#fight scenes

[there-are-many-ways-to-smile]

Renegade Nell is really good. I liked how instead of making the youngest sibling special in some kind of way they made the second oldest have something special. The middle child is often forgotten in these types of stories and it was nice to see. Obviously it’s something on their mother’s side is where the magic comes from, it was said that both Nell and her sister Roxy take after their mother the most. I love a strong female character and especially one that can handle her own. The fight scenes were amazing.

[isagrimorie]

instagram source

One of the things I love about the strike ending (aside from the Actors getting what they need out of the deal), is we finally get to see their BTS photos and videos.

And this BTS of Natasha training for what I consider my favorite Sabine is pure gold.

It shows Natasha's athleticism and real-life martial arts training. Also her spinning backkick (?), is visually, one of my favorite moves.

Also, the stunt people are great, I wish they weren't wearing helmets because their acting too is really good.

[nerdyfangirlmel]

I love that Walker protrays Percy’s fighting as sloppy. Because it’s clearly a conscious decision because Charlie bushnell’s and Adam Copeland’s sword fighting is more swift and purposeful. same with Leah’s and Dior’s even if we don’t see their fighting skills as much. But it’s clear that Percy has less experience. Also I cannot wait to see that fighting skill develop into Percy becoming a renowned swordfighter and recognized as one of the best there is.

[odinsblog]

fight scenes from The Legend of Korra

[deception-united]

It's me again. Are there proper ways of writing fight scenes that flow well? And are there ways to make fights feel realistic without feeling like it stops the story in its tracks? How do I find the middle ground between realism and injury healing times?

Thanks for asking!

Maintaining realism in fights while keeping the story flowing smoothly is crucial for engaging storytelling. Here are some tips to achieve that balance:

Integrate fights into the narrative: Make sure that the fights serve a purpose in advancing the plot or developing the characters. They should feel like a natural progression of the story rather than an interruption.

Character motivations and stakes: Ensure that the characters involved in the fight have clear motivations and stakes. This adds depth to the conflict and makes the fight feel more meaningful to the audience.

Use variety in fight scenes: Avoid repetitive fight scenes by incorporating different fighting styles, environments, and tactics. This keeps the audience engaged and prevents the story from feeling stagnant.

Show the consequences: Realistic fights have consequences, both physical and emotional. Show the aftermath of the fight and how it impacts the characters and the story moving forward.

Balance action with other elements: Don't let the fight scenes overshadow other important aspects of the story, such as character development, dialogue, and plot progression. Maintain a balance between action and quieter moments to keep the story flowing smoothly.

Keep it concise: Avoid prolonged fight scenes that drag on unnecessarily. Focus on the key moments of the fight that are most relevant to the story and characters, and move the narrative forward efficiently.

Incorporate tension and suspense: Build tension and suspense leading up to the fight to make it feel more impactful. Use pacing, foreshadowing, and strategic placement within the story to heighten anticipation.

Make it believable: Research fighting techniques and strategies to ensure that the fight scenes are realistic and grounded in reality. Avoid overly exaggerated or implausible actions that may break immersion for the audience.

Finding the middle ground between realism and narrative pacing in injury healing times and recovery can be challenging but rewarding for maintaining both credibility and story momentum. Here are some tips:

Research: Understand typical healing times for various injuries. Medical websites, journals, and consultations with healthcare professionals can provide valuable insights.

Consider context: The severity of the injury and the overall tone of your story will influence the healing time. A minor scrape will heal quickly, while a major wound would naturally take longer.

Character abilities: Take into account your character's physical condition, age, and any supernatural or futuristic elements that could affect healing. A trained fighter might recover faster than an ordinary person, while futuristic technology or magical abilities could speed up the process.

Plot demands: Sometimes, the pace of your story might require injuries to heal faster than they would realistically. In such cases, consider adjusting the healing time while maintaining some level of believability.

Show the process: Even if you need to speed up the healing process for narrative purposes, acknowledge the injury and its effects on the character. Show them experiencing pain, discomfort, or limitations even as they recover.

Use time skips wisely: If you need to compress healing times for the sake of pacing, consider using time skips or transitions to indicate the passage of time without dwelling too much on the healing process itself.

Balance drama and realism: Strive for a balance between dramatic tension and realism. Injuries can provide opportunities for character development and conflict resolution, so consider how the healing process can contribute to the narrative arc.

