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One of the innumerable things which mildly irritate me is a cinematic and literary trope which can be summarised as “Fight scenes written by someone who has never been in an actual fight.” It’s not that I think people should only write about their own direct personal experiences, that would be stupid. It’s just that it annoys me when people don’t even make the first attempt to find out how stuff works before writing about it, and that makes me respect them less as an author.
The worst perpetrators of this sort of writing tend to be the ones who boast about their in-depth research in their self-penned authors' bio at the start of a book, but then clearly not only have they never been popped squarely on the nose, they’ve not bothered asking anyone who has what it’s like or how fights play out either. In fantasy books, the fight scenes tend to be written by folk whose closest encounter with combat has come from playing D&D or more latterly WoW, and it shows. You get this sort of thing:
The orc lowered its head and charged Zangara the warrior-woman with a bellow. Slicing at her with its axe, she only managed to dodge backwards out of the way just in time. Then it was her turn. The orc waited patiently until she swung the bane-blade Yyrdrass and cut across its chest. A few precioushit points drops of its blood drained away.
The two warriors, wary of each other, circled warily until it became clear which of them could seize the initiative in the battle. The dice of fate were rolled, and came up…
In the commentaries on the Lord of the Rings DVDs, fight coordinator Bob Shaye says that every fight should tell a story, and the story the above narrative tells us is that the author couldn’t give two beans about the intellectual abilities of his audience. I suppose its because I’ve spent a fair amount of time getting punched in the head that I find incompetently written combat annoying. I’d be the first to admit that if all fights tell a story then the story told by me putting on the gloves would begin something like:
”Come gather round, children, and I’ll tell you the tale of how David got a fractured nose and nerve damage in his face” * but at least I’ve done it. I suppose what I’m really saying is that if you’re an author and you want to write about something you’ve not done, at least ask someone who has or even read a book by them. It’ll help with your credibility.
Anyway, the other week sister picked up a book which someone had abandoned on the train. It was a Young Adult sci-fi actioner called “Acid”, and it’s a particularly egregious example of the “The author has never done any of this stuff but saw it in a film once and that counts as research when you don’t respect your audience” breed I outline above. It’s fiull of stuff like prison guards with firearms which require charging up before they can be fired and personal ID chips implanted in your leg so the person scanning you has to bend over to do so (If can’t see why this might go badly wrong for the scanner, think about it). However, one moment which jumped out at me was the point when the heroine, an improbably pretty and buxom 17 year old girl, does 200 pushups to warm herself up. Just to check out my theory about the author I googled up a picture of her and, yep, there’s someone who has never done a press up in her life and no mistake.
In case you aren’t aware, 200 pushups is a heck of a lot. Back when I was younger I was a big fan of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat books and Slippery Jim diGriz used to do a hundred** pushups every morning to stay in shape. I spent a good while trying to emulate that when I was about 19 and got pretty close during the last term of my first year at university (because I was doing a Psychology degree, I didn’t have anything like lectures or reading or learning to distract me from going to the gym and clubbing), but the magic 100 always eluded me. Take it from me: 200 without stopping is a lot of pushups, especially for a 17 year old girl who is unlikely to have the testosterone and upper body muscle which make it easier for us chaps.
Off the back of this, out of curiosity I looked up the records for doing pushups. I once did 500 and know what that’s like***. It took me an hour and I hurt for several days afterwards, so I figured that the record for pushups without stopping might be in the high hundreds. Some nutter might have done a thousand. That’s when my jaw dropped. The world record for pushups without stopping or taking a break is over Ten Thousand. 10,507, to be precise. That’s a number which my brain didn’t even want to acknowledge for some time. Moreover, there are loads of press-up related records, including a world record of number of press ups in a year of over 1.5 million. That’s over 4,000 every day for a year.
I’d regard doing that as likely evidence for some kind of pathology.
Anyway, looking at the pictures of the people who set these records, I can confidently report that none of them are buxom 17-year old girls. Quite the opposite, actually.
So, really, if you’re writing a book with hero(ine) who has impressive physical capabilities but which stop short of actual superpowers (that’s a different matter. They’re super), please, at least do some research. Suspension of disbelief is important.
