 Action/Adventure: May 17, 2006 Issue [#1045] |
  Action/Adventure
This week: Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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I didn’t scream. My lungs seemed to have collapsed like small crumpled paper sacks. My mind wanted to leave my body behind and just…fly.
-billwilcox
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Writing What You Know
Boy, did I catch hell for my last newsletter. Last month I suggested that in order to write good Action/Adventure, you needed to have experienced it first hand. Most of the reviews I got for that newsletter disagreed with me, saying that a vivid imagination is all that is required; that you really don’t need to write from what you actually know. My intent was to instill the fact that we all have exciting things happen to us from time to time, and that, as writers, we should begin writing there.
When I sit down to write a story I just let things happen. Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it don’t, but it never feels like a chore or a burden—it never feels forced like a job or anything. It’s always an adventure—something I look forward to doing. So, here I am sitting in the dark writing this newsletter. I don’t know what I’m going to write, but let’s just see what happens.
I had quite a few adventures growing up. One of them was when a crazy cow tried to kill me. In fact, by all rights, I should be dead right now.
It was summertime, about nine in the evening, the hot, thick night pressed down on me as I walked that one hundred yards in my knee-high rubber boots from the barn out to the main coral where I was destined to meet my near doom.
In those days, they wrapped the hay bales with wire, and every so often, a cow would eat a small piece of that and begin to suffer, and then die. In fact, dairyman used to shove large magnates down a cow’s throat to catch any small wires accidentally swallowed. It’s kind of like the way they put magnates inside the transmissions of the newer model cars so that they can catch any metal particles that might be floating around.
This particular cow had been acting strangely for the past couple of days, and my Dad, suspecting the worse, told me to put her in a small holding pen for the vet to take a look at in the morning.
I carried a large metal flashlight with me as I searched for the cow in the dark, swinging the beam in large arcs across the coral. In the farthest corner, I found her. She was hunched down, head hanging low; her sides heaving with her labored breath as if she were a doomed and tired bull waiting for the finishing stroke. She had foamy white spittle dripping from her mouth, and her nostrils flared in and out as if she had just finished a long run.
I carefully worked my way around behind her, gently talking to the cow the whole time. She kept turning to face me, still with her head lowered, still giving no ground. The mud was pretty thick where she decided to make her last stand, and I had trouble moving through it. Maybe she saw me struggling, or maybe it was just because I got a bit too close—I don’t know—but all at once, she comes charging at me as if I held a bright red cape.
She bowled right over me and knocked me off my feet. I lay there in the deep mud with the wind knocked out of me. The cow turned and came at me again. I sat up, but that’s about as far as I got.
She literally trampled me; her hoofs beat like hammers pounding on my legs. Then she stood over me, and I could feel her hot breath in my face, as I lay pinned beneath her in the mud.
Cows are timid, they would rather turn and run than confront the situation, but this cow was plum loco. I don’t know who or what she thought I was, but she had it in for me, and that was no mistake. The situation quickly turned for the worse, and a simple job, like putting a cow in a holding pen, became a matter of life and death.
As she stomped me, the cow pressed her head into my chest and ground me deeper into the mud. Thinking about it now, I believe that it was the soft mud that saved me that night, because if I had fallen on hard ground, she would have surely broken all my ribs.
As the demon cow flattened me into the wet slosh, I beat her upside her head with my big flashlight. Then for no reason at all, she turned away, and walked back to her corner.
I jumped up, my adrenaline pumping, and crying, because I was scared and hurt. I didn’t scream. My lungs seemed to have collapsed like small crumpled paper sacks. My mind wanted to leave my body behind and just…fly. Giving the cow a wide berth, I left her and made my way back to the barn to get help.
I will always remember that. It was a real-life incident, filled with Action & Adventure from a childhood memory. Nobody knows better than I do what happened that day. Now you know…
Until next time,
billwilcox
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shaara
Submitted Comment:
Excellent newsletter. I shall really think about what I know. But does anyone really want to hear what goes on inside a classroom full of seven-year-olds?LOL,Shaara
Insidious Raven 
Submitted Comment:
Thank you W.D. for a great newsletter! I would like to ask you, however, about research. I know I write far from what I have experienced, but I ALWAYS extensively investigate what I do not know. Do you feel it is possible to create a believable story with only a little personal danger experience and some good research?
wildbill
Submitted Comment:
WD:
Poppycock! First you have your facts wrong about one of the writers you mentioned having "life and training parallel their writing—they write what they know." Tom Clancy was an insurance agent until he was in his fifies and sold his first book.I'll bet you there are more writers of action/adventure novels that have never experienced what they write than there are novelists who were Navy Seals, Knights, cowboys or assorted adventurers. That being said, experience can help and if you can't experience it, I suggest that you can research your story meticulously like James Michener.
NegaScout
Submitted Comment:
Wow, I couldn't disagree more with the contents of this newsletter. You state that people can't write about something they haven't experienced. Did Tolkien tramp about Middle Earth with his elves? Did Carroll complain about the time with white rabbitts? Of course not.Of course, if you're writing a spy novel, it helps to have a background in black ops, but there are a lot of tools available to the good writers: research, interviews, and ... other books.
cursorblock
Submitted Comment:
While I agree with your statements that to write a good action/adventure story you must be familiar with what you are going to write about, I don't feel that only someone who has had actual danger in their life is the only one qualified to write this genre. To grow as a writer, one must embrace all genres. The only way to get better is to actually write and keep writing, learning what works and what doesn't. If they want their stuff to come across as realistic then they need to research, research and research some more. A real James Bond may have lived a wild and intriguing life, but if they don't have the skills to convey that on paper then no one will care to read about it.
Michael R. Cox
Submitted Comment:
While I agree that one should have some experience before writing, I disagree to a high extent that major characters should not be die. Some of the greatest writers have done this, mostly ones like Stephen King. In addition, although slightly off the topic of writing, the story of Final Fantasy VII has a major death scene of one of its playable characters. Therefore, I will say not to kill everyone in your band of heroes but kill of certain characters that might cause a dramatic effect on the story.
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