Writing Tips and Reviews

Action Scenes

What's a major point in action and adventure stories? The actions scenes. These don't have to be spectacular, but there are parts that need to be included.

1: What is the purpose?
2: Who is fighting?
3: What is their fighting style?
4: Who are they fighting against?
5: What is that character's fighting style?
6: How do the two styles mix?
7: What is the terrain?
8: How does the terrain effect the fight?

These are some points, there are more but I won't get into all of them. The main thing here, is to figure out the basics before getting into the scene itself.

Terrain:

I like God Eater, that's no surprise, so I'm going to use GE3's opening as an example. The opening, besides having an amazing song to it, has the characters interact with the environment. There are parts of the terrain that are shot up by the enemy so the characters use that to propel themselves over the enemy. You can see that flat terrain is easy to move across while bumpy to literal rocks in the air isn't that easy.

Also when working when the elements, think about the temperature and how it's going to effect the characters in battle. Let's say it's snowing, game logic here, fire would be good in a situation. If it's a volcano, water or ice. With Artes from my series, characters can't create it the element, they need to use it from another source. Say, a water element would need water around to do an elemental attack. Fire just needs something to burn and ice freezes over the terrain. Wind would be the one that doesn't need another source, it's wind.

Maybe think about how the characters would fight against an enemy in the air or underwater (Kingdom Hearts looking at you). Can the characters fly? Do they need a plane or something that can fly? Are there tornadoes? What's around the area? Can they swim? Do they need oxygen tanks? Or are they Sora and can hold their breath for literally forever? (I just swam around for an hour straight and not once did he steady to drown.)

Weapons:

This is for those who have weapons. In my series, if a character doesn't have a weapon, the two can't fight, it's not fair. But if they do, the weapons should be taken into consideration. The larger the weapon the heavier it's going to be, along with the material it's made from. Types of weapon have to be looked at. What those weapons are the world you've created and how hard it is to master them.

Weapons against one another should take strengths and weaknesses into the fight. A gun and a sword usually don't match. Guns can either break a sword depending on the material or the sword can block the bullet. Guns are long ranged while swords are sword ranges depending on the length of the blade. Or you can be RWBY and God Eater and mix the two.

Skills:

The skill of the user is important. How good they are at what weapons. In my series, characters have a max of three weapons they can fully master but can also have others within the same class. (Granblue Fantasy for reference). A character cannot be good at all weapons off the bat. They have to train with one and if they don't like it, switch to another. Most classes can have multiple weapons they use along with their abilities (artes or magic in my case, Tales series for reference).

Artes/Magic:

Artes is a Tales series term so I'll use magic as to be more neutral. In my series, a character is bound to one of the eight elements: fire, water, wind, earth, electricity, ice, light or dark. Whatever you decide is fine, you can have more elements and even mix them if needed. Magic is a broad term, being used in most fantasy stories and the rules depend on that story. So here's my suggestion. Make the rules first, apply them to a character, then figure out everything else from there.

Is the character immune to the element? A fire elemental character wouldn't take much damage from fire, or going by Tales logic, fire wouldn't take much damage from earth. What happens when the character is the weaker element? Fire against water? What happens when they have to rely on other means to fight when they've focused so long on magic? What happens to those who are used to other ways of fighting and are introduced to magic?