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Nikos
Dreamer
*Adjusting his mindset according to the tempo of the fight! (I don't know what autocorrect did at the end of this comment, but ai did not catch it at all)
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Descriptions of fight scenes
- Thread starter Nikos
- Start date
Prince of Spires
Istar
In general it's good advice to not start with a fight scene, precisely for this reasons. However, I recently read The Blade Itself, by Abbercrombie, and that starts with a great fight scene that kicks off the novel. It's worth studying for that reason. And since it's the first chapter, you can even just read the sample on Amazon. It's chaotic and as a reader we know very little about what's actually going on. But it's also captivating and drags us with it. (though I realize it's probably not for everyone...).
The reason it works is because we're deep in the character's head. The chapter is more about the character trying to survive and being just as lost as the reader, than it is about the blow by blow of the fighting. There's very little of that, and the bits there are are very fast.
And that is what makes writing fights difficult and visual fights inaccurate. People who have never been involved in personal violence don't know, can't know, how it can take only seconds from the initial contact to someone bleeding out on the bricks. They have no idea what you mean when you say, "Time dilation," or the true nature of "going berserk." They have no idea what two gallons of "blood" looks like splashed across cobblestones.
And chaos. The very first fight I wrote and wrote well took me six weeks to dig into, because while I have a long history of violence, the words weren't in my head, yet. So, I obeyed my first impulse and got some books.
I'm reading, and reading, and finally, thirteen pages into a fairly small offering, I hit the phase, "Sometimes, shit happens." And it was like someone got off the hose and suddenly I saw the entire fight.
Wrote the whole thing in an afternoon, and it's still one of my favorite fights.
Also, tunnel vision. POV matters a lot here. If you're in first person or close third, and you're aiming for "accuracy" (however you choose to define that), then you can't actually describe much. You can't be the camera swinging around showing different perspectives, reaction shots, and the like. It's something to consider when choosing to detail a fight scene and what the reader "needs" to know.
Mad Swede
Auror
It isn't tunnel vision, at least not in the sense most people use that expression.
This is very hard to describe, and I'm not sure this will be terribly clear to anyone who hasn't been there. Time slows in an intense fight, everything seems to happen in a sort of slow motion. You're very focused on the moment you're in. It isn't that you don't hear or see what's going on around you, it's more that you filter out what doesn't seem essential at that moment. The thing is, what isn't essential varies a bit as the fight goes on, so sometimes you do see and hear things a bit further away because somehow you know you need to, and othertimes it's like things around you just aren't there. At the end of it all, you're there, with or without injuries, and the world seems to come back. And that's when it all hits you. Where you are, what's left around you, the blood, the bodies, the groans and screams of pain. The sheer exhaustion. And if you're unlucky it all starts again a short while later.
Naruzeldamaster
Inkling
I don't have much advise on how to do fight scenes but I dare you to handle defective weaponry like this...
Nighty_Knight
Troubadour
To me it's no different than telling a story. It is a story. What is happening, why, what are the results of each action and overall. I like to think of a good dramatic pro wrestling match. The story and showing the audience what's happening is the key. Moves are important, but they need weight and results. If someone gets cut or punch, it's going to have a physical reaction as well as mental and emotional one. Make them quick to keep the flow going. I do a lot of blow by blow, but it's quick and then move to the reactions to it. I honestly feel like I do well writing fight scenes purely because I write from a lot of personal experience and just try to put it all together. But who knows, I never had anyone read anything I have written yet so it might just be plain bad lol.
Everything is a weapon, in literature and in life. Dude's surrounded by weapons. If the weapon at hand is defective, throw it at bad guy and grab another one. My little sister is about 5'2". She throws things, which works great if you know how to make that practice into a better weapon. I'm 5'7" and built like a vending machine. I do not throw things. I like to joke that I know how to kill a man five ways with a washcloth. And that's just washcloths. And to better demonstrate, this is one of my favorite scenes that we've done. We call it The Upgrade Scene.
This is long. I regret nothing.
~~~
A moment later the shadows near the foot of the spiral staircase rippled, and the kitten returned, still in human form.
Etienne jerked his head upright, brows raised.
The kitten approached, gaze skeptical. “Deal?”
