Fighting and writing workshop, day 5 and 6: military fight scenes

This is the online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.

Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.

Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.

So, here is day five and six.... Day five was merely an assignment. Day six was more interesting.

 Day Five: Putting It Together

At this point, you should have an idea of what you're doing. Take assignments three and four, and put them together. Whether you start from a weapon and go to hand-to-hand, or vice versa, is up to you. This is the

assignment.

Like with most writing, practice makes perfect. So don't be discouraged if you're not writing full-scale battle choreography by now.

Day Six: Writing For Military Fights

Writing a military fight scene is no different from any other, when you get down to it. Do some research on terms, maneuvers, etc., but don't overstress that part. It's mostly just a matter of vocabulary.

But, seriously, there's little difference from warfare fighting.

Character: In describing filming for Lord of the Rings, and the Battle of Helm's Deep, director Peter Jackson discovered a basic law of fight scenes – Jackson had hours upon hours of stuntmen beating each other to a pulp, but the battle was boring when the camera was not on the primary characters.

The important thing you need to know is, no matter what, you need to focus on the individuals involved. The more modern your setting, the more things are done by groups of individuals, squads and fire teams, and not massive lines of fire, one against another.

However, no matter how many people you have fighting whatever enemy, you need to have individuals the

audience can focus on and care about. Writing about a line of tanks is boring. Writing about someone the audience has met, and is invested in, is much, much better.

For great examples of this, read the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell – he has, on average, about six players in any battle that he focuses on, as well as a massive, historical battle taking place.

Setting: If you want to focus on a full-scale battle, in whatever age and setting, one thing you'll want to focus on is the field of battle. You're going to want to focus on the sounds, and the sights, perhaps even the smells. You want to recreate it as though the battlefield is a character. A loud, monstrous, messy, rampaging character, with lots of property damage.

The best I've ever seen of this type of recreation is John Keegan's The Face of Battle, where he recreated the battlefields of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Verdun.

Hand-to-hand combat and weapons: Depending on the scenario, military battles do not start with close combat, unless it's a type of covert infiltration, where getting in close and killing people silently is important. And, let's face it, the use of weapons will vary wildly depending on what time period and setting you're using. For the most part, it boils down to individuals.

DADT, Gay Marriage: Who cares?

Last week wasn't very good as far as blog posts went. And I'm sorry for that. This week, I've got three posts already written.  This one is considered "timely," as my Examiner.com editors like to say.



A while ago, I wrote an article about gay marriage in New York.  It was entitled: Gay Marriage, so what?  I suspect you can guess what my general conclusions were.



I collect all sorts of weird articles, and magazines.  On the one hand, I could read Guns and Ammo, then the Spring catalog for a major publisher, then Time Magazine (until they went anti-Semite), the list goes on.



One such magazine is Salute, the magazine of the archdiocese for the military services, USA.



Yes, the military has their own archdiocese -- their Cardinal is the Cardinal of New York City.



In their Summer, 2011 issue, there was a statement from Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the Archbishop for USA military services. (An Archbishop is more hands on.)



His statement was two pages long, and here's an excerpt ...

"The church is unwavering in her commitment to the pastoral care of all persons in need, regardless of sexual inclination or anything else.  All people in need are served by Catholc Chaplains with zeal and passion for bringing the reality of the Risen Lord to all.  Whether Don't ask don't tell persists or not is immaterial to that bedrock principle.  The faithful .... must never forget that those with a homosexual inclination must be treated with the respect worthy of their human dignity."  [Typed by hand, any typos are mine]

In short: that's nice, we don't care if they're outed, it doesn't matter to us.



The message then cited Federal law (1 USC subection 7)... which I believe is commonly known as the defense of marriage act (DOMA).



So, "yes, you have DADT repealed. Who cares? We don't like it, but we're not going to marry gays, and you're not going to make us. We can continue, business as usual."  Everyone can move on.



Which is pretty much what I said the first time about gay marriage.



It's so nice when the Catholic Church listens to me.

[More below the break]



Then, on September 30th, the Pentagon issued an order allowing all military clergy to perform gay marriage ceremonies ....



The response of Broglio?  It's pretty much the same. Not to mention, there is still DOMA.  It's a federal law.  How can a federal agency allow the existence of something that, legally, does not exist at the federal level?



And, come April, 2012, what will happen when all of the gay married couples file joint income tax? The IRS cannot acknowledge them -- the IRS is a federal agency.  Accountant friends (and relative) are already saying that the IRS will not accept joint filings from any of the new marriages from New York (et al) between two men, or two women.



