Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

A Fight Scene

A Fight Scene

In my second edit of Don Ricardo de Castillo, which is now entitled Habit of Despair, I'm close to grafting a new beginning to the older work. What remains is Chapter 6 to provide that transitional link between old and new. It could well be that this transition takes two chapters but that remains to be seen.

In this Chapter there will be a fight scene between the bandits and the Hermandad led by Benvolio…In the aftermath he will take an unexpected prisoner who is a son of the King of Portugal. He hangs the lad. This incurs the wrath of Ferdinand who stood to gain a ransom and he's not too happy. Ricardo thinks it’s a good idea if his friend drops out of sight for awhile and Benvolio is relegated to keepig an eye on his sister Maria. A bit contrived but it dovetails nicely into the story.

Regarding the fight scene, I have decided to write it using the same basic philosophy for a love scene. This is well documented in earlier blogs and in my essay, Rules of Thumb…“ In essence it needs to be long enough to show what happened and not so long it distracts from the Romance. Sort of like some of the scenes that set the religious context of the novel.

It needs to be somewhere between being afraid to go behind the bedroom door, (i.e. telling and not showing) and some marathon lovemaking episode I read from time to time on writing.com that are often well written but simply overwhelming….After all as much as many readers like battle scenes, this scene is not going to compare with “The Longest Day.”

What I have done in this second edit is analogous to realizing that the front end on an old truck is not suitable for high speed driving and I am grafting a new one onto the frame. I’ll let you know how its coming or you can check it out first hand on my port under the file “Habit of Despair.“