And now I question myself · 4:21am Jan 14th, 2015
So now, with the aid of all those who responded to my last blog, I have a fairly epic fight mapped out that's taking 60 line items in my outline worksheet. If a single line item turned into just 200 words, that would be 12,000 words.
And now I question myself. Is Not the Hero actually an appropriate place for a 12,000 word fight with a dragon that, realistically, advances the plot only insomuch as Discord is collecting magic items to harass his enemy with and this is just one of seven?
To be fair, (mild spoiler here) the Element of Greed is going to end up being pretty crucial to Discord's actual goal. So it's fair to make him work for it. The fight scene would also demonstrate that Discord actually knows how to fight against a powerful opponent (this cannot be taken for granted; many fanfic versions of Discord have him basically incompetent because all he's ever done is throw his vastly greater power at his enemies, and one distinction held by my version of Discord versus others is he actually has combat experience from a time when he wasn't all powerful.) It would establish a few things about the properties of the Element of Greed that will be useful later. And if I do it right (which again can't be taken for granted because I'm not known for my fight scenes, but it's something I definitely want more experience doing), it ought to be pretty awesome. :-)
But is that really a good reason to take up so much real estate in the fic with a fight? Not a climactic fight, not even a fight with the main boss, but essentially a side quest boss battle?
Look, I know I write loooooong. It's one of my weaknesses as a writer -- not because it's wrong to write long, at least not on the Internet where storage is cheap, but because it takes time, and for that reason I often don't finish my stuff... it takes me so long I run out of steam. I think it's also a strength -- one of my chapters is definitely going to give my readers their eyeballs' worth of reading material. I'm not planning on abandoning my style, which is dense and wordy and detailed (sometimes over-detailed), anytime soon. But in this case am I going overboard? Cheese Louise the harp, I expanded this thing from 26 lines of outline to 61, and 26 was too low because it was approaching cakewalk territory, but is 61 too high? How long is this gonna make this fight?
But on the other hand, if I cut it back down again, am I running into the territory I was trying to get away from where the conflict is too easily resolved?
Yargh. I'm so indecisive...
My advice to you is to just go all out I don't mind at all
treasure.diylol.com/uploads/post/image/190063/resized_jesus-says-meme-generator-jesus-says-trap-go-ham-0ea054.jpg
Some of those side quest bosses can be quite the unexpected challenge...
It sounds awesome, and I am one of those who always assumed canon Discord is not tactically sound for the exact reason you mentioned, it's one of the main differences between your Discord and others, so getting to see him using his powers really smartly, pushed right up to his limit, would definitely be something to see, and us readers would gain a lot of perspective on how he operates. That said, does what I just described fit with how you want to handle the final boss fight (i.e. Anon)? You probably don't want to write a 12,000 word fight scene that is pretty similar from Discord's side twice, so I would probably go through those 60 lines and see which if any you might want to save for the fight with Anon. Sure, a human with self-insert powers and an ancient dragon pose pretty different challenges that must be responded to with disparate tactics, but fight scenes are often driven more by the protagonist than anything else.
If, on the other hand, you're planning to make Anon end like a non-Tirek boss fight on the show, i.e. one side has overwhelming magical power and immediately curb stomps the bad guy, then this fight could well be the main fight scene of the story, in which case hold nothing back!
I would love to see this fight! Dragon fights are like kittens and little girls -- they are their own excuse!
You're not a novelist (on FIMfic at least), you write serial fiction. You don't have the luxury of viewing your entire, finished piece before the readers see it and going 'ooh, the pacing gets a bit wonky there, and the tone drifts, but now that I've got the whole picture I can see what I need to take a hacksaw to.' You can plan, and use your best judgement, but trying to exactly figure out the pacing of a story, avoiding ramping everything up too soon, yada yada, will slow you down and drive you round circles of self-questioning insanity.
That being said, I'm a pretty meticulous planner of fight scenes. If you want someone to take a peek and say 'yah i'd cut that', welp...