Persistent effects: Even if a character's injuries are on the mend, they may not fully heal before the story's conclusion. Implementing this in your writing involves ensuring that the injury continues to affect the character in some way, whether it's physical discomfort, limited mobility, or psychological trauma.

Plot hindrance: Use the not-fully-healed injury to hinder the character's progress or add tension to the plot. For example, if the character's arm was injured in a fight, they may struggle with tasks that require the use of that arm, such as wielding a weapon or climbing.

Pain and discomfort: Continue to reference the injury after the initial healing period. Describe how the character experiences pain or discomfort, particularly in situations that aggravate the injury. This could be triggered by specific movements, weather conditions, or emotional stress.

Character growth: Show how the character copes with their lingering injury. This could lead to moments of vulnerability, resilience, or resourcefulness, allowing for further character development and depth.

For more tips on writing fight scenes, see my previous post!

Hope this helped ❤

[oatm1lkdr1nker]

reject modernity (live action sw) embrace tradition (animated sw)

[hashtagcaneven]

Kuro's Advice for Awesome Fight Scenes

So I heard you want to write a cool fight scene. Rock on.

Running into some trouble though? No sweat, I got you covered.

I compiled this list of 8 Rules I personally use for Kickass Action Scenes for a Discord group of writers and thought it might be useful for others as well.

Rule #1 Fight scenes MUST tell an emotional story.

A fight is just an argument but with physical violence instead of words. Just like how in a musical people talk until the energy and emotion goes so high they burst into song and then when that keeps building, they all start dancing. Same concept. People argue and disagree until the emotion is so high they start throwing hands.

Fights act like any other scene where it starts with one emotion and ends with another. Emotion should flow through each move. They should ebb and flow from start to finish, raising and lowering tension to keep a reader engaged and guessing over who is going to win.

This is the bedrock of fight scenes. No amount of “rule of cool” is going to save the scene if there is no emotional heart beating through it.

Rule #2 You need personal stakes

Goes kit and parcel with Rule #1. Your POV characters have to have something on the line to tell an emotional story.

What happens if they lose? What happens if they WIN?

Go beyond JUST “oh if they lose, they die”. What happens to the character’s world if they lose. What will happen to the ones they love when they’re gone? What are the TRUE long term consequences for failure?

Even if it's a friendly (ie non lethal) competition scene, what are those stakes? Bragging rights for a proud character? Or perhaps taking their opponent down a peg?

Avoid vague generalized stakes and find what makes it personal. A knight may fight for his king and country but he also does it because he has his pride as a knight on the line if he walks away or loses.

Rule #3 Pacing is key

Action is fast paced in real life. It should be so in writing.

I personally think of my fight scenes as if they were a movie/show/play fight scene. Partly because that’s my own personal experience and partly because it helps me with pacing, especially with multiple POV characters.

Don’t spend too long on one action. Keep it flowing but have moments of pause. Real fights have moments where someone needs to pick themselves back up or two opponents need to steady themselves for the next round of assault. Use those moments to dig into the introspection of the POV. Your reader is also gonna need a breather from time to time.

With multiple POVs, I flip through them like I’m switching shots on film. We cut away from one thing to see what another character is up to in the flow of things. I flip the camera at moments of triumph or tension to keep building that emotion.

Rule #4 Let your heroes take some hits

Show off those stakes by letting your big bad character get his ass kicked a little bit.

Let ‘em get knocked around a bit to build that tension within a reader. Make them wonder how they’ll pull this off.

Superman fights are so easy to be boring because he’s basically invincible. We all yawn because we know he’s gonna win. Then along comes someone with kryptonite and suddenly it's Superman getting the beat down. Now we’re emotionally engaged because how is he going to get out of this one?

Show their competency in a fight by how well they can take big, painful hurts and keep going anyway. Show it in how they fight back or stay standing, despite the effort.

And don’t be afraid to let your heroes lose a few times. It makes their eventual victory sweeter.

Rule #5 Be clear and concise with your descriptions

Now ain’t the time to pull out your best Tolkien describing a meal impressions.

Action is fast. There are a ton of moving parts which can be severely complex and hard to follow. You want to avoid this confusion at all costs.

Use clear, specific language so the reader can visualize what is happening in their head and not get lost. Once they get lost, they will get frustrated and disengage.

Ditch the heavy metaphors. Let the movement speak for itself as the allegory. If you want to sprinkle in some flowery language, do so separate from the actual action happening in a fight.

