* * *

The taste of blood has always intrigued me. Sort of a zingy copper, with just enough sweetness to make it delicious, which in itself makes it repugnant. I’ve tasted more blood than I’d care to tell my parents, but I’ve come to enjoy it in the moment, the rush of adrenaline that comes with being punched in the mouth, your teeth breaking through your lip and the plasma spilling onto your tongue. I can accept that, but it’s also given me a gentle craving occasionally, both enthusing and terrifying, like waking up to get a midnight snack but knowing that if you walk into the dark kitchen you can never come back to the safety of your bedroom again, so you pull the covers back up and let the monsters sleep.

That said, the blood on my lips now seemed different, and scary. The scent was like electrified steel, cooling down, the smoke blurring your vision and making everything seem gray. The open wounds from his fist were convulsing as they crashed against my teeth, as if the flesh was already sowing itself back together. But most unsettlingly, it was cold. Like melted ice dripping into my mouth, forcing me to jolt away onto the ground, terrified. It was as if frosted lightning had shot down my throat, freezing my insides while boiling them at the same time. Horrified, I looked up at my assailant, not into his hollow eyes but into his bleeding smile, the cold blood running through his teeth. He’d let me hit him earlier, let me open him up thinking myself a surgeon, when instead I was the patient on his malefic table. I was the plaything to this visage of inhumanity, a mere rag doll to be tossed around until he tired of me and cast me into the fire with his other broken toys. I was a victim.

But this is ridiculous, I told myself. I’ve tumbled with dozens of strangers in these alleys, and been terrified I’d kill someone or be killed before, this was nothing knew. But I’d always found consolation in the fact that whoever won the fight, we’d both been opened up and showed each other our humanity; whatever differences we had, we still bled. But our blood was warm. And suddenly I could feel my eyes tearing up, and my voice broke as I whimpered, “What are you?”

“You’re about to find out.” His grin was growing, a Cheshire smirk of malice and vivacity, the blood having run down his lips and across his chin. As his melted smile dripped into the street, I closed my eyes and pulled the sheets back over my head, warm in my bed and safe from all the monsters and the other shadows on the way to the fridge. But this was no dream, and there was nothing covering me but the chilly mist in the air and his inhuman blood. This was no dream. This was a nightmare.

* * *

As I’m sure you notice, there’s not a lot of action. There’s one punch and falling on the ground. My problem is, I find it very hard to write about punches and kicks without getting redundant fast, and as such tend to end my actions scenes with far too much brevity. What would you suggest to help make my actions scenes into, well, action scenes?

*

That thing, that’s kinda like a mini-chapter break. It’s like a semi-colon. It’s not as strong as a fullstop but it does the same job. Same here, it’s not as strong as a chapter break but it does the same job.

Although really if you’re going to use that you might aswell use a chapter break.

Maybe one day I’ll fly to Brasil and learn capoeira. As for now I just study forms and whatnot.

Well It depends on how long they use the fancy moves and each character has a different way they fight. I’ve studied many forms of combat and I want the reader to be able to tell the differences between a spin kick and a plain old kick.

It’s like a person who has owned horses for twenty years writing a fantasy story with horses involved, and going into things like which lead the canter is on or the specifics of the breed.

If you know a lot about something, and it’s touched on in your writing, it’s so easy to make it a ‘look how many words I know’. Just figured I’d point this out, just for thought.