Writing climactic battle scenes (+ kittens)

I'm working on the climactic battle scene of my current novel, and as I was preparing for this, I realized the task was going to be complex.

Write battle. (I haven't done this before.)
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Write climax of the story. (I haven't done this before either. This is my second novel, but the first in which that I have gotten this far.)

So what do I do? I research.

There was helpful hints out there, but they were scattered all over and embedded in articles about larger story structure.  So I had to collect them and chew on them and digest them.

I'm going to share what I found. (Whether I can implement all these principles in my own novel remains to be seen, but at least I can make this helpful to you, dear reader.)

*Ahem.*

How to Write a Climactic Battle Scene

Make sure each character has a goal. Make the goals clear, and make it really matter. If the character doesn't succeed, what do they lose?  Power? Control? Freedom? Wealth? Respect? Love? Loyalty?  Life? The lives of all they love? Their soul?  Will all the fluffy kittens die and no more rainbows will appear forever?

Also, point of view will need to be carefully chosen for greatest impact at various points.
Pay attention to each main characters’ internal and external goals for the scene and for the story.

Involve suspense.  Show the preparations of Lord Evil of Mount Doom-y Doom and how they will exploit the protagonist weaknesses so that they see something terrible is coming.  When the readers know more than the characters do, it creates dramatic irony and suspense.

Make the hero vulnerable. i.e. they can be killed, trapped, enslaved, destroyed politically or professionally, or ruined financially or socially. Vulnerability can come from the character’s own physical, mental or emotional shortcomings and conflicts as well as from the machinations of the adversary.

Threaten character’s safety, goals, morals, possessions, freedom, family, beliefs...  And their kittens.

Rack up the tension and suspense by making more and bigger promises about problems to come – disasters that will devastate the hero and his allies, shatter his plans and bring him so low that he might never recover.  Climaxes are where the consequences come after the hero.
(Show the dreadful kitten-gun that will be leveled at all the kittens.)

Create effects that spread the danger and damage early in the fight. Everyone should feel they are in danger, even the antagonist.

Focus on who is the largest threat to the villain and knock out a few heroes, but avoid downing them so early that they don’t feel like they can contribute. 
Make sure the hero appears as the underdog. (Or an under-kitten?) Or reduce them to underdog status quickly. However, avoid effects that completely neutralize character abilities or arbitrarily cripple them.

Being forced to compensate for a lost ability can be a good end for a minor arc, but for the campaign’s end, the heroes should be able to use everything they've learned and everything in their arsenal.  Even their kittens. (Rarr.)

There will be moments when the characters calculate chances and risks and analyze advantages and disadvantages of various courses of action. There will also be moments when they act on instinct and go by their gut.  (Like kittens.)

Consider when you can include a shift in tactics or calling for guards, or a transformation of the environment.  Negotiation turns to violence. Violence turns to diversion (like when the herd of kittens is released into the yarn factory). Success that is shattered by an ambush from the side.  Or mix these all up.

Remember to use scene and sequel. One act leads to a response, that leads to another.
With battles, efforts to destroy are "up to 11" on a scale of 1 to 10.  No punches are pulled unless there is a chance that the opposite side is weakening and may give in. (Punches may not even be pulled then.) For the antagonist, diplomacy is battle by words, and parley and peace is delaying battle for strategic advantage.
Try to avoid a fight of attrition.

Let your hero think he’s won – then tear victory from his grasp and turn it into absolute, crushing defeat.

Up to this point, the protagonist has been contemplating a transformation. Now she’s tested to see if she has changed.
Make your hero face his/her greatest fear – and risk losing the thing that matters most to him/her. (I hear you ask, "Like maybe losing their kittens?" Yes, maybe.) 

Expose protagonist to his greatest nightmare. (Kitten zombies?) Make sure to have warring emotions at the time of greatest decision.
Then tip it to one side with a little factor of deep meaning that offers a glimmer of hope or inspiration. (like kittens!) (The little factor has to be carefully set up and invested with meaning in the previous scenes for this to work.) Alternatively, if no hope of survival can be offered, offer a glimmer of hope that a sacrifice will not be in vain.
Make the peak moment of the scene run in slow motion with excruciating detail in description. Show it through all the senses.
Includes a moment of truth  -- The protagonist must realize ______.

The impossible task. The last stand against the enemy.  The kitten's back is against the wall, cornered by the wolves.
The hero must solve their own problems in the climactic battle. (Must define what the problems at the various stages)

Climax needs to resolve love plot and adventure plot.
The climax must fulfill all the promises of the story. (So you have to keep track of all the promises you've made about what the battle will be like or what might be used and prepare a way to keep them.)
It must also answer the story question.