Rule #6 Learn the basics of movement

You don’t need to know how to swing a sword with proper technique to write a sword fight (though, let’s be real, it helps). As long as you understand the fundamentals of how the weapon moves, you can write a good sword fight.

Because what makes a fight good is the EMOTION in the fight. Not just the fancy flourishes.

However, if you go too crazy and it becomes unrealistic, your readers can easily disengage.

So you don’t need to know the difference between a riposte and an ochs stance. You just need to know that arms don’t swing that way. You need to know if someone gets pushed, it can throw them off balance.

Learn the basics of human movement, and if there are weapons involved, learn at least the basics because if I see one more person say they’re wielding a longsword like it’s a small sword, you people will kill me inside even more.

Rule #7 Every action has a consequence

When someone attacks, someone has to defend (or get hit). But when someone moves their body one way, it can open them up to a counterattack.

If I lunge too far forward and overextend, I’ve left myself open for attack. If an opponent turns around, their back is now my next best target.

Pay attention to how your characters are moving. Are they opening themselves up for easy counterattacks when you don’t want them to? 

Thinking about what opening a move gives their opponent can help you write your fight scenes, as it will lead to a natural flow and chain of events.

Rule #8 Don’t be afraid to add sound

Fights are vocal. People grunt and groan and shout when they’re hit. They also make noise when they attack. The more wrapped in emotion, the louder and noisier people tend to get as they get lost in it.

During those moments of pause you add from Rule #3 is a great moment for characters to continue the verbal part of their argument

 If one character temporarily overpowers the other, let them brag. If one character gets punched in the mouth, describe the sound of the blood they spit on the ground. 

Just, for the love of the gods, don’t go all Marvel and be quip central. Don’t undercut your own tension and emotion for a quick laugh or to sound cool.

Some examples of great fights:

[khaotic-neutrxl]

loves these little snippets of frames from this particular fight scene

genuinely one of my favs, love how she fights in this scene 💥💥💥

[buckevantommy]

i'm sure i've seen hotter fight scenes than colin firth getting bamf and bloody against that hate church in kingsman but i really can't remember when

[thepedanticbohemian]

I studied Isshyn Ryu Karate and Filipino fight sticks for many years. Trust me when I tell you, fights are short. Perhaps only a couple of minutes at most. It is exhausting work. It also hurts. Don't pay attention to the shit television and movies pump out. I'm telling you, getting punched in the nose or eye hurts like an MFer. A kick to the groin is horrible. Even blocking, especially if it happens bone-on-bone, again hurts like an MFer.

If you get hit with a weapon on bare skin, your eyes will water and you'll jerk back. (I got the pinky finger on my right/dominant hand broken by a Filipino fighting stick--a 2-foot long solid piece of bamboo--by my years-long sparring partner. My first reaction was to hit him as hard as I could in his temple. It hurt that bad.)

If you're adding fight scenes to your work, don't patronize your readers. Show how tiring and painful it really is. Need inspiration? Interview the Sensei of your local martial arts dojo/dojang.

[novlr]

Today's blog post is all about writing great fight scenes, along with narrative tips and techniques for how to keep readers hooked. Here's a sneak peek:

What makes a good fight scene?

Writing a compelling fight scene isn’t all punches and kicks, nor is it sharp katanas or firearms.

In fact, fight scenes are made up of classic narrative elements such as tension, anticipation, rhythm, and coherence. Let’s see how you should use them:

Narrative tension

Tension is a key element to maintaining the reader’s anticipation.

The feeling of imminent danger, the threat to the players in combat, and the consequences of defeat are what drive tension.

If there is no tension in the story, your fight scenes will be safe, with no stakes. Without stakes, a reader won’t want to keep reading.

Anticipation

We can understand anticipation by asking questions like Who will win? What happens if the character fails? What actions will they take if injured?

The unknown makes the reader excited and nervous enough to care about the outcome.

Rhythm

The rhythm is the flow and swiftness of the narrative. In fight scenes, the utilization of rhythm plays a pivotal role in conveying the level of intensity and urgency. 

A good rhythm will help the reader not to get bored or lost. It’s important to have both intense and calm parts so that the reader can understand and process what’s happening. 

Moments of high intensity require shorter sentences and paragraphs with quick descriptions, while moments of pause allow the reader to catch their breath and delve deeper into the emotions and thoughts of the characters.

