Melva Gifford

This is a panel from one of the Life the Universe and Everything symposiums.  Any inaccuracies or misinformation in any of these notes is the fault of the note taker.

• One of the common pitfalls in battle scenes is that a lot of people don’t have experience
• What is great in the movie is not necessarily great in the book
• You can give an overall view of the battle but concentrate upon the individual conflicts of the characters that you like
• There is a challenge of doing three things at once
• Battle scenes don’t use consistent long sentences but short
• Check out the blog horses in fiction, http://horse-journal.com/blog/horses-fiction-25354
• One of the problems is the idea that horses will blindly run into a roll of Spears
• Another inaccuracy is you can’t ride a horse hard for three days
• When you’re doing a battle scene, do a one-on-one blocking.
• Stories and battles always are always better if you personalize it. An example of this is Saving Pvt. Ryan
• Another problem is a people will hit each other and don’t feel pain. That’s unrealistic TV
• Put in sensory details.
• If you start a book with the big battle the problem is that the reader has no reason to care because you don’t care for the characters.
• Wright what is in the riders head. If you don’t write it than the reader doesn’t see that it exists.
• It’s important to keep track of items in your scene. You need a sword later in the scene you need to be introduced in early. This includes you need to keep track of when a character is holding or where.
• Don’t change the point of view in a scene do a new scene.
• Don’t leave reader confused of location and times sequentially.
• A character will describe a battle scene from their experience and will use their words.
• I think it was on D day, the first boats landed on the beach were manned by inexperienced fighters because the general’s knew that experience soldiers would not get out of the boat.
• What type of motivation behind the fight will influence the fight for example revenge or surprise fight. Other influences is if the person a soldier a ninja or inexperienced.
• Take a look at the book: gru-nt by Mary roach
• Another book is memoir which is a firsthand account of that
• You need a good editor for things that are writer has forgotten. His soldiers need to have limitations
• If you stop training your abilities and strength will drop as you lose reflexes and weaken muscle memory
• One half of the soldiers that fought in World War II never shot the gun. In battle you rise or lower your reflexes
• Book: writers guide to violence by Roy Miller
• Writers should have personal experience or do research to learn about the limits and capabilities of guns, weapons, horses and medical experts
• Do your research; does a railgun have a muzzle? No, it doesn’t.
• How far does a certain gun shoot? What kind of damages is caused?
• You need to know your weapons limits
• If you usual technology know how it works
• Need to keep track of bullets and supplies of arrows.
• For infighting, you need to do blow-by-blow. Get emotions and motivations intermixed . Anthony Blake is smart and ruthless
• Book: over focus on Gore
• Movie over four curse on CGI.
• People and audiences are interested in people.
• You need to keep track of a character’s resources.
• Book: face of the battle.

Do you have something to add? Please do so in the comment section of this blog.

This is a panel from one of the Life the Universe and Everything symposiums.  Any inaccuracies or misinformation in any of these notes is the fault of the note taker.

• Ask what warranties are in the contract?
• Make sure that when you sell your warranty you include the phrase ‘to the best of the office knowledge vows protect the author.’
• Publishers should know the laws
• Anthologies: define prorated share get specifics if the payment is by word or by the number of stories and term limits.
• For a movie contract, hire a movie attorney. They charge $500 an hour
• They cut out the crap of the contract and send’s it back to the agent. The agent then returned the back to the movie studio. In the contact is fine to permit to rewrites but more than two is unreasonable. Only California and New York have agents who have rules to follow
• Don’t have a contract for ever. You always need to contact that has next clause.
• An author gives six points for movie script entry points per TV script. When you have six points join the script field because they provide legal advice. Often the producer may be willing to pay the 3K entry fee. SFFA organization has samples of contracts that we can look at
• Always be willing to walk away from a contract.
• You need to know what questions to ask a lawyer
• If you do work for a publisher, you my ask them if you can be on their insurance policy
• The more clout you have more control you have to negotiate your contract
• We need to use the right language on the nuisance clause. This is when some past will say that the author plagiarized in the publisher will just pay a go way she and then will charge that fee the author
• Live up to your contract.
• Small publishers, likely to have bad contracts. Sometimes they download them off the web. And don’t know that they are bad contracts
• Rights need to be specific
• For your short works give time limits of use and certain republishing rights.
• You always keep the film rights never give them up

Do you have something to add? Please do so in the comment section of this blog.