Writing gunfights is hard
- Thread starter Nightcrawler
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+1 for Hammet's "Red Harvest" that's about as two-fisted hard boiled as it gets.
Don't forget Raymond Chandler either.
Don't forget Raymond Chandler either.
Great thread, and some good talent here.
I'm another wannabe novelist.
Fight scenes are the easiest for me. Action comes naturally. I have no problem with dialog either, as that just seems to flow. Exposition kills me though.
I'm one long winded riot nerd when I get going. I really have to watch out for that.
Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. Coming in 2006.
I'm another wannabe novelist.
Fight scenes are the easiest for me. Action comes naturally. I have no problem with dialog either, as that just seems to flow. Exposition kills me though.
I'm one long winded riot nerd when I get going. I really have to watch out for that.Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. Coming in 2006.
Moster Hunter was a GREAT read!
KriegHund
Member
Devonai said:
Thats an excellent thing to keep in mind!
Its hard to remember that just because you know your character, everyone else does to
But its something to fill bored times, and for my personal amusement, mostly. I do have alot of dialogue later. Maybe i should move things around a bit to introduce him more, or just take out the entire portion.And nightcrawler, i bookmarked your "So there i was..." thread. That is an AWSOME story.
*Sigh* another book im going to have to look for. You evil, evil person...
Oh heck...why not?
This is the prologue to the sequel to ALL NIGHT RADIO, which I've been trying to finish for a couple of years. I'm about 200 pages in, but I can't seem to get my head wrapped around writing with all the teevee travel stuff...
Mybe this'll jump-start me...
Michael B
-------------------------------------------------------------
FIVE TO GO
Prologue
About 30 seconds before Anna splatters the cholo’s albeit meager brain material all over some family’s Grand Slams, extra bacon, it starts to dawn on us that the s*%$ we’re in might be seriously, world-class deep.
How else to explain three little gangsters — two vatos and a chavalona flashing enough cleavage in her black-and-gold tank top to be a real show-stopper — going straight to the hardware, not even a cup of tepid Denny’s coffee between their shiny double-black Impala ride and Pulp Fiction redux.
“Hitters,” Anna says with the same tone and inflection she’d just used to order a horrible concoction of biscuits, gravy, runny eggs and hash browns when the gangsters hit the door. She’s beside me in the Samuel Jackson seat, back to the wall, eyes on the door; her Glock — one of the stubby ones in .357 Sig, enough muzzle blast to weld steel plates — already in her lap under the napkin.
“What?” says Lee-Anne, across the washed out green Formica table from us, looking up from a plate of cottage cheese and sliced tomatoes with the consistency of Sorbothane shoe inserts. Her mascara has run, and underneath all the Dolly Parton blonde hair and the perfectly sculpted chin, her Adam’s apple looks the size of a wiggling golf ball. “What did you say?”
Then the lead cholo, who looks vaguely like Jimmy Smits, fixes on Anna’s red hair, laser-beam dead-certain, and in adrenaline-fueled slo-mo his right hand snakes behind him, pushing back his baggy black shirt with the gold Chinese dragon across his chest, feeling for the grip.
“Here we go,” Anna says, quiet-like, mostly to herself, the Glock appearing in her hand like some Vegas magician’s trick. My own STI bumps once on the bottom of the table, but I jerk it around and am almost out of the booth, had it almost to eye-level, when the .357 Sig goes off, my head suddenly ringing like a whole f%$#&%$ cathedral’s worth of bells. Dimly, I hear Lee-Anne scream, knock the plate of cottage cheese off the table as she dives for the floor. A slice of tomato slides across the baby-puke green Formica and splatters on my leg.
Snapshot of a Denny’s in the Texas panhandle, right near those ten stupid Cadillacs with their finned butts sticking up in the blast furnace heat. Cadillac Ranch. Whatever. Nine in the morning, and it’s hot enough to smelt lead, shimmering heat waves turning the enormous parking lot into some mirage of hell. In our snapshot, the first cholo, Jimmy Smits, is falling backwards, against the girl banger, whose mouth is open in something between a snarl and a scream. About four inches from the tips of her fingers is the friction tape-covered butt of a sawed-off shotgun, launched into low earth orbit by sheer bad luck and the now canceled bulk of Jimmy Smits toppling backwards. The shotgun is poised in mid-air in front of a family of four, a father-son duo in matching Hawaiian shirts, a mom in total denim and a too-mousy-to-pull-it-off Britney-clone daughter, halter, short-shorts and lank blonde hair, everybody looking at the pieces of Jimmy S.’ intellect slathered across their breakfast. When time starts again, Britney is going to throw up. Cholo number three is frozen as he pushes through the glass door, something squarish and nickel-plated in his right hand. Call it a Mac, little buzz-gun, maybe a nine, maybe a .45, big stick mag out the bottom of the grip. No matter. When time starts again, I’m going to shoot him repeatedly in the chest.
