View source for Offscreen Moment of Awesome/Literature

{{trope}}
* In [[The Most Dangerous Game]], the climactic, much-anticipated sword fight is completely skipped over. It's only mildly implied afterwards that  {{spoiler|the protagonist won}}.
* ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' remains with the POV of the title character, which is no problem in the earlier books; in the later books, however, there is a war being fought largely out of view, with the other characters doing various things to fight it that the audience doesn't get the chance to see.
** Charlie Weasley {{spoiler|shows up at the [[Final Battle]] with Slughorn and the rest, but doesn't bring in a dragon to fight.}}
*** The final battle is probably the most jarring example, as there was a lot of action going on with many characters involved. In the other books, the characters involved in the action were usually the trio if at all, or an extended group which Harry was a part of.
** In the fifth book, Ron, Neville, Ginny and Luna somehow manage to knock out Draco, Crabbe, Goyle and a couple of other Slytherins.
* In the final chapter of the ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]: [[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' novel ''Sabbat Martyr'', the narrator speaks of a week-long battle supposedly more intense than any other recorded in the narrative, but we do not get to read it. Admittedly, it came on the heels of the final confrontation between Saint Sabbat and the Magister, but still...
** It's also at the end of the book, just after the climax. Also...perhaps it's best not to dwell on a heroic battle that occurs after someone tells the people getting slaughtered that they might want to try fighting back.
* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|A Storm of Swords]]'', blacksmith Donal Noye leads a defense against a group of giants while Castle Black is under siege. The readers only get to see the outcome, all the combatants were killed, and Donal and the giant king Mag killed each other. Sure, the chapter is told from the viewpoint of Jon Snow, who didn't participate in that fight, but the author could have just written ''one'' chapter told from Donal's perspective so that the readers could have taken in the awesome.
** Virtually all of Robb Stark's campaign in the Riverlands and Westerlands during the War of the Five Kings. The closest we get to "seeing" a battle is Catelyn listening to the battle of the Whispering Wood from a distance. The only times we see Robb "onpage" in the second and third books is when he's showing his [[Honor Before Reason|father's aptitude]] for politics.
** It is this style, with large battles and many epic fights not being seen during the event as the protagonist was not present, that apparently made producers feel the series was workable as a TV series.
* In ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'', Bella passes out before we get to see the fight between Edward and James. Apparently Meyer sucks at fight scenes.
** We hear that Leah told off Bella for being mean to Jacob, perhaps the only time in the series when anyone calls her out on anything, but never see it.
*** Well, why [[Show, Don't Tell|show us when you can just tell us]]?
* This trope is used masterfully in [[China Mieville]]'s ''[[The Scar]]'': the book's largely about a narrator 'lost at sea' in a city that's often outside the bounds of her knowledge and understanding. The story builds up a rivalry - and an intriguing past acquaintanceship - between two overpowered badasses, and they finally get their showdown a couple of chapters from the end...but then the fight scene gets skipped entirely, and instead we get to see the aftermath at the start of the next chapter.
* ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series often has large, plot-central battles being stated to occur, but the only "on-screen" action being the commanders discussing the battles before, after, or away from the field. The most [[Egregious]] example would be the fight between Mat and Couladin. Not only does one major character kill another offscreen, it actually narrates Mat preparing for the encounter, then cuts to the victory celebration. To be fair when battles are described, they are both epic and empty of [[Hollywood Tactics]]. However, if the movie adaptation that people are talking about does happen and does get to book 5, they had better include that fight onscreen.
* ''[[Shogun]]'' ends just before the decisive, climactic battle that the whole book was building up to. A battle between hundreds of thousands of samurais that historically decided the fate of Japan. {{spoiler|Admittedly, after Toranaga?s [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|crowning moment of chessmaster it was pretty much a done deal.]]}}
** You need to remember that there were a number of [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Crowning Moments of Awesome]] earlier in the book. {{spoiler|Blackthorne and Toranaga's escape from Osaka is one of the most awesome scenes in the book, as well as the attack by the ninjas near the end of the book... which is unbelieveably awesome. Except for Mariko's death.}} Besides, Shogun is more focused on Blackthorne's development from a European to being assimilated into Japanese culture.