The climax must settle the issue of whether the hero will or won’t achieve the goal.
1) The hero achieves the goal. Happiness ensues. Or,
2) The hero does not achieve the goal and realizes the goal was a false lead and he's better off without it. Happiness ensues. Or,
3) The hero does not achieve the goal and discovers a better goal and achieves it. (Best when the better goal was under his nose all the time.) Happiness ensues. (+ kittens)

Justice must be done.
There must be judgment, punishment, and restitution. If redemption can be worked in, even better, but it must be consistent with the character.
Dead kittens must be avenged as the kitten killer is brought to justice, wounded kittens must be healed, enslaved kittens must be released.. You get the idea.

Give a sense of what the hero’s life will be like after the story ends. 
What will life be like back at home for the protagonist? (Hopefully with kittens.)

Make sure the relationship arcs are resolving in the place they should. (There may even be a tiny relationship arc that is a mini-version of the story arc.)
Make sure minor plot lines are resolving in slower moments.

And hopefully everything ends up happily ever after, with kittens and rainbows and satisfied readers who buy more copies of your book to thrust into their friends' hands.

Writing Tool: Reverse Outlining

Just about everyone is familiar with the process of creating an outline and writing from that; it’s something taught in just about every English class at school.  However, the reverse outline is another writing tool that is just as useful as the pre-writing outline, although it has a different purpose.

What is a reverse outline?  Do you take your pre-writing outline and hold it up to the mirror?  (eye roll) No. 

A reverse outline is when you read through what you have written and summarize it in outline form in a separate document.  Happily, it doesn’t have to have Roman numerals and indenting.  (Who wants to fight with Microsoft word over that stuff? Not me!) The reverse outline can be as simple as a list.  In fact, the simpler, the better.

If you’re writing non-fiction, a reverse outline summarizes the main points you make and the way you try to make them.  Example:

Prairie dogs are good eating.

Story about eating prairie dogs when starving. They were filling.

Health benefits observed when eating prairie dogs. Lustrous hair and energy.

Story about imported prairie dogs saving the lives of malnourished Chinese children.

If you’re writing fiction, a reverse outline summarizes the events that happened in a chapter that are most important to your plot.

            Frank chases down heart-broken Wanda

            Wanda explains why she can’t trust Frank; she saw him kissing Charlene

            Frank explains kissing is part of normal Hispanic greetings.

            Wanda is skeptical because of the length of the kiss and storms off.

            Frank realizes he may lose the love of his life if he doesn’t get act together.

So how does a reverse outline really help?

Cognitively, we can only keep so much in our memory at a time, so making a reverse outline gives us a visual way to evaluate a lot of text easily.

While pre-writing outlines show us where our writing should go before we actually write it, a reverse outline shows us what is actually there once we’ve written.  Often the pre and post outlines don’t match. 

By studying your reverse outline, you can see if there are holes in your logic or missing pieces in your plot.

Not only that, but reverse outlines can become a tool for manipulating our long texts.  I can look at my reverse outline and see where I got off track.  I can see where the progression of my logic or story is out of order.  If I can move a few lines around in my reverse outline, that shows me where I can move much larger chunks in my long-form writing.

Story time!

I had to discover reverse outlining for myself. I was working on a religious book about applying the Book of Isaiah to modern teenage problems, and I noticed that as my chapters got longer and longer, I had a hard time making sure things flowed in a logical manner. 

I could keep about three pages of ideas in my head at a time, and keep those flowing, but beyond that, I just felt like I wasted too much time reminding myself what I’d written before moving anything around.  And if I wanted to insert new stuff it would break my beautiful linearity and then I had to wrestle with the whole thing again.

So I had to invent reverse outlining. (Yes, I know I didn’t really invent it; it’s been around a long time, but I had to discover-invent it for myself.)

I said to myself, “Self, you need a list of all the main points you’re trying to make in the order that you’re making them.”  So I made that list, and that was my very first reverse outline ever. 

Once I had it, I could see exactly where I needed to move things. I could see what arguments were duplicated. I could see where the holes were. I could see where I’d gotten distracted and gone off topic.  By using a reverse outline, my book became much more of a cohesive whole.

I remember I felt absolutely brilliant for having invented reverse outlining. It was like a shiny new toy that I played with.