Then we are going to get the hell out of Dodge, Denny’s and Texas in general and try to figure out where this train jumped the tracks before the next set of hitters gets lucky.
Time restarts with a whoosh. Britney pukes as the chavalona falls against her, one hand with rings on each finger sliding across the Grand Slams and assorted other gunk. I feel four jolts as the STI goes off, snappy little shoves into the web of my hand, sharp cracks as the nine-mils go supersonic. Cholo number three falls back, his butt smacking on the concrete sidewalk. The girl goes to her knees the floor, locks her hands over her head, brown eyes smoldering with pure, unalloyed hate.
“Time to go,” Anna says, pulling Lee-Anne to her feet. The heel on one of Lee-Anne’s mules has broken off, and she totters like a six-foot skyscraper smacked by a plane. “It’s okay,” Anna says, even though it’s demonstrably not okay. The mom, pop and the kids unit alternately screaming and barfing; two very still cholos down and the girl still trying to kill us with her eyes; a matched pair of waitresses on the floor, some cowboys in the back hunkering under their table...it might never be okay again. Annie gets the hobbling Lee-Anne to the door, and I’m holding the STI on the girl, waiting for a move that doesn’t come. I’m halfway out the door, the dirt-brown Land Cruiser in sight, when a voice comes from the back of the restaurant, off my blind side.
“Hold.” Not shouted; no drama; just “Hold.”
One of the cowboys has a gun pointed dead on at my head, a big Colt 1911, not that many generations removed from what’s in my own hand. The half-inch hole at the end of the barrel gapes like one of the side entrances to the underworld, and I have to focus to pull my eyes away from it. The cowboy’s a big ‘un, gotta be pushing 250 pounds, but he’s not sweating, holding the Colt in an almost casual two-handed grip. A lot like my grip. Oh s^&%, I think, he knows what he’s about with that gun. And damned if he doesn’t look familiar.
He takes a single step forward, lightly, like some cartoon ballerina, the Colt never wavering.
“You’re Kashi,” he says. “Aren’t you?” I sense Anna outside the door, humming from some killer electric, waiting to see who lives and who dies.
“I shot in your squad about three Nationals ago,” the cowboy says, his face finally registering. Chuck something-or-other...for all his size, a Master class shooter. Great. I nod; words are still beyond me. The chavalona shifts slightly; I track her with the STI. I’m three feet away; one of the 20 or so 9mms still in the gun has her name on it, she keeps moving. Reading my mind, she freezes back up.
“My daughter,” the cowboy continues, “had her picture taken with you. You’re her hero; not many ladies can shoot like you do.”
I nod again; does he want my friggin' autograph before he shoots me?
His thumb moves slightly, and I can hear the snick of the safety going on from across the room; the big Colt lowers to his side.
“I don’t believe you did what they’re saying you did,” he says. “You didn’t do nothing in here that I wouldn’t have done. I don’t know about that red-head with you, or that other...thing...but you better be going now.”
“Chuck,” I say, more of a croak. “I owe you.”
The cowboy nods, and I’m through the door. Back through the glass, I see him level the Colt at the girl banger, whose shouting obscenities in a mix of Spanish, English and for all I know, Farsi. I can hear sirens in the distance, the noise carrying over the flat Texas landscape. Anna’s got the Land Cruiser fired up, and we smoke out of the white-hot parking lot, onto the endless hell of I-40 east. Three minutes and two exits later, she swings the Land Cruiser through a cloverleaf and we head back west, where we’re passed by an ambulance and two Amarillo PD cruisers.
“The five-point crown tattoos,” Anna says finally. Lee-Anne has curled up in the backseat, mascara-laden tears rolling down the side of her face. “L-T-P-F-J above the crown...Love, truth, peace, freedom and, if all else fails, justice. Latin Kings. Maybe from Albuquerque. I don’t think they have any sets in north Texas.”