Not to mention .... the military has bases all over the 50 states. Gay marriage is only passed in about ... Five? (CA, VT, MA, NY, HI).  Isn't that a bit of a problem? And arguing that they are federal institutions is a problem, when you consider that, again, DOMA is federal law. State laws do not matter in this instance.



Is it just me, or did someone not think this through?



As I said the first time: I'll start to care about gay marriage when someone comes after religion in its name.



I don't care just yet. Initial reports of this story said that "military chaplains are being forced to marry homosexual couples."  I cared for about five minutes, then I looked for more footnotes.



However, now that I found that it "allowed" gay marriage, instead of "requiring" clergy to perform them, I'm back to not caring. Though the legal situation is going to be hilarious.

Pfc Abdo, the Conscientious objector. The Revenge

I will issue a warning right now.  This post may have some ... intemperate language.

You may not remember my July 19th post about the inability of Muslims to be good Americans.... at least if you followed the logic and reasoning in the case of Pfc Nasser Abdo, a 21-year-old Muslim who discovered a religious objection to killing fellow coreligionists .... coincidentally, he discovered this religious objection in the lead-up to doing his own time in the field.


However, looking back, I wonder if anyone in the military bureaucracy talks to each other.

Why?

Because when Abdo was granted his status as a conscientious objector, he had already been AWOL (absent without leave) for over two weeks.  The charge? Possession of child porn.

It seems that when I referenced the Fort Hood shooter in my post about Abdo, I was more accurate than I knew.

Because Abdo was just arrested in Texas, in possession of firearms and
bomb-making materials.  This comes from the Huffington Post, NBC DFW, and Fox News, so I think I'm being perfectly neutral here ...

The Associated Press reports that .... Abdo has admitted he was planning an attack on ....

Wait for it.....

Fort Hood.

In the coming weeks, I hope that the army deliberately put out the word that Abdo would be granted his conscientious objector status in order to allay his suspicions and drop his guard. If so, it worked ... I'm not that optimistic, but what the heck.  But, then again, I may have watched too many cop shows -- I half- suspect that Abdo's arrest on child porn may have been merely a cover to have the police talk with him in the first place.

But, then again, he used sharia law as a basis for his conscientious objector status.  If you read my previous article on Abdo, you know that sharia is the brand of Islam favored by people who enjoy cutting off body parts, and stoning women to death after they have been raped.

Oh, and the image above?  Notice the label in the lower right hand corner.  The photo is a screen capture of Abdo from an Al Jazeera television interview.

I wonder if that made anyone suspicious.

An anti-war group, Iraq Veterans Against the War, had helped Abdo with his conscientious objector application. They were simply shocked, shocked I say, to discover that Abdo was a terrorist wannabe.

One of them noted

"We’re shocked [at Abdo's arrest]. I believe he had some
significant mental health issues that became apparent as we worked with him. He
had a particular version of Islam that was certainly … He was disrespectful to
women. These were the kinds of issues we argued over late last year. It’s not a
religious thing, it’s a matter of human decency.”

I suspect it might be religious on his part, considering, again, he cited sharia law.  And if you guys did think he was a little nuts, why didn't you suggest to the military that they send him to a shrink?  You didn't need the conscientious objector status if he was nuts.

Anyway ... how did they catch Abdo, you ask?

We now go back to a previous story   ... that Terrorists are Stupid.

Abdo went to a local gun store near Ft. Hood.  In fact, he went to the same gun store where the first Fort Hood shooter bought one of the guns he used in his attack.

Now, I'm from New York, so my knowledge of the South is limited.  But, seriously, did he have no other option but to buy from a store within rock-throwing distance of his target, and then ask questions about it?

Even better.  Abdo went into the store, walked up to the store clerk (a 17-year veteran of the local police force), then bought bought 6 pounds of smokeless gunpowder, three boxes of shotgun
ammunition and a magazine for a semi-automatic pistol.

The clerk was concerned when Abdo asked questions about explosives .... in a gun store ....

Now, why would that set off any alarm bells?

Yes, my sarcasm is set to "kill."

Anyway ... this was just a follow up email.  I don't have anything more to add.  We can't say that this was an al-Qaeda sponsored plot, or payback for bin Laden.  And, while we have Oslo on one end, and this twit on the other, it looks like pure, 100% coincidence.  It is only in Tom Clancy novels that terrorists arrange for massive, three pronged attacks on multiple continents.

Then again, Tom Clancy is also where I first heard the line that "Fiction is different from reality. Fiction has to make sense."

"Where do they get those wonderful toys?" The Weapons of A Pius Man, an Illustrated Guide

The Weapons of A Pius Man: An Illustrated Guide