Sneak Peek - The Lost

Monday, December 12, 2005

**copywrite, yaddah, yaddah

Needs tweaking, but I'm starting to have fun with this one. It just might be worth something when it's done. :-)

The kinlins swarmed in a half circle round her and Callum. Their large doe-like eyes, staring out of cherubic faces, fastened onto Yancy with terrifying avarice.

“The Princesss. Give us the Princesss,” they hissed as one in childish voices. The clicketty-click of their sharp, little, teeth spiked chills into her spine. Unbound. Dear god, their mouths were all unbound.

“I think not.” Callum swung his sword in a smooth arc, keeping them at bay. “Who sent you?” he demanded.

“Those who you would thwarted. Have care the enemies you make, Beguiler,” one kinlin warned, pointing a large tell-tale finger at Callum. These assassins were small, but their hands were monstrous. All the better to hold onto their prey.

“Don’t waste our time with your questionsss, or your pathetic attempts to entrance us.” This one grinned, showing those pernicious teeth. “Give her to us, and you won’t be harmed.” Clicketty-click, clicketty-click.

“On your honor?” Callum asked and Yancy tore her gaze away from the trolls to stare at him in shock.

“Yess, yess, yess.” A few kinlin moved forward, clicketty-click punctuating their words.

Yancy swung her torch at them. “No!” Her arm trembled with the effort, and a flash of sweat bathed her. Hot, then cold, then sour.

“You heard the lady,” a smile tilted Callum’s mouth. “No.” His smile faded and his voice turned hard. “There’s also the well-known fact your kind have no honor. The Princess and I will be leaving here together. Alive.”

“Think again, beguiler.”



I'll stop at this point for tonight. I find fight scenes just as demanding to write as love scenes. You gotta do the whole choreography thing--what body part does what to where, action vs reaction, etc.,--but not too much of it, or it'll read like you're giving instructions, and the sense of immediate danger goes poof!. Also you have to watch your verbs/adjectives for repetition, or overdoing it, or sounding like a thesaurus. Pacing is another big bugaboo. Too much description/introspection, and you lose energy. Too little and you lose emotional impact. Remember to use all the senses. Short sentences are preferable, but too much and the whole thing reads choppy.

*sigh* Did I say I was having fun?
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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW! I knew I liked this when I read the start,...now I'm supereager!! Great Job, Vanessa!

vanessa jaye said...

Hey, what the heck are you still doing up? lol. I took tomorrow off, gonna sleep in, then start up on this bad boy again.

::blush:: thank you. I am liking this, even though part of me is absolutely sure I don't know what the hell I'm doing. lol

Sela Carsen said...

I'm having fun reading it! You're right about fight scenes. Even through the short, choppy, intense parts you have to find a certain flow, a certain elegance. A tough balance. I'm working on it.

Sela Carsen said...

If you haven't been tagged already, you're it! The Book and I meme. http://selacarsen.blogspot.com/2005/12/book-and-i.html#comments

vanessa jaye said...

That's the word, Sela: 'flow'. Sometimes I read a fight scene, and it's the equivalent of a director stopping the camera mid-scene (multiple times) to have a narrator do a voice-over. :-P

lol @ the meme. I picked up the tag on Anne Fraiser's blog a week ago (I think). Been meaning to do it ever since. I'll try and get to it this week.

*sigh* My fingers are just twitching to edit the excerpt/post. That 2nd para in particular is clunky.

Anonymous said...

Jaye, I LOVE it!

The fight should be yummy!
They sound like little soft-eyed piranhas! (or politicians...or both...)

vanessa jaye said...

They sound like little soft-eyed piranhas! (or politicians...or both...)

Bwahahahahaaa! They are pretty creepy, though.

The last time I created a pretty cool 'being' was in werewolf book i was writing just for fun. There's a creature in it that's related/similar to werewolves, but actually feeds on them. Really nasty peice of work. I must get back to that book.

Julie Cohen said...

I love it.

And I couldn't write a fight scene to save my life. Go!

vanessa jaye said...

Thanks, Jules.

Hey, I remember reading a fight scene from one of your ms before. In fact there were a couple of confrontations in the ms I'm thinking about. The one with the heroine working in the diner? You did a pretty good job with those, and isn't that ms sold now?

Julie Cohen said...

Nah, I can't be bothered to rewrite it at the moment; rewriting Delicious was so hard I want to give myself a break and write new stuff. In fact I only have fight scenes in unsold manuscripts. I think there might be a connection. :-)

vanessa jaye said...

In fact I only have fight scenes in unsold manuscripts. I think there might be a connection.

Only proves, you're a lover not a fighter... ;-)

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