How do I write a MODERN combat/violence scene without being dry?
Warning: I have ADHD and this might be a little ramble-y, sorry.
I'm completely stumped. I'm trying to get into writing fiction but I feel that I've hit a roadblock. My story is told from the first person in a "diary" format. Well, not a "dear diary" diary, but it's more for the purposes of narrative/chronology with the dates and stuff. It isn't me writing about my day, it's me telling my story to historians.
...The point is, It takes place in the early future, 2020, after nearly two hundred striking workers are massacred at "Arlin Factory." The six that survive form a socialist insurgency group with the plan of gradually gaining more and more support, a-la Che Guevara. I've read Che's "Guerilla Warfare" and so I have good knowledge of their tactics and have a very clear grasp of their ideology. My problem is that I can't write a violent/emotional scene without sounding super... purple. Things like over-complicating words and generally being dry. It sounds like I'm a historian and not a storyteller. I couldn't even describe the massacre well.
Several armored cars pull up, with "MPDC" emblazoned on the side. Six policemen in full gear close in. "Riot police, masks on." I whisper. A voice is broadcast from the helicopter. "THIS EVENT HAS BEEN DECLARED AN UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY. LEAVE THE AREA OR YOU WILL BE ARRESTED" Defiant, we step forwards, approaching the barrier. The police tighten their formation. Suddenly, a burst of machine gun fire tears through the first picket line. Harris drops, along with thirty other men. "FALL BACK," I yell. They do. Well, the people with me do. I feel a bullet strike my chest, and as I look back I realize the reason I'm not dead is because it had already been through two others. We flee.
I feel that I'm using too many periods, and the actual event seems emotionless. I'm thinking of going all-in and simply explaining the massacre from a "recalling" point of view, because I don't fully believe I can make the massacre seem horrible without having already wrote about the characters before. Would it be more correct to explain it as a "background event" like the following?
(This is probably the second/third page, the first few pages being when the group is fleeing after "something bad" happens and they go pick up an old friend, who is former military)
"So... what happened to Harris?" he asks, breaking the silence.
Confused, I answer best I can. "We lost him at Arlin, sir. One of the first to go."
"Arlin?"
"Yeah, feds shot up the place. Only six guys survived, far as we know. Lost our friends, lost our job. Lost our lives."
He looks at me, puzzled. "...What?"
I repeat myself, "The factory workers were on str-"
He rolls his eyes, "I'm not that old, dude. I meant what happened to him."
"I... His body, you mean?"
"Yes. Also... don't call me sir, makes me uncomfortable"
As another example, I tried writing the intro of Saving Private Ryan as a warmup, but it felt horrible.
A river of machine gun fire rips through the craft. Explosions, everywhere. A dozen men killed instantly. I frantically try to undo my vest but blood starts to cloud my vision. The sounds of battle drown out most voices, except the screams of the wounded and dying. We fire upwards, best we can, just enough to make it to the seawall.
It feels very... empty, but at least in this example I had something to go off of that isn't my imagination. Does jumping straight into the action not translate into literature?
As someone with ADHD, I've always found that the best way to right action, especially in battles and combat, is fast. Us …
5y ago
Research what modern fighting is actually like. Don't pay too much attention to the details, those can be googled easily …
5y ago
When I am writing an action scene - my Secondary Protag getting shot, for example, I use shorter sentences. It echoes th …
5y ago
+1 DPT, +1JBiggs. Remember battles are local and personal. What I mean is that in a fight, there is no big picture, ther …
5y ago
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As someone with ADHD, I've always found that the best way to right action, especially in battles and combat, is fast. Use short sentances... this isn't the time you want to be descriptive because all hell is breaking loose. Say what you need to say and move on.
