To battle!

[Feo Takahari]

One common trait of my stories, occasionally quite noticeable, is that I don't really have "fight scenes". My characters start fights, and within a paragraph or two, they end them, but there's little detail and little tension. In my current WIP, however, the fights are a large part of the story, so I figured I'd make a thread about fight scenes.

My protagonists start off the story as completely inexperienced in combat, so my rule for now is "What can go wrong, will go wrong, so long as it doesn't cost the heroes the fight." For instance, the flow of the first battle begins as follows:

* The melee "expert" runs on ahead, straight into an ambush, and finds himself grappling with a wolf-like monster that has interest in his throat.

* The mage tries to back him up, and fails miserably.

* The gadgeteer turns to find five more monsters approaching from behind . . .

And ends like this:

* The melee expert is out cold, the gadgeteer is pinned under a heavy wooden desk, and the mage ends the fight by frantically spamming telekinetic blasts at the last remaining monster.

However, I'll have to adapt this somewhat once they gain more combat experience--they deserve one or two easy wins before the final battle.

How do you handle fight scenes?

 

[srcroft]

Fight scenes in my stories are built up thematically from the start. They are mirrored in minor occurrences and sometimes huge ones throughout until the big one. I do Dark SciFi Fantasy, so--I tend to have very weak weak protagonists. It makes it hard but if your super creative about the environment you build, and you try to give your protag no way out--it builds huge tension.

Sounds like your doing that, but your Deus Ex Machina End although funny, steals drama. I say you should fight to make it near impossible, then figure out, what in the story and characters flaws or talents will allow for a miracle.

Also never give them an easy win unless its to lure them into a trap. You have to be unrelenting in the tension and conflict of your story. You can have a very talented fighter and still use his "helper" characters to make things really hard too.

 

[wordwalker]

Sounds like you've gotten into something doubly tricky. Fights in general are hard to make suspenseful and yet more or less believable, and you've trying to do reckless, muddled characters on top of that-- who still I guess manage to survive. Very tricky.

You might build on the idea that your characters do have their strengths, the question is more how badly they deploy them or get blindsided, and have to struggle to get them into play after all. (Eg, your mage sounds powerful enough, if he can keep his distance and survive the cost of "spamming" that much energy. But if those aren't difficult, the guy really is a Deus Ex Magica.) It does seem like you've got a good eye for details and creative What Could Go Wrong, so you may be on the right track.

Special nod to srcroft's rule "Try to give your protagonist no way out." That may not be all of suspense in a nutshell, but it's pretty close.

As for easy wins, I sort of agree with srcroft, but an eye for pacing can help. If there's a reason for a fight to be easy, you can skip past it or trim it or else fill out its time with something else happening as it goes on; superheroes always get the occasional page kicking muggers around the alley, that are presented as something other than challenges. Still, it's always tricky to keep an easy fight that isn't specifically a setup from draining away too much tension.

 

[Penpilot]

How do you handle fight scenes?

I used to think fight scenes were easy, give them an exciting blow-by-blow, right? WRONG.

Fight scenes are for me the hardest thing to do now. First, the fight scene has to center around your pov character, and second, it has to mean something to them emotionally/personally. Finding that emotional/personal stake and having it flow throughout the fight can be really hard, at least for me. If the fight doesn't have much emotional meaning, I cut it short, get in quick and get out quick.

Also to echo a bit of srcroft said, no free lunches. Fights should have consequences even if those consequences aren't immediate, like getting your butt kicked.

Lastly, be careful about spamming your story with big fights. The more you have the less they'll mean and the less engaged your reader will be with them. I used the rule of three. I'm allowed to have three big fights and three tiny skirmishes in a book. Even then, I think that could be too many.

 

[Saigonnus]

I think a fight scene beyond being segments of action in a narrative, it should be learning experience. Either for the reader or the character themselves it should serve some purpose beyond just adding action to the story. It may teach the character the danger that exists around them. It could teach the antagonist the potential skills of the protagonists or teach the protagonists just how dangerous the big bad villain really is. It could serve to mold the character into something else, maybe they freeze and are ineffectual in their first fight... they will likely not do that twice. The possibilities are endless and I try to lend a little of that POV plus action, though it is difficult to find a good balance.

 

[Steerpike]

Also depends on what you are writing. I just finished the book Bloodsworn, by Nathan Long. It is a Warhammer book. Basically action-adventure in the iconic Warhammer world. There is a lot of fighting; in fact the vast majority of the book is comprised of action sequences in one respect or another. But, it was great fun and a nice fast read. I enjoyed it.

If that's the kind of book you are writing, you may have a lot more fighting, and may handle it differently, than if you have a book where there are just one or two big fights and a handful of skirmishes in between.

 

[Saigonnus]

I agree Steerpike... Thus far in my primary WIP has 3 sizable battles and at least a half dozen skirmishes and it's no where near finished even with the rough draft.

 

[Zero Angel]

Hmm...I have at least 17 fights in my novel...

I just have them do whatever comes to mind and hope that they survive. I regularly draw out diagrams of the fight scene to make sure that I am consistent in my descriptions and am not forgetting anything/anyone.

For my novella I am writing, it is more military in style, so I am a little more careful with the battles. I typically have a battlefield in mind and a goal of some sort for each battle--I diagram the battle (but with force markers instead of character markers) and any relevant stages of the battle. But no, again, I kinda' just throw the force into the battle and hope they figure out how to make it out alive.

Hmm, that's interesting. I thought I planned things much more

 

[The Dark One]

Any sort of action - fighting, sex, sport, walking down a street and even conversation - needs to serve multiple purposes.