Consistency and coherence

Imagine that you read the following line in a story:

“John threw a direct blow to Jack’s belly. Anne felt a stab in her neck.”

Are Jack and Anne connected emotionally? Does Anne have empathy superpowers? Is John so bad at fighting that he ended up hitting Anne’s neck? Or was Anne’s stabbing completely unrelated to John’s blow to Jack? Is John the only assailant, or is there more than one? Are the blows simultaneous from multiple attackers, or are they sequential from only one?

Consistency and coherence refer to logic in the narration of fight scenes. Therefore, the paragraph above lacks information or context for the reader to understand what is happening.

The characters’ actions, reactions, and responses should be consistent and logical, regardless of their progression or the abilities they have acquired.

Want to read more? Check out the full post at Novlr.org!

[howtofightwrite]

How much detail should go into a fight scene to make it vivid but not oversaturated with information? If the battle is between two trained fighters then should the descriptions be more quick and to the point since the fight would likely be quick? Or would it be better to focus on quick thoughts and strategies leading to the action? How does change with sparring practice or novice attackers?

The best way to think about fight scenes is that they are a cathartic end to prebuilt tension. That tension can be created in a few paragraphs, a couple of pages, possibly even a few chapters, but the fight itself (no matter how tense it is) translates to catharsis for your audience. You build to the scene, have the fight, release the tension, and then new tension seeps back in as a result of the characters dealing with the consequences.

Regardless of how you stylistically choose to approach fight scenes on a sentence by sentence level, it’s important to understand how the scene itself behaves in broad strokes so you’re not accidentally releasing your narrative’s tension out of order.

As for how to write fight scenes, there’s no right way to do it except practicing to find the tempo that works best for you and for your individual characters. Personally, I find that clear images and short visual descriptions work best for both experienced characters and for novices. One of the main differences isn’t just the speed at which the fight is ended, but the level of comfort and confidence a character expresses in their narration. (Knowledge of advanced strategy and tactics on the part of the author also helps, but, remember, what you don’t know can be learned.)

Here’s a short snippet I wrote for two characters in a practice duel. Aysun, a well-trained young woman but inexperienced and has never fought a live battle, versus Leah, an experienced swordswoman who grew up in a rough environment fighting for her life.

Blade lit, Aysun hurled herself across the chasm between pillars.

Leah grinned.

They met in the center.

Aysun rushed forward.

Leah sensed the rising arm, the flaming blade pointed straight into a thrust; Aysun ready to let forward momentum carry her strike to victory. She slowed as Aysun landed, pivoted onto a diagonal as the blazing sabre seared past into empty air. Blade up, she struck.

The sensor on Aysun’s chest glowed red.

A horn blared.

“Out!”

So, what does Aysun do wrong? In her overconfidence against an unknown opponent, Aysun rushes in. Rushing is a common tactic you’ll see in martial artists who’ve only ever fought in safe environments because they don’t worry about getting hurt. This is a novice mistake, but also one you’ll see from people who should know better. When I set out to write Aysun, I decided she’d fight via tournament rules. That’s what she knows.

Meanwhile, Leah, being experienced, takes advantage of Aysun’s mistake. She starts by running and looks to Aysun like she’s also rushing, but this is just to lure Aysun in. As they get closer, Leah incrementally slows her pace to allow herself more control over her own momentum. The problem with rushing is that if you close the distance too fast, you can’t stop in time and you run into your opponent. Leah doesn’t bother to block or parry Aysun, as it’d put her at risk of being on the receiving end of Aysun’s momentum. Instead, Leah steps out of line, allows Asyun to go past, and utilizes Aysun’s overextension to claim victory.

(We are, of course, missing the entire setup where Leah baited Aysun into this bout.)

One of the major differences you see between experts, intermediates, and novices isn’t the usage of advanced techniques, but adept use of very basic ones. They don’t game out a fight on the fly because that takes time, instead acting on prebuilt strategies and relying on trained reflexes. With advanced fighters who regularly see combat, they’re more miserly when it comes to showing the audience what they can really do. They’re aware of the exterior consequences that persist outside of the fight.

Some common personality traits of advanced characters versus novices:

Advanced:

Decisive - what it says on the tin. They’re unlikely to hesitate when given openings and go straight for the kill.

Explosive - they shift from resting into violence quickly and without hesitation when they decide the situation calls for it.

Selective - probably saw this fight and that one coming and will move early to avoid as necessary. Injuries mean you can’t fight when it matters.

