One of my favorite authors (who I consider a mentor though I never met him in person) was Louis L’Amour. That may seem strange, as most of my writing is in the horror/thriller genres. But my first attempts at writing fiction were weak emulations of L’Amour westerns.
I once read an interview he did where he talked about writing fight scenes. L’Amour used to be a semi-pro boxer, and knew a bit about fighting (out of 59 fights, he only lost 5). In this particular case, he said, he was really getting into creating a particular fight scene. He was so wrapped up in it that he was on the edge of his seat. The action was terrific. The hero and villain were going at it, toe to toe, tooth and claw. L’Amour said his own heart was pounding and his hands sweating as he typed faster and faster.
When the scene was finished, he finally relaxed, breathing a sigh of relief.
And then he realized. The scene was the best fight scene he’d ever written. But it happened in the middle of his story. Now he had to come up with an even better scene to end the book!
Of course, Louis L’Amour was up to the task.
But now I kind of know how he felt. One of the most intense fight scenes I’ve ever written appears in my short story “Any Minute” — my first vampire story. In the story, protagonist Trevor Sloan must fight for his life in a dark warehouse against a newly-risen vampire-like creature.
I burned through this scene in under an hour, typing like a maniac. I was going for a hard, brutal, no-holds-barred kill-or-be-killed battle, and I think I accomplished it. Like L’Amour, it left me breathless and exhausted. I had to go back and revise it a bit, but most of the scene worked fine as it was.
Unlike Mr. L’Amour, however, this was the pinnacle fight scene of my story. It’s a short, not a novel, and it gets pretty dark at the end. Hey, that’s horror fiction. Unlike a western, the good guy sometimes doesn’t get to ride off into the sunset with the girl. And that’s all I can say about that!
But at least I can say I have one thing in common with Louis L’Amour. I now know the feeling he must have had when he finished that great fight scene.
You can get “Any Minute” at Smashwords or Amazon Kindle store for your favorite ereading device, be it a phone, a pad or a dedicated reader.