With your third paragraph, I'd focus on soft number values unless the exact figure is important or will be important later on. If it's not important, guess it. A dozen is a hard number (12, 13 if your a baker). Your character does not have time to head count the people who are about to be blown away. About a dozen, A dozen or so, a number of men are better terms. Be colorful with your verbs only and use verbs... this is action... verbs are action! ("Explosions, everywhere" is more appropriate with dialog, but you're not speaking in the narrative. At least try "Explosions are everywhere" but you can do better. "Explosions burst/sound/detonate everywhere (try something that puts it closer... like all around... behind me, in front of me... next to me). Split the sentence about the vest off from the blood. Maybe add why you're undoing your vest (is it encumbering you, are you latched to boat by it, why are you wearing it if you're throwing it off) and I need more detail about the blood... is it yours? Is it someone else's? If so who's? Just your eye? Assault all your senses, blood feels gross, blood tastes gross (and this is D-Day, nearly 40 years before AIDs was a thing, don't spare the visual of tasting another man's blood. You're writing Private Ryan, a film that made Hell want to distance itself from it's association with War), blood smells very distinct (also very gross). Your next sentance, I like, except I'd delete everything out after the word "Screams". Again this is the Normandy Scene in Private Ryan you're righting... you don't need to tell me who's screaming or why... we all know it's not for ice cream. The sentence or two, I'd leave to the mindset of the POV... comment on how he points his gun up... he hopes he'll kill a few Krauts (again, It's Private Ryan... you're not going to be PC about killing Nazis)... and you aim for the seawall (this is probably the most poetic you should be, but to my mind, it helps establish that he really wants to kill the enemy... but if he makes it to the sea wall without dying, his chances of living get much much better. Show me a man who was a stoic while storming the beaches of Normandy, and I'll show you someone who was no where near the battle.).
As for your story, passages, there are some issues. The biggest one is that we go from a stand off to shooting with machine guns in the space of seconds. As someone who lived in the Baltimore Area during the riots, that doesn't happen in the U.S. (Forgive the assumption, and please let me know if it's another country, but the names suggest some Western Society with Anglo-American Roots). If you look at the footage of the first night that 10 pm Curfew was declared, there was a confrontation between the National Guard/Police, and the crowd. At around 10 pm, the assembly was declared illegal and there were several rioters tossing things at the police. By 10:30, the crowd was dispersed, with one man arrested. The point is that you'll need to establish that this is a pot on slow boil. It's been tense like this for days, maybe closing on weeks. Everyone is on edge to the point that one wrong move is going to set off the entire powder keg. There are a few ways to handle it. First one is that your character never directly saw the initial spark that caused the shooting... he just hears a strange noise and suddenly rioters are attacking cops and cops are shooting back (Shot heard round the world scenario. To this day we still do not know which side shot first in the Revolutionary War: The Colonials, the British Army, some Yahoo watching from his porch, but it set the whole keg off and here we are).
The other option is that it's Harris that is the first victim of the War. Maybe he was doing something... maybe one of the cops was nervous... who knows, either way, he's shot and dropped and the mob slowly starts to try and seek revenge, and the other cops are defending themselves, at which point retreat orders are issued. From there it's all chaos and short burst description writing until you find a place to process everything. You're not gonna name the dead as you flee (and you certainly wouldn't simply say "We flee"... this is a massacre induced panic stampede... again, there's more color to add here with your verbs. Flee sounds like you're having a musical number while guards chase you for stealing bread from the Baazar... at best). If you need help, try doing another writing segment about a panicked street fight... I highly recommend describing the point of view of a person who is fleeing the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11 (the people who are outside the towers, obviously. The building evacuation was described as an orderly descent by the survivors from the inside.).
Anyway, you're second block is where you start realizing the true magnitude of the situation. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug and really kind of limits your immediate thoughts to "Fight or Flight" mentality... it numbs you until you're coming off the boost and the realization of the dangers and the full nature of the situation hits slowly. You kinda get that in your second exert but you don't take the time to show the emotion of this... And the POV character is way to calm for someone reporting all of this for the first time.
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When I am writing an action scene - my Secondary Protag getting shot, for example, I use shorter sentences. It echoes the thought pattern of the characters, implies that everything is happening very quickly and help with tension.