*True story
**Harrison had been in the army, and so presumably had done a lot of pushups and knew what he was talking about/
***I stopped fairly often in that time. I didn’t do them all at once.
The worst perpetrators of this sort of writing tend to be the ones who boast about their in-depth research in their self-penned authors' bio at the start of a book, but then clearly not only have they never been popped squarely on the nose, they’ve not bothered asking anyone who has what it’s like or how fights play out either. In fantasy books, the fight scenes tend to be written by folk whose closest encounter with combat has come from playing D&D or more latterly WoW, and it shows. You get this sort of thing:
The orc lowered its head and charged Zangara the warrior-woman with a bellow. Slicing at her with its axe, she only managed to dodge backwards out of the way just in time. Then it was her turn. The orc waited patiently until she swung the bane-blade Yyrdrass and cut across its chest. A few precious
The two warriors, wary of each other, circled warily until it became clear which of them could seize the initiative in the battle. The dice of fate were rolled, and came up…
In the commentaries on the Lord of the Rings DVDs, fight coordinator Bob Shaye says that every fight should tell a story, and the story the above narrative tells us is that the author couldn’t give two beans about the intellectual abilities of his audience. I suppose its because I’ve spent a fair amount of time getting punched in the head that I find incompetently written combat annoying. I’d be the first to admit that if all fights tell a story then the story told by me putting on the gloves would begin something like:
”Come gather round, children, and I’ll tell you the tale of how David got a fractured nose and nerve damage in his face” * but at least I’ve done it. I suppose what I’m really saying is that if you’re an author and you want to write about something you’ve not done, at least ask someone who has or even read a book by them. It’ll help with your credibility.
Anyway, the other week sister picked up a book which someone had abandoned on the train. It was a Young Adult sci-fi actioner called “Acid”, and it’s a particularly egregious example of the “The author has never done any of this stuff but saw it in a film once and that counts as research when you don’t respect your audience” breed I outline above. It’s fiull of stuff like prison guards with firearms which require charging up before they can be fired and personal ID chips implanted in your leg so the person scanning you has to bend over to do so (If can’t see why this might go badly wrong for the scanner, think about it). However, one moment which jumped out at me was the point when the heroine, an improbably pretty and buxom 17 year old girl, does 200 pushups to warm herself up. Just to check out my theory about the author I googled up a picture of her and, yep, there’s someone who has never done a press up in her life and no mistake.
In case you aren’t aware, 200 pushups is a heck of a lot. Back when I was younger I was a big fan of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat books and Slippery Jim diGriz used to do a hundred** pushups every morning to stay in shape. I spent a good while trying to emulate that when I was about 19 and got pretty close during the last term of my first year at university (because I was doing a Psychology degree, I didn’t have anything like lectures or reading or learning to distract me from going to the gym and clubbing), but the magic 100 always eluded me. Take it from me: 200 without stopping is a lot of pushups, especially for a 17 year old girl who is unlikely to have the testosterone and upper body muscle which make it easier for us chaps.
Off the back of this, out of curiosity I looked up the records for doing pushups. I once did 500 and know what that’s like***. It took me an hour and I hurt for several days afterwards, so I figured that the record for pushups without stopping might be in the high hundreds. Some nutter might have done a thousand. That’s when my jaw dropped. The world record for pushups without stopping or taking a break is over Ten Thousand. 10,507, to be precise. That’s a number which my brain didn’t even want to acknowledge for some time. Moreover, there are loads of press-up related records, including a world record of number of press ups in a year of over 1.5 million. That’s over 4,000 every day for a year.
I’d regard doing that as likely evidence for some kind of pathology.
Anyway, looking at the pictures of the people who set these records, I can confidently report that none of them are buxom 17-year old girls. Quite the opposite, actually.
So, really, if you’re writing a book with hero(ine) who has impressive physical capabilities but which stop short of actual superpowers (that’s a different matter. They’re super), please, at least do some research. Suspension of disbelief is important.
*True story
**Harrison had been in the army, and so presumably had done a lot of pushups and knew what he was talking about/
***I stopped fairly often in that time. I didn’t do them all at once.