Confident - confidence comes from experience. They know what they do, and they know they’re good at it. Can be mistaken for overconfidence until seen in action. More likely to talk shit pre-game. They know the value of psychological warfare. Some variants may get a kick out using this confidence to piss off their opponents so they fight angry.

Practical - experience leads to realistic expectations. Experienced characters don’t need to prove themselves and know to save themselves for when it matters, so baiting is harder. Most of the usual shit talk will wash off. Also, more likely to punch someone in the shoulder because punching with a now swelling bruise hurts and slows them down.

Brutality - not guaranteed, but not uncommon either. Here again, we have psychological warfare.

Fatality - unless you’re looking at a situation where killing is not allowed, they’ll lean into this if circumstances require it.

Sophisticated Bodily Knowledge - they know where all the major arteries, important nerve clusters, and internal organs are. (Yes, this includes knowing that stabbing someone in the armpit or groin can cause them to bleed out.) Also what hitting them does and what hitting them feels like. They’re going to be more pointed and technical with their strikes depending on what they want. More likely to break the human body down into joints and ligaments. Understands small damage leads to big results.

Sophisticated Psychological Knowledge - less experienced characters are not likely to surprise them because they’ve seen the same tactics before. Humans aren’t that unique. A clever idea to a novice is an old song for the experienced fighter, and one they’ve probably tried before. Fighting is more than technical, its pattern recognition, and being good at it requires understanding people on a behavioral level to predict them.

Room to Play - this is simultaneously a do and don’t which depends on how strict the character is. May play with a less experienced character or character with no experience if they believe they can get away with it. They know their limits. Not advised, but nobody’s perfect.

Spends Time Practicing - the more skilled a character is, the more rigorously they practice and the more time they devote to developing their skills. While some characters are inclined to rest on their laurels, truly advanced characters know their edge falls off without training and understand the ceiling is without limit. They’re dedicated to their skills.

Chains Techniques - unless you have a character fighting with a bladed weapon, and even when they do, they’re unlikely to be one and done. Blocks create openings for counters. One strike opens the door to another three and so on. (Lots of writers mistakenly try to ping pong fight scenes to draw them out. Combat isn’t turn based. If an opponent isn’t providing suitable resistance to slow them down, they won’t.)

Considers Long Term Consequences - familiarity with techniques means understanding what those techniques do, what the long term consequences are, and how long it takes to recover from them (if they can be recovered from at all.) The same goes for battle. Violence is escalation. Characters who solve problems with violence should face escalating problems further down the road as a result of their actions.

You might be thinking male characters, but this list is gender agnostic. It’s important as a writer not to buy into a skilled character’s bullshit. They’re working very hard to convince the world they’re invulnerable, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.

Novices:

Optimistic - trends for a more romantic, rosier view of martial combat. Experience with the human condition hasn’t knocked it out of them yet.

Indecisive - for most people, it’s not easy to hurt another human being. To see their pain and suffering and to know you caused it. Novices are more likely to hesitate, more likely to ignore openings given if they don’t like the potential outcome, more likely to extend fights to their own detriment, and take hits they don’t have to. Less likely to seize the initiative and, if they do, not great at holding onto it against experienced opponents. They haven’t fully realized they can’t afford to be nice outside of safe, training settings.

More Tells - everyone has tells, but the less experienced a character is then the more obvious their tells are and the more they have. This can be everything between the way they stand to their techniques generally being larger in motion, more obvious in the early movements of the musculature, less energy efficient, and, comparatively, much slower than their experienced counterparts.

More Likely to Flinch - combat hurts coming and going. It hurts to receive hits, but it also hurts to hit someone. The closer you are to bone, the more it’s going to hurt. The harder you hit, the more return vibrations you receive. Beyond movement, these vibrations are what wears out your muscles in prolonged combat. (It only gets worse with weapons.) Proper technique diminishes some of these damaging returns, but not totally. Inexperienced characters will stop to go, “ow, that hurts.” You’ve probably seen characters on television shaking out their hand after hitting another character, that’s what this is. Pain. Inexperienced characters and novice characters are both less capable of pushing past the pain because their training hasn’t covered it or they don’t know to expect it.

Plays Around - there’s a point between novice and intermediate where someone’s learned enough to be dangerous (mostly to themselves)but not yet realized how little they actually know. This leads to overconfidence and overconfidence leads to playing around.

