It's 2 dead ends really. The first, my MC Josh is travelling with his 2 companions. They've only been together for some 30 pages, and Josh doesn't trust them. Problem is, they HAVE to travel together. Now, I've got to the point where Josh actually sneaks away from them in an attempt to pursue his journey on his own. The 2 companions will need to find him. So how the heck do I actually keep them together, where the characters stay together voluntarily?? The 2nd dead end - how do you make a fantasy fight scene look good? Balls of light and powers flying around works on TV - works brilliantly in anime - but in western prose it's another story... and I don't know how to do it so it doesn't look lame.
First dead end - there's lots of room for creativity here. Maybe they're traveling through a place too dangerous to brave alone, but once the road gets safer, he's comfortable setting off on his own. Maybe he gradually realizes their untrustworthiness as they travel together, deciding to split when he's learned enough. Or maybe he'd swallowed the bad vibes before, but they'd grown and he couldn't keep ignoring them? As for the fight, there's another thread on this somewhere that I'd recommend you look up. Bottom line -- focus on one character's POV (at least one at a time) and make the reader be, not see, the character. This will make it relatable, rather than giving the impression of a sports commentator. Don't use phrases like "I saw," "he felt," etc, instead just hit us with the sensations. Appeal to the five senses.
Maybe his companions want to travel with him? Like when he sneaks away they seek him again, so they come back to him because they want to. As for fight scenes, the best way to learn to write is to read. Try reading books with action such as Lord of the Rings, I Am Number Four. Those kinds of books are chock full of great action sequences you can learn from! Hope I helped!
Exactly, the different characters could appeal to each other as advantages (at least for part of the story) with special powers, items, skills, knowledge, or anything really. Possibly the other ones are in need of an adventure or friends depending how the rest of your plot plays out? Also, for those actions scenes, the best thing to do is read other books or recall other books that have dealt with that sort of thing and in similar genres. I find that's the best thing to do is pay attention to what works and what doesn't.
Second dead end: The weapons always change, yet the fights always stay the same. A hand-to-hand fight isn't any different than a sword-fight or gun-fight. Or lightsabers, for that matter. Or magic. It's the characters that matter, not the weapons.
Thank you everyone!! And Mallory I especially found your advice helpful. I think I more or less did that - eg. get straight to the action in the quick points of the scene and definitely preferred "hit", "whipped", "kicked" kinda words over "hitting" etc. WritingDude - yeh I agree it's the characters. It's just with this "fight" scene, it's a fantasy one and I actually meant the kinda fantasy you see in anime - power balls and levitation and magic powers kinda stuff - and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it believable, let alone transforming it into an actually good scene! I dwelt on the physical in the end (so instead of talking about powers and stuff, you see the effect as something you can relate to, eg. pillar of water etc) The fight scene actually naturally led to my company of characters being forced to be together again woo - so one dead end solved!
You could have them travel together because they don't have enough money individually to make the trip. The ME could rip off the other two when they're vulnerable, explaining the reason they want to catch up with him.
When you have block, the best thing i find is to take time away from writing, do other things and think about it from time to time, ideas will come to you eventually. If you want your characters to stay together, they need something big to happen to keep them together, possibly a big evil to fight or a great tragedy happens which means they fight for a new cause?
Well you could have the character senak away and get caught. Then when the others awake and set off wondering where their new companion went off to they could stumble onto the captors and rescue him. Thus creating trust for his new companions. While a simple idea you could really create just about any problem in the world and have the other two help/rescue the main character leading to the same result. Either way the only way to proceed with the story is to create a situation in which the characters build some sort of trust with each other or the main character is always just going to leave them at his own convienence.
Two ideas for having the characters stick together - 1. He runs off and has something bad happen which makes him realize he can't make it on his own. 2. They decided to work together for a common goal (even though he doesn't want to be with the others neither group can defeat the bad guy without the help of the other). Good luck on the fight scene - that's something I seriously struggle with. If you come up with something great, post it, maybe I'll learn a few things I could use.