I know the answer, but I find myself mouthing the question.
“Coincidence? Bad luck?”
Anna starts the quip, then stops, takes a hand off the wheel and rubs her eyes under the garish orange Rudy Project sunglasses.
“Not a chance,” she says finally, the wraparound sunglasses making her look vaguely insectile. “They were looking for us. More specifically, they were looking to kill us. And they knew where to look, which is more than the cops know.”
“So why are Mexican gangsters trying to kill us?”
“They’re not Mexican,” she says. “They’re as homegrown as Timothy McVeigh. And on the other, I don‘t have a f%^$%#% clue, except that there’s only two flavors — money or a big-time favor.”
“For whom?” I ask staring out the window, the dead flat interstate sailing by at 80 miles-per-hour.
“Isn’t that the million dollar question?” she says. “It’s time to finish this thing, Kashi. F%$&*(% past time.”
I nod. Outside the Land Cruiser, in a saner world, a sign reads “Tucumcari, NM, 60 miles.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the prologue to the sequel to ALL NIGHT RADIO, which I've been trying to finish for a couple of years. I'm about 200 pages in, but I can't seem to get my head wrapped around writing with all the teevee travel stuff...
Mybe this'll jump-start me...
Michael B
-------------------------------------------------------------
FIVE TO GO
Prologue
About 30 seconds before Anna splatters the cholo’s albeit meager brain material all over some family’s Grand Slams, extra bacon, it starts to dawn on us that the s*%$ we’re in might be seriously, world-class deep.
How else to explain three little gangsters — two vatos and a chavalona flashing enough cleavage in her black-and-gold tank top to be a real show-stopper — going straight to the hardware, not even a cup of tepid Denny’s coffee between their shiny double-black Impala ride and Pulp Fiction redux.
“Hitters,” Anna says with the same tone and inflection she’d just used to order a horrible concoction of biscuits, gravy, runny eggs and hash browns when the gangsters hit the door. She’s beside me in the Samuel Jackson seat, back to the wall, eyes on the door; her Glock — one of the stubby ones in .357 Sig, enough muzzle blast to weld steel plates — already in her lap under the napkin.
“What?” says Lee-Anne, across the washed out green Formica table from us, looking up from a plate of cottage cheese and sliced tomatoes with the consistency of Sorbothane shoe inserts. Her mascara has run, and underneath all the Dolly Parton blonde hair and the perfectly sculpted chin, her Adam’s apple looks the size of a wiggling golf ball. “What did you say?”
Then the lead cholo, who looks vaguely like Jimmy Smits, fixes on Anna’s red hair, laser-beam dead-certain, and in adrenaline-fueled slo-mo his right hand snakes behind him, pushing back his baggy black shirt with the gold Chinese dragon across his chest, feeling for the grip.
“Here we go,” Anna says, quiet-like, mostly to herself, the Glock appearing in her hand like some Vegas magician’s trick. My own STI bumps once on the bottom of the table, but I jerk it around and am almost out of the booth, had it almost to eye-level, when the .357 Sig goes off, my head suddenly ringing like a whole f%$#&%$ cathedral’s worth of bells. Dimly, I hear Lee-Anne scream, knock the plate of cottage cheese off the table as she dives for the floor. A slice of tomato slides across the baby-puke green Formica and splatters on my leg.
Snapshot of a Denny’s in the Texas panhandle, right near those ten stupid Cadillacs with their finned butts sticking up in the blast furnace heat. Cadillac Ranch. Whatever. Nine in the morning, and it’s hot enough to smelt lead, shimmering heat waves turning the enormous parking lot into some mirage of hell. In our snapshot, the first cholo, Jimmy Smits, is falling backwards, against the girl banger, whose mouth is open in something between a snarl and a scream. About four inches from the tips of her fingers is the friction tape-covered butt of a sawed-off shotgun, launched into low earth orbit by sheer bad luck and the now canceled bulk of Jimmy Smits toppling backwards. The shotgun is poised in mid-air in front of a family of four, a father-son duo in matching Hawaiian shirts, a mom in total denim and a too-mousy-to-pull-it-off Britney-clone daughter, halter, short-shorts and lank blonde hair, everybody looking at the pieces of Jimmy S.’ intellect slathered across their breakfast. When time starts again, Britney is going to throw up. Cholo number three is frozen as he pushes through the glass door, something squarish and nickel-plated in his right hand. Call it a Mac, little buzz-gun, maybe a nine, maybe a .45, big stick mag out the bottom of the grip. No matter. When time starts again, I’m going to shoot him repeatedly in the chest.
