to look at him.

“Yes,” she answered, marveling at how far away her voice sounded.

He lay face down on the ground. “Cover me with leaves.”

She gazed at him, not comprehending.

“Cover me with leaves,” he said harshly. “Now! Do it now.”

She dropped to her knees.

As she scooped the wet, soggy leaves over him, he said, “As soon as you’re done, I want you to start running. Zigzag through the trees. Make a lot of noise so they think we’re both running away. And whatever you do, don’t look back.” He turned his head and looked up at her. “Got it?”

Pippi nodded, but refused to meet his eyes. How could he talk to her like that? Blinded by tears, she finished covering him with leaves, then took off running.

The binoculars banged against her chest, branches tore at her hair, rocks tripped her, and still she ran.

She stopped for a moment to massage a stitch in her side. To her horror, she saw the boys up ahead, coming straight at her.

She looked around in confusion. Seeing the thicket of bushes and the mound of leaves covering Jeremy, she realized she had come full circle.

She glanced at the boys; they leered at her and licked their lips.

Her skin prickled.

The smaller boy, whose hair had been dyed a deep crayon blue, thrust his pelvis forward and cupped his crotch with his hand. The larger boy, blond ponytail swinging, flailed his arms and legs in a gross burlesque of a woman running.

The boys convulsed with laughter.

Still laughing, the blond boy raised his rifle. With his finger crooked on the trigger, he aimed it at her.

Suddenly the mound of leaves at the base of the bushes erupted. A creature—barely recognizable as Jeremy, with his tensed body and his rage-distorted face—sprang toward the young blond rifleman.

The boy didn’t even have time to turn his head.

Dressed in camouflage clothes as Jeremy was, it looked as if the very leaves reached out, grabbed the blond ponytail, pulled the boy close, and made three rapid sawing motions across his throat.

Blood spurted in a bright red arc from the boy’s neck.

It happened so fast that when Jeremy tossed the blond aside, the blue-haired boy was still cupping his crotch and laughing.

Jeremy turned to confront him. The grin slid off the boy’s face. He dropped his rifle and raised his hands. His eyes, the irises rimmed with white, were riveted on the bloody knife.

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Five against one hero. Whap. The hero is down. The end.

March 2, 2008 — Pat Bertram

In a previous post, I mentioned that I needed to fill a hole in my work-in-progress. As it stands now, everyone my hero knows disappears, leaving him alone for too many pages. I have a hard time writing scenes that come alive with only a single character; I need another character contributing to the conflict or providing a sounding board for the hero. The hero will have a cat for a while, which doesn’t really help. The cat is an ally (perhaps) and is not a source of conflict. Besides, writing dialogue for a cat is difficult unless he is a talking cat, and the story is silly enough without that.

Suzanne Francis, author of Heart of Hythea, commented that she found writing scenes with lots of characters even more difficult than writing for one or two. I have to agree. As difficult as it is to make a scene with a single character come alive, having a whole cast of characters interacting is worse. I picked up a book today about a group of women who banded together to avenge those who had wronged them, but I couldn’t get into it. Too many characters to keep track of and try to identify with.

Perhaps a crowd action scene wouldn’t be that difficult. Short sentences and pithy identifiers might make it seem as if a lot is going on. But the most compelling conflicts are usually between a protagonist and a single antagonist (human or nonhuman). Ever notice how in movies, whenever one hero is pitted against a multitude of bad guys, the bad guys take numbers and stand around waiting to be called? I always thought it was silly, but the reality doesn’t make for much of a story. Five against one. Whap. The hero is down. The end.

Dialogue with two people is easy. You don’t need many speaker attributes because they can take turns conversing. And you know who is in conflict. With several people, you have a litany of he said/she saids, dispersed conflicts, and long drawn out conversations. In real life, people talk over each other, which can’t be easily portrayed in a book. (Or even in a movie – in the nineteen seventies they tried for realism in dialogue with two people talking at the same time, and it was very confusing. And annoying.)

I read a bit of advice once to the effect that if you have several people in a restaurant scene, for example, have all but two characters go to the restroom, tablehop or whatever to get them out of the way. That way you can have both: a big group and a focused discussion.

Later in my work, I will have to deal with the problem of too many people in a scene, but for now I have the opposite problem.

So. A talking cat is out. But what about talking sheep?

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