Less Advanced Body Knowledge - more likely to demonstrate less sophisticated knowledge of the human body, unlikely to break the body into pieces, and focus only on the major points like stomach, heart, head. Less focus on exterior limbs and joints, not a lot of thought given to pressure points outside the groin, less common arteries, or damaging musculature to debilitate. Might realize preemptive opening blow to the throat is good, but probably not thinking in those terms yet.

Less Advanced Psychological Knowledge - they don’t have the experience to pick up on the more subtle psychological games and are more likely to be baited. (If you’ve got an MC like this, it’s important to let them make their mistakes. Mistakes build experience and audience street cred.)

One and Done - most martial schools will train blocks and counters early, along with technique sets, but for true beginners chaining unfamiliar techniques won’t feel natural and there’s more likely to be gaps in their combat flow.

Easily Overwhelmed - much more likely to not understand what is going on or for the pacing of combat to fly out of their control.

Few Considerations For Long Term Consequences - novices have the luxury to be hot headed. They haven’t learned about the debilitations of long term injuries or even just the damages caused by small ones. They’re easier to write because they’re more likely to jump in with wild abandon, are met with more surprises, and have an easier growth trajectory for their character arc.

As a writer with no combat or limited martial experience, you’re more likely to start out thinking like a novice when structuring your scenes. While humans are very impressive creatures, it’s easy to overestimate what the body can fight through in comparison to damage received, especially against skilled opponents.

Ultimately, clarity and specificity in how you deliver the visual image combined with the sensation of the character’s combat can provide an entertaining fight scene. This is dependent on your writing, if you focus too much on technical details like sentence structure and not enough on the content and building up character’s decision making then the scene itself might fall completely flat.

Fight scenes are an extension of a greater whole. They’re the frosting on the cake, but the cake’s got to be tasty to begin with. Like martial combat in the real world, there’s no shortcuts, just a lot of hard work. Try, fail, reassess, try again. With practice, you’ll find your rhythm.

Michi

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[violent138]

On writing Fight Scenes

I just read a bunch of really lovely feedback on one of my fic's action scenes and I've waiting to gush over how fun it was to write that. I'm a trained martial artist (over ten years) so good fight scenes need to be cool + grounded somewhat in the world's reality + have emotional stakes, and I was extremely worried the fight scene wouldn't be written well.

My sparring partner and I beat the shit out of each other. Not even joking, we had to to bring the scene to life. Not all of the nonsense we did made it onto the page (because it's actually ridiculously hard to translate action to text without making it drag on forever).

2. There are billions of decisions and microdecisions that fighters make. Most are stupid (unless your opponent is a sea sponge and you're an 8th-level intellect), and backfire or accidentally work out, but you must keep adapting.

3. The two of us earned bruises, definitely flipped each other around way more than necessary and kept fighting over who got to be Deathstroke. So he'll be happy to hear that nearly chipping teeth and breaking the dojo mirror was worth it.

4. I also killed my street cred by admitting I wrote batman fanfiction. In the beginning I was pretending it was for an animation project, but I got caught fast.

5. If I could bring this to life, I'd either do it in animated format (because action is so much cooler and easier to render), or I'd do it without cuts as an uninterrupted action sequence with stunt doubles trained to an inch of their lives.

[alpaca-clouds]

On Writing Fight Scenes

I have been asked about it, so let me try and talk about it. Because those of you who are reading my fics, will know that I actually do like writing my fight scenes. Be it just characters having sparing matches - or outright fights. There is quite a few fics I have written that go into the action/adventure area.

Yet, I do know that a lot of people struggle a lot with fighting sequences. So, I will try to explain some of the core aspects needed to make an fight scene work. Most of these also work for other types of action sequences - though I might write a bit more on those in a seperate blog.

See, I think there are six aspects you need to keep in mind when writing a fighting sequence.

Characters

Pacing

Skills

Perspective

Emotion

Space

Let me explain those points.

Characters

In a fighting scene you need to keep in mind, that actions speak louder than words. Which is to say, that how the characters act within the fight scenes is going to tell the reader about who they are. Their tactics, how brutal their attacks are, how precise they are, how much they care about preventing friendly fire, how much effort they put into preventing collateral damage... It all says something about the characters involved in the fight scene. Hence it makes sense to start with thinking about what characters are participating in a fight and how they would act within it. This goes both for your protagonists and the antagonists.

There is also other stuff. Like: Do they attack head on? How tactical are they about the fight? How aware would they actually be of their surroundings (more on that a bit later)?