Then we are going to get the hell out of Dodge, Denny’s and Texas in general and try to figure out where this train jumped the tracks before the next set of hitters gets lucky.
Time restarts with a whoosh. Britney pukes as the chavalona falls against her, one hand with rings on each finger sliding across the Grand Slams and assorted other gunk. I feel four jolts as the STI goes off, snappy little shoves into the web of my hand, sharp cracks as the nine-mils go supersonic. Cholo number three falls back, his butt smacking on the concrete sidewalk. The girl goes to her knees the floor, locks her hands over her head, brown eyes smoldering with pure, unalloyed hate.
“Time to go,” Anna says, pulling Lee-Anne to her feet. The heel on one of Lee-Anne’s mules has broken off, and she totters like a six-foot skyscraper smacked by a plane. “It’s okay,” Anna says, even though it’s demonstrably not okay. The mom, pop and the kids unit alternately screaming and barfing; two very still cholos down and the girl still trying to kill us with her eyes; a matched pair of waitresses on the floor, some cowboys in the back hunkering under their table...it might never be okay again. Annie gets the hobbling Lee-Anne to the door, and I’m holding the STI on the girl, waiting for a move that doesn’t come. I’m halfway out the door, the dirt-brown Land Cruiser in sight, when a voice comes from the back of the restaurant, off my blind side.
“Hold.” Not shouted; no drama; just “Hold.”
One of the cowboys has a gun pointed dead on at my head, a big Colt 1911, not that many generations removed from what’s in my own hand. The half-inch hole at the end of the barrel gapes like one of the side entrances to the underworld, and I have to focus to pull my eyes away from it. The cowboy’s a big ‘un, gotta be pushing 250 pounds, but he’s not sweating, holding the Colt in an almost casual two-handed grip. A lot like my grip. Oh s^&%, I think, he knows what he’s about with that gun. And damned if he doesn’t look familiar.
He takes a single step forward, lightly, like some cartoon ballerina, the Colt never wavering.
“You’re Kashi,” he says. “Aren’t you?” I sense Anna outside the door, humming from some killer electric, waiting to see who lives and who dies.
“I shot in your squad about three Nationals ago,” the cowboy says, his face finally registering. Chuck something-or-other...for all his size, a Master class shooter. Great. I nod; words are still beyond me. The chavalona shifts slightly; I track her with the STI. I’m three feet away; one of the 20 or so 9mms still in the gun has her name on it, she keeps moving. Reading my mind, she freezes back up.
“My daughter,” the cowboy continues, “had her picture taken with you. You’re her hero; not many ladies can shoot like you do.”
I nod again; does he want my friggin' autograph before he shoots me?
His thumb moves slightly, and I can hear the snick of the safety going on from across the room; the big Colt lowers to his side.
“I don’t believe you did what they’re saying you did,” he says. “You didn’t do nothing in here that I wouldn’t have done. I don’t know about that red-head with you, or that other...thing...but you better be going now.”
“Chuck,” I say, more of a croak. “I owe you.”
The cowboy nods, and I’m through the door. Back through the glass, I see him level the Colt at the girl banger, whose shouting obscenities in a mix of Spanish, English and for all I know, Farsi. I can hear sirens in the distance, the noise carrying over the flat Texas landscape. Anna’s got the Land Cruiser fired up, and we smoke out of the white-hot parking lot, onto the endless hell of I-40 east. Three minutes and two exits later, she swings the Land Cruiser through a cloverleaf and we head back west, where we’re passed by an ambulance and two Amarillo PD cruisers.
“The five-point crown tattoos,” Anna says finally. Lee-Anne has curled up in the backseat, mascara-laden tears rolling down the side of her face. “L-T-P-F-J above the crown...Love, truth, peace, freedom and, if all else fails, justice. Latin Kings. Maybe from Albuquerque. I don’t think they have any sets in north Texas.”
I know the answer, but I find myself mouthing the question.
“Coincidence? Bad luck?”
Anna starts the quip, then stops, takes a hand off the wheel and rubs her eyes under the garish orange Rudy Project sunglasses.