Etienne nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, we have a deal. You get me out. I take you with me.”
The kitten returned his nod and pushed a shadow through the door bars. The shadow rippled, first dropping the sigil and then a heavy boot with char here and there.
A… boot.
Etienne blinked at the boot. Between the sigil and the boot and the soot on the walls, he was pretty sure he knew what had happened down here. The dwarves had been murdered and burned. At least, he hoped that had been the order. He couldn’t afford to contemplate the alternatives.
Instead, he gestured to the boot. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
The kitten pantomimed throwing it.
Etienne opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again. It made a strange sort of sense. The kitten had probably had a lot of boots thrown at him and had every reason to fear them. Did he dare send the kitten back for something more… weapony? Was it worth putting him at risk again? Finally, he shrugged. “Screw it. We’ll make it work.” He slipped the sigil into the inner pocket of his leather jacket and patted it.
He dumped what was left off the food tray, feeling the heft of its weight in his hand. Since they were improvising, it was good of his jailors to give him another weapon. He looked the boot over, finding what he hoped for. A sturdy, dwarven-made boot with threads of metal reinforcing the laces. Now, here was a weapon, of a sort. He pulled out the laces and wrapped them around his wrist.
And then, of course, he had the Glock, but against a sidhe, it wouldn’t do much more than wound them unless he got very lucky. His model carried .45’s, and they could leave an impressive hole, but even then, a pure sidhe could heal it if they were strong enough.
Etienne turned to the kitten. “I need you to be small and hide until this is over. If something happens to me, I don’t want them to know you helped me.”
The kitten nodded and dropped his hands to the floor, shadows rippling over his body until he landed on soft, gray kitten paws. He slipped between the bars and burrowed under the hay in the far corner of the cell.
Etienne let out a breath, steadying himself, and weighed the boot in one hand. Yeah, this would work. He stretched his arm out beyond the bars and threw the boot across the room with every ounce of his newly returned strength, striking the open door and forcing it to swing with a metallic screech.
The same sort of noise Etienne’s cell door had made when it was slammed shut by Zephan.
“What’s going on down there?” a rough male voice called down the spiral staircase.
Etienne didn’t reply. Instead, he leaned against the bars, arms crossed, and waited.
Quieter, Etienne heard, “You, check it.” Lazy asses.
A single guard came trotting down the stairs, not one attractive enough to be stationed in the public spaces. Not a sidhe. He sneered at Etienne. “Shut up down here, traitor.”
Etienne glanced down and saw a small ring of keys hanging from a thong on the guard’s belt. Fuck him, for once in his life, he was that lucky. Etienne smirked and met the guard’s gaze.
The guard moved closer. “What are you smirking at?”
“Your face. I saw it on the ass end of a dog, once.”
The guard’s face reddened. “You’ll eat those words.”
Etienne leaned further into the bars, his voice bland. “You’ll have to feed them to me, ass face, because there’s a whole lot more where that came from.”
The guard pressed against the door, trying to intimidate Etienne. “I’m going to enjoy watching you die, trai—”
Etienne’s hands shot out, grabbed the guard, and spun him around, slamming him against the bars. The reinforced bootlace pulled tight against the guard’s throat. Etienne worked a foot up against the bar at the guard’s back and went up on his toes with the force of his constriction. There was a popping sensation as the hyoid bone crushed.
No sound escaped the guard’s lips, only the drumming of his heels against the soft dirt floor.
Etienne maintained tension on the makeshift garotte until the drumming ceased and the guard hung from the length of bootlace. He tied the laces tight, leaving the man hanging from the cell bars, and retrieved the keys, breathing a sigh of relief when they really did open the cell door. He grabbed up the tray and the guard’s dagger and whispered to the kitten, “Stay hidden until I call you.”
“What’s taking so long?”
Etienne jumped just a little at the voice from the top of the stairs.
“If you’re just screwing around down there and my ale gets warm, you’re fetching more.” The voice circled closer as it came down the stairs followed by more than one set of footfalls. So curved and narrow, the guards would have to come down one at a time. A design intended to keep people in also kept them out.
Etienne slipped to the left side of the staircase, out of immediate sight, tray raised.