This would technically be a good point for me to rant about modern action movies, that often just do not do this AT ALL. And yes, yes, I am talking about fucking Marvel.

Pacing vs Details

I think one of the aspects that most often get messed up in written out fighting sequences is the pacing. Even in a lot of published books (even those by some big names) this is often not done very well - and I will not say that I do fully master this myself. Because it might be the hardest aspect of a fight scene to master.

Simply put, an fight scene needs flow. It will always struggle against the aspect that what it is describing is happening faster than words can convey it. Something that happens within a few seconds is so easily blown up into 300 words or more. And that... is a problem.

Because within a fight scene two opposite aspects struggle against each other: The pacing of the writing - and the need to convey enough information to the reader, so that the reader can get immersed in the scene.

So as a writer you are constantly trying to balance those two things against each other.

Something I personally found works well is putting effort into making sure you know what perspective you are writing - and find way to shorten things. Make the sentences short. Maybe just make super short additions. Two examples:

She aimed, breathed, shot. Once. Twice. Thrice.

Making the description very short. And accented. The same here:

He stabbed her, then stabbed her again. Again. Again. Until the blood was splattering across his face.

Skills

Something that is closely connected to the character, is that they all have different combat skills. How skilled are they with different weapons? How physically strong or dexterous are they? How fast do they think?

Let's face it. Most of us will probably write within some phantastic setting, in which the characters might also be able to use some magic or otherwise supernatural abilities.

All of this needs to be kept in mind. Especially in how it relates to the characters and their actions. This is especially true when you the characters might have an ability that would actually end the fight rather quickly and the writer does not use it. Something that might actually rub readers the wrong way.

Perspective

Alright, let me talk about another thing that I see a lot of people struggle with - once more including a lot of actually published work. And that is something that I actually find really annoying: Know your perspective.

Most of us use personal narrators - so a narrator who usually is narrating from the limited perspective of a character. And this means in a fight scene you will also still be limited to this characters point of view.

And especially in a bigger action scene a single character might not be completely aware of everything happening in that fight. Because their attention is on whoever is the biggest threat on them right now. Maybe they are also somewhat aware of the persons closest to them (be it physically or emotionally), but probably not of everything. And that is okay.

If you go out of the point of view, there is a good chance, you will just confuse the readers, or will break their immersion. Given that again, this will tell you a lot about who the character is. Because if a character diverts a lot of attention towards other things happening in a battle for example. And this might actually not be quite what you want to say about a character.

Not to mention that it actually might take from the perceived threat of the battle. Because you are saying: "Oh, yes, their opponent is unthreatening enough that the character can totally take their attention away from that opponent."

Emotion and Thought

This also ties very much into another aspect of this: How much attention is diverted towards the emotions and the thoughts of a character.

Let me be fully honest here: I have been in life threatening situations before - though never in a fight where my life was in danger. But I can tell you even from the non-lethal fight, as well as just really some dangerous situations. And I can tell you something: Adrenaline will usually make it that you are hyperfocused on the situation at hand, and will furthermore actually kinda block out a lot of emotions. Because that is literally one of the things we have the adrenal gland for.

Sure, the character might think about the situation, trying to find a good solution to win the fight. Especially, when they are more experienced fighters. But even they will probably not think about some implications or why like their one friend had been in an argument with someone else before... Stuff like that once again is immersion breaking - unless it actually has some influence on the fight. Like, if the character thinking about something else making them distracted and that leads to them getting badly injured. Stuff like that.

But even if in a fight you see someone you care about getting injured or killed... The emotions of it will usually only hit after it. And I actually think that makes it even more raw.

Space

Okay, let me talk about the last point, that again tends to be something that a lot of folks struggle with (and here I will very much include myself, especially once we get three-dimensional). And this is the space and spatial relationships within a fight scene.

Again, it is fine that a character is not aware of where everyone is - because they will probably focus on the biggest threats against themselves. But they will at least be vaguely aware of the geography of the space the fight is taking place - and probably have a very general idea of where different people are. And the reader should be able to understand this so that they can understand vaguely what is happening in the room.

This is of course most important to relay the information of where the POV is in regards of their active opponents. Which is gonna be important if you want to understand their actions - and the danger characters pose to them.

So... Make sure to keep that in mind.

Well, that is the most important stuff I can think off. To whoever this might be helpful.

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Chris Hemsworth - Extraction (2020)