* After spending the entirety of ''[[The Hobbit]]'' running around pissing everyone off and fleeing the bad karma before they can get what's coming to them, Bilbo and friends are finally cornered, with everyone turned against them and each other. The book climaxes as huge armies of men, elves and dwarves are about to begin fighting a humongous battle when Gandalf comes out of nowhere and tells them to stop, because huge armies of goblins and wargs with bats are coming at them! They quickly strike a truce to fight the common foe, and an enormous battle rages! At the brink of defeat, sentient eagles suddenly show up out of nowhere to help! The [[Holy Shit Quotient]] is [[Readings Are Off the Scale|off the scale]]! Oh, wait, Bilbo just got bonked on the bean by a rock. At least he gets to hear about it later.
** Most of the good bits happened before he was knocked out - the various characters popping up and all (a giant werebear shows up as well). Besides, the actual fighting would just be bloody and awful and since the only 'point' in the battle for any of the 'good guys' was living through it and getting gold afterward, the fighting itself wouldn't have meant much of anything to ''anybody.'' (Except the goblins, for whom it was a matter of revenge and honor.) And Bilbo wakes up to find that [[Tear Jerker|two of his companions are dead and one is dying.]]
* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', Boromir's last stand, the Ents wrecking Isengard and the Dead Men driving off the Corsairs at Pelagir are described in detail by those involved in flashback. [[The Film of the Book]] depicts these events in real time.
* At the climax of ''[[1632|1634: The Galileo Affair]]'', Father Mazzare is about to give a speech defending Galileo to a crowd that includes the Pope and many senior cardinals. We hear him begin the speech... and then we cut to him stepping down, where he can't remember what he has just said. However, the speech was apparently powerful enough to get Galileo off.
** Or, to be more precise, {{spoiler|[[Secret Test of Character|to convince the Pope that Mazzare was truly a priest of the Catholic church before promoting him to a cardinal]], as the Pope had already decided that Galileo was not strictly a heretic}}.
* The ''[[Dune]]'' novels suffer from Frank's annoying tendency to skip some amazing moments of awesome which... are actually rather crucial to the story. The Fremen/Sardaukar battle at the end of the original novel, for example, was alluded to in less than a page (fortunately the duel between Paul and Feyd-Rautha in the last chapter was dealt with in full); the massive jihad between the events of ''Dune'' and ''Dune Messiah'' is never covered... even  {{spoiler|the destruction of Arrakis}} at the end of ''Heretics of Dune'', for example, was skipped over between chapters. Though what crowning moments of awesome are included more than make up for it.
* Happens a bit in Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, though as a Trope Breaking semi-parody of fantasy and fairy tales in general, it was to be expected. Dealing with the evil fire witch and the averted epic battle between the dragons and wizards are two such moments.
* Less understandably so, however, is the two-part series by Mark Acres, Dragonspawn and Dragonwar, presumably he is terrible at writing large battles as that's the only real explanation. The only large military engagement one sees is when Bagsby the thief rides in and blasts Ruprecht's army with his two dragons, shortening the fight considerably.
* Happens so many times in ''[[The Iliad]]''. There are prophecies delivered multiple times that if Achilles kills Hector, both Troy will fall and Achilles will die soon after, but both Troy and Achilles are still standing at the end of the book.
** If you add ''[[Odyssey|The Odyssey]]'' into it, it's possibly the worst missed moment ever: ''[[The Iliad]]'' ends with Troy unconquered, and the Odyssey begins with Odysseus trying to get home after the sack of Troy, leaving [[Trojan Horse|a certain story about a horse]] to be told only briefly in flashback. The Odyssey similarly has a prophecy about an oar, which is mentioned multiple times but never revealed, though it was probably not an awesome scene.
*** ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' are part of a [[The Trojan Cycle|much longer epic cycle]], which contains the entire history of the [[Trojan War]]. Unfortunately, the other works (''Cypria'' (before the Iliad), ''Aethiopis'', ''Little Iliad'', ''Ilious persis'' (lack of capitalization intended), ''Nostoi'', (all between ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey''), and ''Telegony'' (the conclusion)) have all been lost.