The first guard came into view, a fae mix favoring human, helmless. Etienne didn’t know what goddess was smiling on him right then, but he wanted to kiss her full on the mouth.
Or him.
He swung for the fences, as his friend the late wizard Arthur Mulcahy would have said, taking the second guard in the face with the tray’s edge hard enough to bend the heavy piece of metal around his head with the wet crunch of shattering bone. The man went down like so much meat, falling back against his comrade and taking her down with him.
The tray fell away, leaving the red, crushed ruin of the man’s face.
The third guard scrambled to get to her weapon, blood spray in her flower eyes, dead weight across her legs, the narrow staircase limiting her range of movement.
Etienne cleared leather and pointed the Glock at her face. She was some sort of sidhe mix. It might not kill her, but maybe he could do enough damage to slow her down.
Her eyes widened with terror. “Agmundr,” she whispered.
Etienne didn’t so much as blink. If she wanted to believe that this was his named revolver, bringer of death to sidhe, then let her. This moment, right here, was why he’d spent a lifetime teaching the sidhe to leave him alone.
But now he had a quandary. To kill her or not? At first glance, it looked like he might not have to. He could lock her in the cell and walk away. But that left a guard who could make enough noise to alert others and knew what he was armed with. He gave her a look of pity. “I’m sorry.”
The guard kicked free from the body and scrambled back up the stairs.
She made it a single step before Etienne was on her. He drove the dagger into the base of her neck, severing her spine and thrusting downward through her throat. She didn’t even kick on the way to the floor. A sidhe mixed with something weak, apparently.
Etienne looked at the dagger, thinking, and decided to take the two that weren’t covered in slick, sticky blood. He let out a soft whistle, and after a moment, the kitten peered out. Etienne gestured for him to hurry up. “We have to go. Now.” The kitten scampered up to him, and Etienne picked him up and put him inside his shirt. “Scratch me and the deal’s off.”
Bodies. Now he had to worry about bodies. A torch caught his eye.
He dragged the bodies into a cell and set the hay on fire. He moved from cell to cell, igniting piles of dry hay. Upstairs, he ignited every flammable thing he could reach. Fitting, considering what they’d done to the dwarves. Hopefully, the other citadel guards would be too busy with the fire to pursue him.
He patted his chest to make sure the kitten was secure and made his careful way from the dungeons. Now, to find Cian and get the hell out of Summer’s Splendor.
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Naruzeldamaster
Inkling
I don't have a whole lot of fight scenes written down yet, I do have one written down but it's a very classic take of each step of the fight.
My fight scenes feel 'choppy' most of the time, I think part of that is just how I write, but I do try to write them good.
My biggest focus is having the narration focus on things that the point of view character would focus on. The swordsman is going to be focusing on his environment and how best to take advantage of it, and the martial artist is going to be focusing on contorting her body correctly to weave through the fight.
The brash and sassy character makes rash and hard judgements, the calm and studious one maintains their demeanor in a tense situation etc
I wouldn't say I'm very good at it, but I do what I can and I can only draw from what I've seen in shows and movies as experience.
Mad Swede
Auror
Maybe an example would help illustrate what I mean. This extract, translated from the latest novella:
Aiming out through the doorway, finger on the trigger, the crossbow pointing at Rogge as he stood facing Ragnarsson. The world around fading into the background, eyes focussing on the cloaked back in front of her. Just a matter of choosing her moment.
Ragnarsson hadn’t answered Rogge, just stood there watching with narrowed eyes, as though daring Rogge to use the sword.
“Nothing to say Ragnarsson? It might be easier if you tell me now.” Rogge sneered as he spoke.
“I doubt it,” Ragnarsson replied drily.
It all seemed so slow. Rogge stepping towards Ragnarsson, his hand reaching out to take Ragnarsson’s arm. No real thought, no doubts. A small jolt against her shoulder. The bolt almost crawling through the air, hitting Rogge between his shoulder blades, disappearing into his cloak. The world around coming back as Rogge stood still for a moment, then fell forward onto his face.
A soft thud as the bow dropped from her unthinking fingers. Silence.
Aiming out through the doorway, finger on the trigger, the crossbow pointing at Rogge as he stood facing Ragnarsson. The world around fading into the background, eyes focussing on the cloaked back in front of her. Just a matter of choosing her moment.
