The next “Inside the Blogosphere” question is up. This time it was about what makes a good battle scene exiting to read and what makes it drag or detract from the narrative.
I’m curious what you all think about this. What makes a good battle scene exciting to read and what makes it drag the narrative?
(Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Sometime near the end of the Spring semester, I decided it was time to take another crack and reorganizing my life. I’ve gone through years of on again / off again burnout, some of it my own fault (I’m disorganized and try to do too much) and some of it a consequence of things about which I have no control (my former university essentially bankrupted itself, forcing me to find a new job in my field, and I’ve since moved twice — the short version). All that burnout and overfilled plate-ism has made it harder to keep up with grading and find the energy to complete tasks on time. So it seemed only logical to use my university library privileges to borrow a variety of recommend productivity and project management books to see what advice, systems, etc. are out there.
Why would someone make a list of important and interesting works of dystopian fiction? Or a suggested reading list of works that are relevant to those dystopian works? There is absolutely no reason other than raw interest. There’s nothing going on to compel this. There is nothing in particular one making such a list would hope you’d learn. The lists below are not an exhaustive list. There are bound to be texts I have forgotten or texts you think folks should read that are not listed. Feel free to make your own list and tell me about it OR leave a comment. I’ll add things I’ve missed! Anywhoodles. Here goes:
And so it came to pass that I finished up my annual Best of EDM [Insert Year Here] lists. I used to do these on Spotify before switching to Tidal, and I continued doing them on Tidal because I listen to an absurd amount of EDM and like keeping track of the tunes I love the most. Below, you will find a Tidal playlist that should be public. You can listen to the first 50 tracks right here, but the full playlist is available on Tidal proper (which has a free version just like Spotify does). For whatever reason, the embedded playlist breaks the page, and so I’ve opted to link to it here and at the bottom of this post. Embeds are weird. Or you can pull songs into your preferred listening app. It’s up to you. Some caveats before we begin:
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2 Responses
I think a good battle scene is one that keeps the action going, and is just descriptive enough to give a general idea of what is happening, but does not get so bogged down in verbiage and description as to stall the whole thing. Battle/fight scenes need to feel fast paced and immediate, though of course there can be mini scenes within those larger ones that slow the action down, and give the reader a better view/insight into what characters are doing and seeing. An example of this is the Harkonen attack on the Atrteides in the first Dune novel. That scene is masterful in the tension it creates through the grand sweeping action, as well as the little things is focuses upon, like the two or three sentences devoted to what a laz-gun does when it is set to explode. The attack on Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers is another example of this, to a lesser extent, though Tolkein does allow the action to wane at times. Still, I think these are good places to look.
This was an extremely interesting link. Thanks for sharing!