I also have my characters feel - a flash of fear they must set aside, anger at what is happening and perhaps disbelief that it is happening, yet all overcome by their training. Anger and frustration that one of theirs is hit, fear for her survival - all masked since one must be strong and clear headed for the wounded, must not let them know what they dread might be true.
I had a friend years ago who was part of the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. He had two stories that haunted him more than others; the death of a dear friend with whom he had been fleeing (both were revolutionaries) and his friend was shot. He lay gravely wounded, my friend well aware what would happen once the police arrived. He stayed with his friend to comfort him until he was ordered away - live and fight, don’t make my death in vain. He left his friend alone and escaped - haunted.
Another incident involved a family friend who was a chief of police. He was a good man and my friend knew that a mob was heading to the police station to kill anyone they could. He ran to the station, hoping to get this man away. The last he saw of this man who had dined with them often was him stepping forward into the maddened crowd and disappearing. He found blood later.
My point is this violence changed him and he, a peaceful fellow by nature, had done things that troubled him and seen things one should never see. Your MC, one of only a handful of survivors, might feel guilt, but he will be changed by what he witnessed. Let that show in his entries.
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Research what modern fighting is actually like. Don't pay too much attention to the details, those can be googled easily enough whenever you need to double-check something. What you should be paying attention to is the emotion and sensations involved. The ear-splitting crack of a rifle, so loud you can feel it in your chest and in your sinuses, the acrid smell of gunpowder, the roar of armored vehicles, the metallic THUNK of bullets striking armored plate.
In fact, if this is possible where you live, spend a day at a public shooting range. TV and Youtube just can't properly do justice to what it feels like to shoot a gun.
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+1 DPT, +1JBiggs. Remember battles are local and personal. What I mean is that in a fight, there is no big picture, there is your picture, a tight focus, the people around you, the immediate enemy you are fighting, moment to moment.
Lines are short because thoughts are short, description and metaphors and analogy are definitely used, but quick and simple and direct, because the mind is working in hyper speed trying to survive, it has no time for reflection or convoluted thoughts, it has little time for emotion other than flight or fight. Some soldiers freeze in terror, others can become analytical machines. Although one might become the other, there is little room for in-between those states, and the freezers usually die.
This is precisely what military battle-field training does for you, just like martial arts training. By repetition in practice it makes your moves automatic second-nature, instinctive, so you can literally perform and do your job when you feel like you can't think at all. What the trainers want is that you don't need to think, you just react and fight.
An example:
I get hit in the chest with a hammer, I slam my hand against the wound and fall. That's it, I think. Dead. I'm falling in sync with Barry ahead of me. Barry is dead. I'm not. The bullet went through him, sternum and spine, slowed it down before it hit me.
I have to move but I'm frozen. Machine guns chatter in fast bursts. I can't stand up. Afraid to stand up. My mind flashes on Barry. Had a nine millimeter in his pocket. Wasn't supposed to bring it. I grab him by the collar and pull him up on me as a shield, I blank but suddenly his gun is in my hand, short thirteen round clip, I'm firing at the closest machine gunner, fast.
I hit him in the hand with the sixth round. I empty the gun on the right gunner. Too far. All misses. He stops ducking to get back on his gun. Barry takes three bullets for me. Two others hit the pavement, spraying asphalt.
Someone else fires on the gunner; pop pop pop. Right gunner's hit in the throat. Spine hit. Drops like a sack of dirt. Troop fire changes direction to the other shooter. Shot like that gotta be Marco.
I drop Barry's empty niner and run for it. Stupid. Should of kept it. By some miracle I reach the warehouse without getting shot.
Now the battle is over for the MC; pull the focus back out to include others.
The other shooter was not Marco, it was Rebecca, she made it on my tail, with a bad calf wound. We tear out of there doing a hundred miles an hour, the half that's left of us.
I'm binding Rebecca's calf in the backseat of a Honda with two other wounded, using my shirt. Thank god they didn't bring copters.
But that is just an example of style, from my imagination, I'm not trying to write your story for you. The advice is stay in the mind of the POV character, do not try to describe the whole battle and all engagements and what every person did, describe what the POV can see and do and process.
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