Writing reality - Is detailing every action in writing good?

January 22, 2009 by Lee Hammaker

I love movies, all kinds, but especially Science Fiction movies (I’ve done a lot of reading the great masters of Sci-Fi as well). I can even watch a good epic fantasy movie now and then; the great LORD OF THE RINGS comes to mind. I even watch my fair share of martial arts movies. I even like watching tacky kung fu movies, I don’t take them too seriously and one of my friends shares my enjoyment of these chop-chop movies as well.

We both trained in karate for a time and it’s fun to watch some one perform some of the techniques we learned, though she likes to watch Jackie Chan movies most of the time for obvious reasons.

I don’t like to write much (REALLY)? Yeah I know, what am I doing now? I have no idea. Anyway she likes to write and is currently writing an action Science Fiction story chuck full of martial arts battles. At one point she asked me to help her with a small battle between two antagonists who are fighting over a rifle. She told me from the beginning that she wanted it to be real.

I mentioned that that wouldn’t be a good idea since reading or even watching a real fight is hard to look at. I’ve watched boxing a lot and noticed the difference between a movie about boxing and the actual fight in the ring. In a movie the techniques are clearly defined and you can see the fists impacting the persons faces clearly. You can’t see that in a REAL boxing match until you slow down the speed, and even then sometimes you can’t tell what happened.

If you make a movie with action in it you want action that’s clearly defined and sometimes over the top so it’s interesting to look at. If you make a movie or even write a fight sequence realistically it’s just boring, and you’ll lose your audience quickly. You need some fiction in your fight scenes. Not to say that you need to go over board like Hollywood likes to do time and again, but it needs to look interesting.

Funny thing is, painters do the same thing. When a painter first looks at the subject they try to figure out how to make that subject more interesting. Even photographers do the same thing. 

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Lee Hammaker has a passion for graphic arts and has been involved in computer graphics for over 15 years. Although he does it mostly for personal satisfaction he does contract out to businesses and organizations through GoFreelance. He has a new website where he is selling some of his unique designs on clothing at Half Infinity Productions. His artwork has appeared on various websites.