The battle scenes in the book are some of my favorites. I am a stage combatant, trained in different styles of swordplay and other Medieval weapons. I’ve traveled all over the world to learn from the best in the field.
So when it came time to write an skirmish, then a duel, then a battle, I found myself standing in my office, sword in hand, working the movements one after another. I’d pick up a spear. Then an axe. I actually own a halberd, a gift from a cast of Richard III I once directed, and that came into play up on my roof. I found myself choreographing the fights as I would for a stage show, but on a much larger canvas.
The art of stage combat is looking incredibly violent while being incredibly safe. As Maestro David Woolley puts it, “Your job is to make sure your partner is safe and looks good. You do your job, he does his job, everybody’s safe, everybody looks good.”
It is also a goal, as a choreographer, to make violence seem as awful as it is. It’s not enough these days for Juliet to just stab herself, or for the Duff family to be murdered. My goal is to leave the audience squirming.
I had an especially good time doing the fights for Defiant Theatre’s A Clockwork Orange. Some fights had the audience laughing, some cringing, one in particular drew gasps most every night. Fun fun fun.
I tried to bring some of that to the novel, varying the type of fighting, the kind of weapons, the intent of the combatants. Sometimes the fighting is light-hearted, sometimes desperate and sudden. The page also allows me to do two things. Firstly, I can broaden the scope of the fighting, doing a great deal on horseback, which I have only had one abortive attempt at in theatre (seriously, don’t ask). Secondly, I can slow the action down. Part of the trouble in stage violence is that if it goes by too quickly the audience isn’t sure what happened. If it happens too slow they don’t believe it. A very tricky balance to maintain. Now, pacing is as important in a novel as it is onstage, but the written word does afford me a little more latitude.
In the end I noticed I was wounding my lead far more than I ever intended. Pietro was never meant to be crippled by a blow to the leg so early in the book. It just happened, though I have to admit it made all his subsequent fighting much more interesting. I’ve always been a fan of the James Bond and Sharpe books where the hero has to spend a month in the hospital after saving the day. I never heap physical woe upon Cangrande. Always poor Pietro, as much my victim as my hero.
-DB