* Two of the main villains from ''[[The Death Gate Cycle]]'' are Xar (a [[Magic Knight]] [[Badass Grandpa]] who is quite possibly the most powerful wizard who ever lived) and Kleitus (an undead, omnicidal necromancer who is magically weaker but makes up for it by being almost impossible to destroy). They meet, fight, and Xar manages to force Kleitus into being his (grudging) servant. Unfortunately, this all takes place ''off page''- the reader is even told that the fight was spectacular, albeit brief, but never gets to see it. Now, seeing it wasn't plot-centric or anything, knowing what happened, but still- that would have been ''awesome''.
** Not to mention how Alfred turns into a giant dragon and opens a can of whoopass on the creatures of the Labyrinth, including at least one evil dragon of the kind that had only ever been defeated once by aforementioned Xar. The fight never gets described.
* The [[Dresden Files]] has had several major cases of this. In Dead Beat, Harry is told by Morgan, Luccio and Ramirez about the recent series of battles they fought in against the Red Court in which  {{spoiler|ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN Wardens and thousands of vampires died.}}. To give you some sense of how big that was, there are only about 200 Wardens in all. The next book ''Proven Guilty'' nearly matches that with  {{spoiler|a massive battle at a Venatori Umborum base in Oregon in which Morgan nearly kills the Red King and Michael singlehandedly saves 40 Warden trainees at Luccio's boot camp.}}
** Since the entirety of the series is told in First Person, there's no way those scenes could have possibly been included. And a detailed play-by-play of what happened seems kind of improbable.
** At one point, the Merlin quick-casts a ward that holds off the Red Court. The [[All of Them|ENTIRE]] Red Court.
* Done deliberately in ''[[The Charterhouse of Parma]]'' by [[Stendhal]]: The main character joins up Napoleon's army dreaming of heroic deeds and epic action, but when the battle of Waterloo takes place, all he sees is smoke and confusion. The whole thing is a huge anticlimax for him, and, symbolically, it marks the passing of the Revolutionary era.
* The Pardal plot in the last ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'' book ends abruptly during the climactic final battle, with only a brief transmission in the last scene to indicate that they succeeded and did not, in fact, die horribly. {{spoiler|Sean finding the right access code to bring down the defenses}}? {{spoiler|Bringing the full might of Imperial technology on those sorry zealot asses in a well-deserved [[Curb Stomp Battle]]}}? {{spoiler|Taking total control of a global theocratic empire}}? Nope.
** Fortunately the plot is the basis for [[Safehold]], currently on book 5...
* ''[[The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]]''. So much. A huge battle between Aslan's forces and the White Witch's army is set up...cut to Lucy and Susan saving Aslan and riding him to the battle, where we see it mostly ended and Peter tells them "Hey, we just had a really cool battle, you missed most of it though".
** The 2005 Walden-Media film rectified this, even giving the girls minor but pivotal roles at the battle's very end.
* In Yahtzee Croshaw's (currently) only book, "Mogworld", this happens twice, for exactly the same reason each time... the main character, Jim, intentionally walks away from the horde of invaders threatening the mage's school where he's studying, and watches it from afar/death...
* Gordon Korman's ''Losing Joe's Place'' averts and plays it straight in the same chapter. The three main characters see fellow roommate Rootbeer decimate six pro wrestlers one by one in an exhibition, only to have all six gang up on them in the parking lot later, As this fight is about to begin, the narrator is knocked out, only to come to and see all six wrestlers beaten and spread out across the pavement. One friend says, "It was like the end of the world, and you missed it!" while Rootbeer just says, "Those guys - they had ''bad luck''."
* ''[[The Hunger Games]]'' by Suzanne Collins is told in first-person, so much of the action in the arena happens "offscreen", including what is implied to be an epic two-day battle between the two strongest competitors in the arena. [[Battle in the Rain|In the rain]].
* In ''[[The War Gods|Oath of Swords]]'', while the narrator is watching Bahzell busy fighting {{spoiler|Harnak}} as {{spoiler|champion of Tomanak to Harnak's champion of Sharna}}, Brandark is caught in a melee against four hradani simultaneously -- and kills three of the four before going down.
* In ''[[The Island of Doctor Moreau]]'', Moreau grudgingly offers a fragmentary account of how a limbless, writhing ''thing'' he'd created had killed one of his human servants and several of his other creations before being hunted down. Although this event sounds like it might make a decent adventure/horror tale all by itself, no details about the creature or its actions and demise are offered, and it's never mentioned again.

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