Ragnarsson hadn’t answered Rogge, just stood there watching with narrowed eyes, as though daring Rogge to use the sword.
“Nothing to say Ragnarsson? It might be easier if you tell me now.” Rogge sneered as he spoke.
“I doubt it,” Ragnarsson replied drily.
It all seemed so slow. Rogge stepping towards Ragnarsson, his hand reaching out to take Ragnarsson’s arm. No real thought, no doubts. A small jolt against her shoulder. The bolt almost crawling through the air, hitting Rogge between his shoulder blades, disappearing into his cloak. The world around coming back as Rogge stood still for a moment, then fell forward onto his face.
A soft thud as the bow dropped from her unthinking fingers. Silence.
Homework time. I'm going to start you off with some reading, and then I'm going to describe a real time dilation that I experienced.
You're going to want to read all of these, for varying reasons but the main one is they will make you a writer who's good with violence.
Violence: A Writer's Guide - this is required reading
Violence: A Writer's Guide Second Edition - Kindle edition by Miller, Rory, Perry, Steve. Reference Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Body Trauma is a great book. My team writes Urban Fantasy and I use this all the time, but really injuries of these natures result from violence. Better to be ready with knowhow at your fingertips.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005012FPW/
Good reference for writing violence when a different bodily system gets the POV. I like it. She makes good arguments and leans on Miller as a source.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WRN5577/
~~~
Now, story time.
I was raised by a pack of wolves. Family situation was severely abusive, and it would take years of work to stop speaking only rage. A lot of people will emerge into adulthood and being not only fundamentally incapable of understanding the new, bright world they find themselves in, and they will curl up and live in the terror shadows and the stark light of day.
I was actually a whole lot worse, but no need for details. Ironic, given the conversation.
So, I'm tall and broad, and my brother is even taller. He was a teenager during this scuffle, so think pushing 6' with broadening still down the road. And he got super pissed at something I don't remember. You just don't remember. And I'm 22, passing through the living room, and suddenly find myself as the focus of all that angst and rage. Immediately, my skin chills down as the first major adrenaline dump kicks in and that fast I'm ready to party.
The sudden and violent nature of his tantrum just meant it was a Tuesday. No reason but very frequent.
He's yelling at me about whatever's got him going, but I'm still enjoying the adrenaline, and this is where you realize that there are more senses at play. You smell furniture polish, because somehow you got some on the back of your hand and now that's all you smell. You focus on sometimes really random stuff, but it's usually not as random as we'd like to think. Great place for signposting.
Brother's getting really wound up and decides he's a big man, now, and he goes over the couch to get to me.
His foot hits upholstery and the time dilation starts.
I don't know anyone who can force a time dilation or have any control over it. But, there are a lot of violence professionals out there. Surely someone has a podcast? lol But it is some of the weirdest things the jar of tapioca that sits between our ears can devise.
He hung in the air as whole seconds rolled past, and the cool thing was how much time I'd bought to plan my response. I don't freeze up much, so when he'd dropped a couple of feet I was ready. Turns out when you sweep someone's leg at just the moment when they feel the touch of the floor but haven't committed their weight, the surrender to gravity is truly hilarious to behold. He dropped like his strings had been cut and when he hit the hardwood, the sound resonated.
What did I do? The second adrenaline dump hit, and I kicked him like a moose. When I get an opponent on the ground, just bring them a sleeping bag because I'm not letting them up until I'm good and ready. I'm not as strong as a lot of people think I was, but what I do have going for me is speed and ruthlessness. This old lady gonna hurt you. And I'm going to hurt you until you don't want me to hurt you, anymore.
Okay, last book.
This is the book that saved my first fight scene. Maybe it'll speak to you guys, too.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MJFVS0/
Lynea
Inkling
I'm most on board with Devor's input. For me, I like a good balance of in-your-face action sequences and emotional intensity. You're not the only writer who struggles to find that balance. Perhaps a trial and error sort of thing will suit you for the time being. Write out a scene, put it up for some feedback, and if it's not hitting well with the vast majority then try again. Easier said than done but it might help significantly.