More points about reverse outlines in fiction

“But Michaela,” you cry, “What about when writing fiction? I already have an outline I create from! Why do I need to do a reverse outline too?”

Again, reverse outlines tell you what you actually have in your story instead of what you want or plan to have.  They tell you the cold hard facts in the light of day.  And if a scene contains events but nothing that actually pushes the plot forward, then you know it’s unimportant and can be removed.

Reverse outlines for fiction can actually include much more than just a list of important plot events.  I use them to evaluate my scenes as I go. 

After I list events in the scene, I will then make a list of the conflicts that occur in the scene.  If you can’t figure out what the conflict is, then of course you’ll need to put some in.  I use a sign of >< to show what the conflicts are.  (Ideally these are conflicts directly related to the plot.) Examples:

>< The dragon wants Jessary to learn to read, but Jessary doesn’t want to.

>< Jessary wants food, but the dragon is unsympathetic.

You can also evaluate sources of tension in the scene, and naturally if you can’t find where tension is coming from, then you have to insert some ASAP.

            T Darkness in the cave and scary noises.

            T Fear of being eaten by the dragon.

            T Uncertainty of where to go from here and what life will be like.

Occasionally I will also evaluate the emotional direction of the scene, whether it goes from positive to negative or the other direction.  This helps me see where I am leaving my readers emotionally at the end of a scene, whether it is in a place of rising hopes or a situation of gathering darkness and trouble.   Emotional direction can be represented with +/-  or -/+. 

            -/+ Jessary escapes the dragon and is free.

            +/- The dragon realizes Jessary—his only hope to break the spell—is missing.

All these tools can help you evaluate the strength of your story as you write it and help you identify areas of improvement. That way, when you finish the whole darn thing, you know where you need to start revising.

 Bonus: If another author ever asks you to read their work and give them feedback, making a reverse outline can help you evaluate better. 

When you read a book and it disappoints you

Sometimes you’ll pick up a book and it hooks you enough that you push through to the end.  But then the ending makes you say, “WHAT?  NO!  That’s just wrong!”

This happened to me recently; a book I read ticked me off.  I’m not going to say the title or author because I don’t want to shame the individual.   She probably won’t ever read my blog, but I’m going to be courteous anyway.

Anyway, the ending irritated me.  I felt like the twists were not foreshadowed well enough, and

I felt like the reason the hero gave for loving the heroine was a total mismatch with the kind of relationship they had.  For most of the book, the hero and the heroine were at odds with each other, and there was even some question as to whether the hero might actually be the villain.  The hero stonewalled and sought to thwart the heroine every step of the way. With that kind of relationship, did I believe it when the hero told the heroine that he loved her from the first moment he saw her?  No!  No, I didn’t!  He did not love her from the first moment he saw her.  His behavior showed none of that.  There was one scene at the 2/3^rd point when he was subtly protective, but that wasn’t enough.  There was a sequence when they were together and told each other stories, but that was never presented in scene, only as exposition and narration, so it never felt real to me as a reader.  

What would have been more believable is if the hero had said, “I hated you when you came, and I was determined to fight you, but you won me over anyway, and now I can’t imagine life without you.”   And with all the conflict between them early in their acquaintance, the scene where they confessed their love needed a lot more rehashing of previous events.  They needed to explain to each other when they first noticed each other as a romantic prospect, when they first started to love each other, what they thought, what they feared, when they doubted, etc.  That all needed to be explained in order to make the ending feel satisfying and believable.

I also had a hard time believing that the villain was the villain when that was revealed.  The villain was the only person who was kind to the heroine in a very hostile social environment.  The environment stayed hostile for a long time, and the villain was friendly for a long time.  There was just one little scene where the villain snapped a bit and let down the mask.  But because of the villain’s pattern of kind behavior, this seemed like an aberration, rather than showing true colors.  I had a hard time believing that the villain would have the moral courage to show friendliness to the heroine when everyone else was determined to isolate the heroine socially for so long.

There’s a problem when you get to the end of the book and you’re not convinced that the twists are really the truth.  It means there’s been inadequate characterization or foreshadowing.  In this case, I think it was inadequate characterization.  The truth didn’t fit the larger pattern of behavior for the character.

As you can see, when I get done with a book and I don’t like the ending, it helps me to analyze what went wrong in it that left me dissatisfied.   It gives me a little more insight as to what is required for a good story to work.  Frequently I end up asking myself, “Does my story make that mistake too?”  And if so, that becomes an opportunity to improve my own writing.