Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Action scenes and a little romance

Given the choice between writing an action scene and writing a romance scene, I would without a doubt always pick the action scene.  On the surface, it's because these scenes are fun to write - I spent a good half hour this past Saturday running down the empty hallway outside of my room, trying to choreograph different parts of a battle.

If I could do this every day, I totally would - the whole thing was way too much fun - I would pretend to swing a sword, pretend to take the hit, roll and dive out of the way, block attacks - it's as close as I'll ever come to feeling like Jason Bourne.  Or the Karate Kid.

But then I had to write a scene between my two leads that includes more insight into one of the characters and culminates in a YA-friendly, romance-y moment.  Maybe I struggle so much with these scenes because I'm just overly cynical when it comes to relationships - I haven't really been exposed to many successful relationships throughout my life, so I'm kind of a Debbie Downer about the whole thing.

And I suppose that I should state that the romance isn't in there because I just felt like throwing it in.  The main character in the story feels the same way about relationships that I do - that they're flawed and unnecessary.  She starts to re-evaluate her position, just as I'm trying to re-evaluate mine.  But that's not making this any easier to write.  Over the years, cynicism has slowly taken over any sappiness that I might have gathered from watching Disney movies non-stop for many, many years.

I'll figure it out, I suppose, but in the meantime I think I'm going to go run around the hallway and pretend to fight a knight.  It's much less complicated.

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