At the very least, it must do something to advance the plot and reveal/augment characterisation. I've written at length about how to write an excellent bonking scene on my blog (let me know if you're interested) but sex has a lot in common with fighting - they're almost the antithesis of each other and therefore traverse similar emotional landscape.

I have many theories on this but won't bore you all with them here. The three most important things to bear in mind are these:

- the reader must desperately want the fight (sex) to happen because of all that has gone before
- there must be consequences
- when writing the scene (fight/sex) you must live it yourself. You must live and breathe the entire sequence in your imagination, down to the tiniest detail. Don't worry too much about describing actions - describe the smells, tastes, feelings. How does it make the POV character(s) feel?

 

[srcroft]

You
re right sex def counts. My story characters are young teens, so I tend to have more asexual /sexual tension but its powerful none-the-less. Sex can be quite violent too lol, not necessarily always the antithesis--i've known a few crazy red heads in my time lmao. (TMI)--I know. Conflict is an interesting animal. It can mental (mental problems/ fear/weakness), physical (sex / violence), but tension can be very subtle too. New writers especially sometimes don't get the rule that no matter what your character's goal is, you as the authorial voice need to try and stop it, barely letting them win. If they want to make a sandwich, the should be out of bread. Our genre is especially tension driven. Almost no line in a story should be without a tension of 3+, and fights / sex should hit 8. Climaxes should hit 9-10. (In 1 -10 tension scale.)

 

[LOCOFOOL]

I also enjoy a good fight scene, and like everyone here I have issues writing one. I get to involved in the action that I don't know if I put enough heart in it. Afterward I think I put to much heart in it and not enough action. Finally I end up thinking it's to short... It's a sad, sad turn of events.
I always get my proof readers opinions on every fight scene because that gives me a more broad idea of what people like to see. Some say more fight scenes, others say less, and even others say it's just right.
I love how organized Zero Angel is with his battles. I love doing that to in huge battle events!

 

[srcroft]

Ya you have to get a focus group that matches your target audience. There are some that like uber dry Historical Fiction which is 99% Tell Narrative, so you'll get that back and forth.

Ask questions:
Pick a movie your book is like and ask your betas
Do you like this movie?
What would you change?

If they say that 300 had too much fighting which made the plot boring, well they might not be your target.

Make an interview sheet and then weigh the People. So if they are matching 60% of what you want, weight their input at a 6. Add up the comments and you'll have a focused answer.

In My case Dark Fiction I can ask:
Did you like the Never Ending Story, Labyrinth, Dark Crystal?
Do you like Dark Fairy Tales?
Who's your Favorite Villain?
Do you like heroic main characters or weak characters vs crazy odd?

Those are some examples.

 

[Steerpike]

Well...you know...my Second Ever Reaver Challenge entry has a fight scene in the middle of it:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/challenges/5195-second-ever-reaver-challenge-entries.html

In the event anyone wants to comment on the success (or lack thereof) of it.

While you are at it, you could even enter Reaver's challenge. There's still time!

 

[mjmonarch]

Actions scenes are my favorite part of any reading. I think its where it depends on what the readers enjoy, characters, scenery, blood, bones, pain then death. For some reason I prefer the latter four.

Alot depends on how the reader visualizes. Alot depends on how the reader thinks (Man vs. Woman).
Ex.
My wife doesn't like the actions scenes I write, but they happen to be my favorite. She is more interested in the relationship between characters. I am more interested in the visual picture drawn from the read.

 

[The Dark One]

Thing is, you've got to have both - the action AND the relationships. If the reader doesn't care about the characters then the action sequences will feel empty.

 

[Feo Takahari]

What I eventually wound up doing was matching the tone of the fights to the tone of the adventure. At the start, the protagonists are inexperienced but optimistic, so the fights take on a comedic quality. Even though they're often outclassed there's not much sense of danger. However, as they get more and more burned-out, the descriptions turn bloody and brutal. Basically, it goes from this:

Were he human, Wolf might have been killed by the sudden impact of a large wooden desk against the back of his head. Instead, he was simply slammed out the front door, and Price had time to hear him groan before the desk landed on her chest with a solid thud.

To this:

Fortunately, she’d provided Wolf with the distraction he needed. He lunged forward, slamming the abomination to the ground, pinning its arms to bite into its neck. It feebly kicked and struggled as his teeth tore deeper and deeper.

 

[Zero Angel]

This thread has been slowly building in strength of will to compel me to write a super-massive battle-story. I'm not sure how much longer my will save will prevent this battle story from consuming me!


@Feo: This is a good way to tackle battles in your story. It brings more weight to the later battles while not working up your readers over the early ones (unless you want to work them up early).

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

For my fights I think it's most important that the fight and the style of fighting matches the character, and the tension has to follow from that. For example at the moment I'm writing something about a space marine fighting his own evil empire - you know the thing,one man against the universe, and so to do it I have to have him using all sorts of stealthy, tricky, subterfuge type attacks, and the tension comes from him not wanting to be spotted. In Maverick my wizard was all about finding ever more strength as he fought and that was a lot of the tension, i.e. could he draw more power. And in Shavarra my MC was a paladin skilled with a greatsword and so it was all about using a sword correctly and not getting his head taken off by an even more skilled opponent.

One thing I do remember from the stories about Robert E Howard (Conan) was that he used to play act his fight scenes,using broomsticks and so forth, which gave him some of the actual details of the fights and made them more realistic.

Cheers, Greg.