So, at the end, everyone is fighting and dying! Or getting captured. Since it is a book I am trying not to be mean. Meaning I am going through fights start to finish then moving to the next. Now two fights come into mind. One I feel okay with the other I am not so sure. 1. It is like a two part fight. So I show one part, then cut to the next fight and then return to part two later on. Feels natural. 2. This fight I am considering breaking too, but I don't see a natural place to do so. Meaning that the cut will be very sudden. Like mid-punch cut. New scene, finish that scene and return to the previous fight where it left off. Which I know for a movie is fine, but I am thinking it isn't for a book. So I am thinking of staying on this fight even though, the fight is long. That is sort of the reason I was thinking of splitting it up, because of length. So I am curious if I am being to harsh on myself and a sudden break is fine, or if my gut is right and I should just do the entire fight in one scene regardless of length since it can't split naturally. I think the count of the scene is going to reach like 5k.
I would like to ask you this question for 2. What is the purpose of the scene break? If it's not meant to do anything beyond just a break, I suppose it's better to stick with one scene all the way. A sudden break without purpose would suddenly deflate the situation and make the reader aggravated / wtf? When I experimented with large scale, multiple character conflict, i had an entire battle set run up to 10 - 12k words for the chapter. So its ok for it to be 5k words if it's important enough to be that long. Just my 2 cents Regards John Crawford
Yeah, I normally don't go past 3k. In the first case the beak seemed natural. As the characters had fought, stopped and were preparing to fight again. So switching beat there seemed to add suspense. While in this case it was just a passing thought I had, as I noticed I was up to 3k and not nearly done. I did it as one chapter which is about 4,800 words. Which had no real natural break. As it had about 1000 words before and after the fight, but there was no reason to seperate that. Which mean breaking it up would have been right in the middle of the fight for no reason. So I went with my gut on that one. Thanks for the advice all the same.
I don't think the actual length actually matters much to be honest. The only reason you'd want to do that is, like what happened to your first case as you mentioned above, to add a certain air off suspense. While it is more commonly done in film, I don't think it's impossible to pull it off well in text. So I don't think there's an actual need to cut the second fight unless you'd want that suspense factor, but since you already did cut the first fight, then maybe the cutting the second part isn't really a good idea. However, this thought came to me: Let's say you add that suspense factor by using the break in the first fight (which you did) and not using a break in the second fight, then the outline would be something like: Fight 1 part 1 - Fight 2 - Fight 1 part 2. This would seem, to me at least, that you're trying to put more significance into Fight 1 even if Fight 2 is longer. Not sure if this is what you're trying to go for. Just my 2 cents.
It would seem my instincts were right. But I am never against a second opinion. Lol Also yeah. Pretty close. Except fight two happens after fight 1 part 2. That is partly because there is like 6+ fights here. Action climax for the win!!! Lol funny enough most of these fights are supposed to be happening at the same time. So the fight with the split part is the most important in that sense as its ending is attached to half the fights. Lol. (A bomb which rattles the walls in the other fights. Lol)
