# Handling multiple events at the same time



## Zeitzbach (Jan 20, 2015)

How? Any trick?

When more than two people are on the scene, unless they take turn talking, more than one event will take place. This is even more obvious in fight scene especially if it's a 2 v 2 where one side has to constantly interrupt the other side while dealing with their opponent.

How do you tackle this kind of situation? My method doesn't feel appealing enough.

X was fighting Y. X did this. Y did that.
While X and Y were fighting... A and B were also taking it out on each other. A did blah. B did blah.
"A!!!" X shouted having seen A being pushed back. In order to blah, X rushed to blah...
Seeing that X did blah, Y did blah.

It's like a constant "Meanwhile, THen, Meanwhile, Then, ...." and I feel like it won't be good if I just stick to this throughout the whole book. Is there any easier and smoother way to do this?


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## Crunchy_Bat (Jan 20, 2015)

The shadow trilogy by brent weeks has a lot of amazing 2v2 writing senarios, I recomend it as a read to pull insparation and example.

As for my input: x attacks y and a attacks b but maybe y and b don't have the impulse to fight x and a one on one. It seems like the only thought process going through your fighters heads is "we will one v one the first person we see!" There are a lot of complex strategies to war and fighting, and I am sure you can find some good reference on tactics that have been developed over years and years of war. For instance x attacks y a attacks b, y and b retreat back and regroup, x and a attack again but this time y and b will focus on taking one off balance and focus energy on another in an attack, maybe one gets stuck or caught up, the other has to make a choice to help or continue attacking, I mean, there must be a lot of team work options available. But I would suggest trying to write it as one seamless scene without cutting to each pairs fights untill they intervene.


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## Half-Note (Jan 20, 2015)

Hm. I have a possible solution. Split the fights into different chapters, but have them both affect one another to suggest that both are taking place at the same time. What one fighter does in one of the confrontations can affect the fighters in the other.

Situation: Mr.X is fighting Mr. Y while Mrs. Z is defending a missile launch platform against some attackers. One chapter shows the first situation where Mr. X and Mr. Y fight each other and are hit by a missile strike which has a great impact on their battle, then the next chapter will show Mrs. Z fight back the attackers and launching the missile at the fighters, ultimately revealing what the hell happened.

You can also write dates at the start of every chapter to signify what time the event takes place at. So the launching of the missiles displayed in the second chapter take place on October 3rd, 2036 20:19, and the fight between Mr. X and Mr. Y displayed in the first takes place on October 3rd, 2036 20:12.

Hope I've been of some help.


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## Zeitzbach (Jan 20, 2015)

Crunchy_Bat said:


> The shadow trilogy by brent weeks has a lot of amazing 2v2 writing senarios, I recomend it as a read to pull insparation and example.
> 
> As for my input: x attacks y and a attacks b but maybe y and b don't have the impulse to fight x and a one on one. It seems like the only thought process going through your fighters heads is "we will one v one the first person we see!" There are a lot of complex strategies to war and fighting, and I am sure you can find some good reference on tactics that have been developed over years and years of war. For instance x attacks y a attacks b, y and b retreat back and regroup, x and a attack again but this time y and b will focus on taking one off balance and focus energy on another in an attack, maybe one gets stuck or caught up, the other has to make a choice to help or continue attacking, I mean, there must be a lot of team work options available. But I would suggest trying to write it as one seamless scene without cutting to each pairs fights untill they intervene.



What is this shadow trilogy? Never heard of it and its full name but I might give it a try just to see how multiple events are handled. I would do a 1 v 1 + 1 v 1 but that isn't really as effective as cheating and have some random stray arrow fly over to the 2nd opponent once in a while. This will get even worse in a 4 v 4. It's like I'm trying to write a shoutcast script for an MMO team battle ranging from 2 v 2 to 4 v 4 for battlescene, not including normal events. It's fun because it's really messy but because it's really messy that it's so hard to write.



Dog-likeDenis said:


> Hm. I have a possible solution. Split the fights into different chapters, but have them both affect one another to suggest that both are taking place at the same time. What one fighter does in one of the confrontations can affect the fighters in the other.
> 
> Situation: Mr.X is fighting Mr. Y while Mrs. Z is defending a missile launch platform against some attackers. One chapter shows the first situation where Mr. X and Mr. Y fight each other and are hit by a missile strike which has a great impact on their battle, then the next chapter will show Mrs. Z fight back the attackers and launching the missile at the fighters, ultimately revealing what the hell happened.
> 
> ...



I actually have the date thing planned for later but that's for when I start writing for other side. Can't really go with that though since most actions from one person to another at the exact same location probably won't last two paragraph unless I want that side of the fight done on its own which is weird when it comes to a teamfight.


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## Charrio (Jan 28, 2015)

That's a tough one. 
I have only tackled it once or twice. 

My way around it was to have one side's view and action then after having the other sides view in the after report debriefing. 
Its not by any means perfect but let me have both sides point of view without bouncing back and fourth in the story too badly


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## Ursa Maximus (Jan 28, 2015)

If I have two events happening simultaneously, I'll alternate between the two on breaks in the immediate action. When someone dives for cover or reloads their gun or starts a new ongoing action like running. 

While the action is slow or there's a lot of dialogue, I'll stick on a single event for 2-3 paragraphs before switching off.  As the action gets heavier, I'll mesh the two more finely, maybe only 2-3 sentences before alternating. That way neither side loses momentum and the action stays fresh.

I've never been able to effectively weave three or more action scenes this way though. It always ends up reading like garbage. For that, I'll pick the two most important scenes and combine them like I outline above, then dedicate larger blocks to the third when possible.


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## LI.Reaver() (Jan 29, 2015)

Use your characters to describe many events.
Look over shoulder, sudden thought, sound of ambience - everything could be used to let reader know that yes, something did happen independently of characters' knowing about.


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## Guilrel (Jan 30, 2015)

My first suggestion is to combine both actions into one paragraph.  But my second suggestion depends on where they are, you can use page breaks to break away from focusing one character to the next one.  Though if they are close to each other then that second part might be really hard.


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