The Battle of Raven Kill

Started this story over the weekend. I wrote the first couple of pages but it had some point of view problems so I think I'm going to start again. I only had a vague idea of how I wanted to get into the action so I just started typing. As usual, the necessary cast of supporting characters started sprouting up and thus I arrived at the POV issue. I begin with the main character's clan, or what's left of them, huddled by a river and getting the bad news that the bad guys are still after them. The main character, who working name is Oth (which I just realized has a military connection I should have seen before; OTH stands for Other Than Honorable discharge), has a special attribute that will become apparent as the story progresses. This gets foreshadowed by the clan's healer/shaman/wise woman. There's also the clan chief and some other warriors who have bit parts in the beginning. To add to the sense of danger and help raise the stakes that Oth must fight for, I'm also going to throw in some pitiable but oh-so-cute waifs who will be slaughtered if he fails. This all needs to happen by about page three.

However, if I can't pull off a readably tense opening scene then I might just start off with Oth alone on the bridge and do some flashbacks while he fights. Now that I think of it, some flashbacks might be good to plan on. One long extended fight scene that has no change of location could get boring. There has to be some kind of pause in the action to let a reader catch their breath, to introduce some bad guy characters, and to build up the tension as everyone involved starts to realize what they must do. I had originally thought of just writing a bunch of fight scenes and calling it good but when it came to actually writing the thing, I started cooking up other thoughts. In the end, it has to be interesting to me or it just won't get written.