Oh my God oh my God. The finale, on the Google Docs program, goes from page 76 to page 97. What the fuck? How did I right that…?
Well for part one, of this, we got a lot of small things to discuss. It’s strange but I don’t know that Strange has a specific moveset in the comics and in the movies we’ve just seen him use a type of magic I consider opportunist. As in, its just whatever the writers desire for a specific scene. It looks cool for Strange to turn Thanos’ black hole into butterflies or fight his evil double with music notes but these aren’t like specific moves. It’s just reality warping. Me, I like a magic system that has specific spells and potions so I gave Strange moves that still warp reality in a magic way but they have specific names and rules about them. They are all Dutch verbs because Strange is of Dutch descent here and verbs are the best way to describe a spell.
Stark does look to be lackadaisical in this fight but this was my way of balancing it because they are outnumbered. Also there’s a third faction in this fight kind of to add a random factor on top of the possible tension. It is also a reference to Super Mario Bros Z episode 6 which had it’s own three way although that one has a better flow because of it’s medium. I was also supposed to have Rhino appear in Part 2 to fight Namor for real but it had gotten too long.
Dude, everyone who does action stuff does it in a visual media. I was never warned about this in any writing class and never read any book with full developed fights scenes and power systems, but Charles Fucking Darwin is writing a fight scene actually so difficult. I’ve had this challenge for other action projects I’ve written (and will eventually post here) along with this so its nothing new. But its a strangely unique series of challenges. Now choreography matters most I think in watching a fight but reading about a fight, it’s also important to detail logistics (position of the fighters, the geography, injuries) since there’s nothing showing that. And then I give them dialogue, inner monologues, and special named moves that I want to explain mid-battle. The descriptions of some of their movements (like Psylocke) is so specific I feel, I wonder if I’m ever over explaining but I also don’t want to leave y’all confused. Because I’ll reread the fight and be able to visualize everything only because I knew what I wanted to see. But all of these challenges are led by time. When I’m writing an action, it’ll feel like it takes too long and I’ll increase the pace of the sentence since the action is actually supposed to feel fast. And it helps sometimes but its a funny mind trick…later I’ll reread the fight and it was paced just as perfectly as I wanted it to be even though in the moment if felt like slow motion. That’s probably the same for filming a fight, you gotta slowly get all the choreography down and it may take an hour just for two dudes to throw four attacks. I also wonder if you guys got used to the vocabulary of my fights, terms like ‘curbstomp’ and ‘blitz’. I mean I only pick self explanatory words so I hope there was no challenge.
One thing that helps is I have a playlist with a bunch of Edger Wright-esque music. Not stuff from his actual films like Baby Driver but music that’s energetic enough to be used for an amv. Some examples include “Brianstorm” by Artic Monkeys, “Eagleheart” by Stratovarius, and for this chapter specifically; “Any Means Necessary” by Hammerfall. A second thing to help me, when I visualize it in my head, I am either picturing manga panels for 2d moments or something cinematic for 3d moments. The manga view is also more important as Kishimoto and Toriyama have taught me, the flow of of a page multiplies the impact of attacks. For text basically, if an exchange is not built up well, the conclusion will suck or ass or even it won’t conclude. Like, I’ll be unsatisfied and have the characters continue fighting until I can some up with a nice finisher.
That’s probably one reason why this is a two parter.
tdwriter 