“Not a chance,” she says finally, the wraparound sunglasses making her look vaguely insectile. “They were looking for us. More specifically, they were looking to kill us. And they knew where to look, which is more than the cops know.”
“So why are Mexican gangsters trying to kill us?”
“They’re not Mexican,” she says. “They’re as homegrown as Timothy McVeigh. And on the other, I don‘t have a f%^$%#% clue, except that there’s only two flavors — money or a big-time favor.”
“For whom?” I ask staring out the window, the dead flat interstate sailing by at 80 miles-per-hour.
“Isn’t that the million dollar question?” she says. “It’s time to finish this thing, Kashi. F%$&*(% past time.”
I nod. Outside the Land Cruiser, in a saner world, a sign reads “Tucumcari, NM, 60 miles.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The secret is to let the reader choreograph the gunfight.
Make the setting, develop the characters, and let them go. As in all writing, if you're trying to describe every last detail, you're just burdening the reader.
Sadly, that's also the hardest part of writing.
Make the setting, develop the characters, and let them go. As in all writing, if you're trying to describe every last detail, you're just burdening the reader.
Sadly, that's also the hardest part of writing.
Nightcrawler, I just remembered to post this. The following links have the best collection of articles about the craft of writing that I have found online.
www.sfwa.org
www.horror.org
Neither one is in your current genre, but the fundamentals are the same.
www.sfwa.org
www.horror.org
Neither one is in your current genre, but the fundamentals are the same.
NineseveN
member
Wow, some very cool stuff in this thread! I find it easier to write action in the first person sense (that's how I prefer to write anyway). I just let my character tell it as it is happening in his mind at the time, with some AAR afterwards to fill in some of the details. It moves pretty good that way.
I am also writing a book (a couple actually), one inspired by a thread right here at THR (the Zombie KARMA thread) but I sadly, I cannot post anything here, my lead charater is a bit rough (read, vulgar). The made for TV version of the opening is in that KARMA thread, and the subsequent chapters that I will be using as a preview will be on my website.
Keep the writing up everyone, this is some pretty cool stuff.
I am also writing a book (a couple actually), one inspired by a thread right here at THR (the Zombie KARMA thread) but I sadly, I cannot post anything here, my lead charater is a bit rough (read, vulgar). The made for TV version of the opening is in that KARMA thread, and the subsequent chapters that I will be using as a preview will be on my website.
Keep the writing up everyone, this is some pretty cool stuff.
Strange thing: the first time I set down to write a two fisted pulp yarn I had gone through 50 odd pages without so much as a nail being broken. And it wasn't a bad thing.
Bane you can tell you come from the new-school stream of conciousness way of getting it all down on the page without so much as a breath.
I liked it.
And Correia, I want a couple signed copies of your book.
Bane you can tell you come from the new-school stream of conciousness way of getting it all down on the page without so much as a breath.
I liked it.
And Correia, I want a couple signed copies of your book.
Should it ever actually find a real publisher, no problem. (so close, so many times, but so very very very many rejections). If this one that I'm working with right now doesn't pick it up, then I'm going to go the self publishing route.
NineSeven, I rather enjoyed that zombie thread. The picture with the booze, cigs, guns, and blood stains made me laugh for a long while.
NineSeven, I rather enjoyed that zombie thread. The picture with the booze, cigs, guns, and blood stains made me laugh for a long while.
Nightcrawler
Member
Back from Utah
Well, I'm back from my soon to be home. Have an apartment secured and a good lead on a job.
Larry, sorry I didn't get down to visit your shop. I was busy. We went to Wendover. I did not have my roulette mojo that night.
Anyway, there is a lot of great stuff here! Enough to inspire me to get back to work. I don't have a lot to do between now and April 1st when I make the move. Hrm...
Well, I'm back from my soon to be home. Have an apartment secured and a good lead on a job.
Larry, sorry I didn't get down to visit your shop. I was busy. We went to Wendover. I did not have my roulette mojo that night.
Anyway, there is a lot of great stuff here! Enough to inspire me to get back to work. I don't have a lot to do between now and April 1st when I make the move. Hrm...
Sunray
Member
I'd suggest you don't use Wordpad. It's too limiting. Use a proper word processing program. This'll help too. http://dictionary.reference.com/
"...I think access to literature kept from going (more insane)..." Helps a lot if you're not working too.
"...I think access to literature kept from going (more insane)..." Helps a lot if you're not working too.
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