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The final fight with Anon will be nothing whatsoever like the fight I've just outlined for Winnie. None of what I'm planning to use would work in a battle between Discord and Anon. So this is probably one of the fightiest fight scenes in the story (there are several other fight scenes, including one that Discord loses as thoroughly as he can lose without ending up dead or petrified, but none quite like this one.)
2721486 Awesome, roughly even match-ups for a being like Discord are a rare treasure indeed, I can't wait.
Do it. Length be damned, you'll be a better writer for it in the long run and from the sounds of it, this is going to be a pretty decisive turning point for the story. You do not put shit like that on a bus. Take it from someone who also writes long and has alot of experience with fight scenes between mismatched creatures, that it is not the climatic battle does not mean it is a waste of time if it develops the character more than the overall plot. You have very little reason not to do this as far as I can see.
Considering as to how myself and my brother tend to get sidetracked by the Gold Saucer when we play rpgs, I am totally up for a bonus boss fight.
A lengthy fight is fine, but unless there's some other stuff mixed in with it then 12,000 may be a bit much. Admittedly I'm not actually sure how many words go into a fight scene before I get bored with it, and it sounds like there's some other stuff woven into the fight (the hints as to how the Element actually works). I do think it could probably be a bit shorter while still getting the important parts across, but that's coming from someone who hasn't read it.
So I guess what I'm clumsily trying to say is that it might be too long but you've done well with long chapters before, so it's likely that I'll still enjoy it.
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I'm hoping it will be shorter than that. I'm guesstimating based on there being 61 lines (which more or less translate into actions, moves made in the fight) in my outline, and guessing that they'll average 200 words apiece. Some will be shorter, some longer. But I really don't want there to be 12,000 words dedicated to a fight scene, so we'll see if I can keep it tighter than that.
I say you should totally go for it. Not only does it sound awesome, but you yourself cited several reasons why it'd be a good idea.
I'd say the potential benefits outweigh the potential pitfalls.
Holy fuck, I want to read it. Also, Peter Jackson doesn't seem to have gotten the memo about "there can only be one epic fight scene."
What primitive authorial instincts I have agree that a 12,000 word fight seems wildly out of place in such a story. But the rest of me is dying to see where this is going and asserts that bigger chapter updates are always a good thing. Also, come on...Discord fight scene!
I'm all for it. Especially because it seems in character for Discord to go into excruciating detail over finally getting a victory against a somewhat worthy opponent.
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I wholeheartedly agree. If Discord is anything, he is proud of being good at what he does. Finally having a major victory after a series of defeats to show for it, he'd surely expand on that greatly and widely, if only to stroke his own ego.
I'm gonna go against the crowd for a moment and point out that your story is, in fact, being narrated by Discord. Discord is not exactly an impartial or unbiased narrator. If you write out a 12000 word fight scene and then notice that half of it is neither necessary nor particularly strong writing, Discord can just gloss over that part in two sentences while smugly daring the reader to get mad at him for skipping to the parts he thinks are more interesting. Discord could, without breaking character in the slightest, gloss over the entire fight in less than a paragraph if you want him to. He probably won't, since his ego needs a pick-me-up right now and the guy likes to hear himself talk, but I wouldn't really expect him to spend any longer describing the highlights of this fight then, say, the whole affair with the waitresses. That anecdote was just as good for his pride but also relevant to his goal of documenting Anon's "evil" after all.
And on a less diegetic note, while I love a good fight scene as much as anyone and definitely support showing off that your characters are actually competent, I dunno if it's worth slowing down the main plot by more than one or possibly two chapters when the opponent is completely unaffiliated with the "main" plot of the story. Especially since I really want to see how things develop vs Anon.
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You could always do part of the fight detailed and then have the writer have an epiphany that he is being influenced somehow to want to recount a fight that detailed?
I like long, long is good.
No, I would absolutely hate it if the best Discord writer on the site were to even think about writing 12,000 words about Discord being badass. /sarcasmoff.