I’ve been working with the four other writers involved in the next Wild Cards mosaic novel.  Mosaic novels are hard.  Instead of individual stories the person editing the book (me) has to weave together all the stories so it reads like a novel with, in this case, five different writers and five different point of view characters.  They meet, argue, fight together and against each other so we all using each others characters at different points in the book.  As most people know I’m architect when it comes to writing.  I plot everything.  I lay out the major scenes for a novel on 3×5 cards in multiple colors for the different characters, and I was determined we would have a detailed master outline for this book.

All five of us had an hour and a half brainstorming session via Skype and many, many email exchanges.  We picked different colors for our characters, each writer laid out their outline for their character.  I then took all the outlines and began to weave making changes as I saw fit (prerogative of the editor).  And now it is pretty much done.  I complete the final two days of the fourteen day outline this afternoon and sent it off to the other writers for comment.

There was one thing I didn’t get blocked out however — the big fight scene that is the climax of the book.  We’d all figured out the falling action that comes after the big kaboom, and I realized we had a lovely bookend for this volume, but when I got to the fight scene I realized that trying to choreograph a fight for all five of us was feeling a bit overwhelming.  I learned how to write good fight scenes for both film and books by watching Jackie Chan movies.  Pick an interesting location.  Fill it with familiar objects (and sometimes unusual objects) that can be used in quirky ways and let the fun begin.  A few examples — a mounted animal head, a ladder, a tea set, an umbrella, etc. etc.  Then get creative and get crazy.

But what stopped me on doing the full choreograph for this book was the pesky problem of guns.  There’s an old saying that “God didn’t make men and women equal — Colonel Colt did.”  Meaning a woman with a gun can take down a man despite the fact he is in general stronger, has a longer reach, etc.  Well the same thing applies even in a superhero setting unless everyone of your heroes is basically invulnerable.  And that is not the case in Wild Cards.  We have four characters who can pretty much laugh off a bullet — Golden Boy, Turtle, Bubbles and Rustbelt.  Everybody else — pretty squishy.  And even Turtle if you catch him out of his shell is squishy.  Here’s the truth — unless you are impervious to bullets guns make a superhero versus shooter a really short fight. Guns win, particularly if you have an master assassin with a high powered rifle who is on a rooftop half a mile away.  Curveball can throw things really hard and make stuff explode.  Assassin with high powered rifle shoots her in the head.  Earth Witch controls… well, earth.  She can make giant pits, waves of rock and dirt — shoot her in the head.  Game over.  Wrath can turn insubstantial when she’s being a jewel thief, but if she’s just out shopping or getting a mani/pedi…  Shoot her in the head.  Jay Ackroyd is a guy who can teleport you away if he points his finger at you.  But he’s got to see you.  Master assassin half mile away in cover.  Boom.  The Infamous Black Tongue — snake body, poison tongue.  Shoot him in the head.  You’re getting the picture.

So how in a modern novel or movie do you remove the guns in a way that’s realistic and doesn’t rely on the shooter being knocked unconscious or lost their gun or struck blind, or some other contrived event?  Add to that that there are police and security forces, and the armed forces all who have really big guns.  Pull them into a fight even with powered people and a lot of meta humans are going to get killed.  Yeah, they may take out a lot of normal guys, but guns mean you don’t have to get up close and personal in a fight.

And that’s what stopped me choreographing the final fight this afternoon because my character is a master assassin, a crack shot and he knows damn well they are going into danger facing an opponent who has allies both human and avian.  She is also very, very old.  So why doesn’t he set up on a rooftop a half mile away and take her out?  I had no good answer.  So maybe he is out of this fight or wounded in a way that prevents him from using this particular tool of his trade.  And that still doesn’t address why the other heroes trying to save the situation don’t unlimber a gun and handle this problem?

I’m starting to have the glimmer of an idea, and I’m hoping a night’s sleep will bring me the answer.  Wish me luck.