  Action/Adventure
This week: Eight Seconds Edited by: Legerdemain  
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Eight Seconds
Eight seconds. Not a long time, is it? You spend five times as much sitting at a red light. Or ten times that amount of time opening your mail. How many tasks can you do in eight seconds at your job? Maybe if you're a really good window washer, an eight second wipe down could be fast.
If you were writing something that took eight seconds, how many words or sentences would you use? A car crash takes less than eight seconds, but it would take more than a sentence or two to describe. It would only take eight seconds in a surgery for things to go horribly wrong and lose a patient, but much longer to describe.
In bull riding...eight seconds means the difference between big cash-payout glory and your butt in the dust. We're talking about a sport where a man willingly straps his fist under a rope and straddles a 1500-pound bucking bull. This guy is willing to have some very important parts of his body thrown up and slammed right back down onto the back of a riled cow. All the while the bull is bucking and twisting, this cowboy is holding on for dear life and trying to stay balanced enough to remain upright on that cow for...eight seconds. Did I mention style counts? Not only does the cowboy have to stay on, he has to look good doing it.
And then he has to get off the animal! He has to get that strap released and throw his body overboard, trying to land upright and not under the pounding hooves of the bull. Then, before he can catch his breath, he has to make a mad dash for the fence before he gets trampled or tossed through the air by the annoyed bull.
How long would you last? In 2009 the top standing bullrider in the elite tour of professional bullriders made almost $1.6 million dollars. In respect to professional athletes, that's not much. Kobe Bryant in the NBA is making $23 million this year for bouncing a ball down the basketball court. Ironic, don't you think?
When writing, give an important event the description it deserves. Even if the event only lasts eight seconds.
This month's question: What methods do you use to control pacing in your writing?
Send in your reply below! 
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#1663465 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Tex, leaning back against the only tree in miles, pushed his sombrero up and surveyed his surroundings, seeing the desert to the north and east, mountains lying to the west, not a single living thing in sight.
Excerpt: “You want me to crawl in under there,” I couldn’t take my eyes off the rosebush, which had been slowly enveloping the corner of the garden as long as I could remember, “Don’t you?”
Excerpt: Demus was wary while approaching the town that, according to the map, was Skelton’s Pocket. From afar, it looked like a ghost town. After traveling through the cool, desert night, he was at the edge of the settlement. There, he was certain that it was what it looked like. “Cade and his coins,” he muttered to himself while urging his horse forward.
Excerpt: Before I press down on the seal, let us first review the deal.
He rode into town not knowing who or why. The how, was a given. He, she or they would die at his hand.
Excerpt: The stranger who had ridden into town was lean and good-looking. But black embossed leather boots, clinking with spurs drew her attention from his body. She pursed her brow. She did not approve of spurs. A spirited horse never needed them, and why would a good rider not prefer a spirited animal?
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#584546 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: My name's Trace Timberlane. I'm sixteen years old, born in 1834 near San Antonio, Texas and I just signed on to be a Texas Ranger, under the charge of Lieutenant Boots Crenshaw. Boots and his wife Kate took me in eight years ago when my family was wiped out by Comanches. Lieutenant Crenshaw saved my life that day, but my dark hair turned cloud white from fear.
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#1686295 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: A lone gunslinger waits, he is a man of few words. A man who notoriously lets his guns speak for him. Many orders have been given for him to be shot on sight. His daily life is a fight just to survive those that wish to silence him once and for all.
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#1522004 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: The old man slipped silently into the back, of the waiting car. Still stirring from the late night call he had just received thirty minutes earlier. It was time. After all these years it was finally time. “Damn near forty years” he heard himself softly say. As he muttered those few words, a lifetime of trouble, memories, and adventures came flooding back through the wide-open gate in his mind.
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This month's question: What methods do you use to control pacing in your writing?
Last month's question: What kinds of challenges do you like to throw in front of your character?
scribbler  responds: Though tangible challenges are exciting and real, as someone who often writes short stories I give my character emotional hurdles to jump over!
A thinker never sleeps says: I like to throw a mix of mental, emotional and physical challenges in front of my character. Battles, fights, danger but also things that will challenge their very being as well as their life.
The Huntress ~ Finding Love submits: I like to force my characters to confront themselves, to question their actions the choices they have made on a deep, personal level. Character development is most memorable when the reader comes to understand a character as that character comes to understand themselves, thus growing together.
LJPC - the tortoise sends: Hi Leger! "In Bukoba Tanzania, when the lake flies hatch and swarm like a moving fog across the landscape, some locals catch millions of the insects by swinging pans through the bug clouds and make patties from the collected masses. It's a nutritious protein for the body."
Eeww!! For a minute, I thought I'd opened up the Horror newsletter! Other than grossing me out, your NL was clever and to-the-point. Thanks!  -- Laura
tatsuya has this to say: I personally like to put characters in places or situations in which they have use strategy to overcome it like fighting someone who is stronger. than the character moves the fight to a better location for him.
Creator-of-Worlds replies: I like to throw things at my characters that can highlight their specific abilites. If one of my characters where an archer or other marksman, I'd make the focus of the current difficulty something very small and well protected that needed to be hit. And so on.
NickiD89  says: Since my work is typically character-driven, I like to throw physically demanding challenges at my characters that wear down their bodies. In my own life, whenever I'm exhausted I notice my ability to ignore my inner demons dissolves. I try to set my characters up to face their internal conflicts in the same way. Thanks so much for featuring my story!
lane kensington submits: I found living in a specific place helps alot, for example living in the mountains you encounter all sorts of hazards. You have to be realistic in the "how do you deal with it" catagory because if you don't; your reader will know!
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Action/Adventure: November 16, 2010 Issue [#4082]
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