forum writing action/fighting scenes

Started January 30, 2019 by audrey

tune

any tips on how to write good fight scenes?

I always try to not over do the action so it doesn't seem like over kill

Keep it moving! Keep it realistic. Nothing’s worse than a slow-moving and unrealistic fight scene.

Keep it moving! Keep it realistic. Nothing’s worse than a slow-moving and unrealistic fight scene.

I agree it can't be unrealistic or people won't believe it when they read it.

Keeping control of the pacing is really important in action/fighting scenes. Be mindful of the way you write! Maybe use short and quick sentences to keep things moving and to sort of spike your reader, stringing them along. Here, a quick example:

This wasn't Jace, whoever this was was too fast. Jace couldn't move like this. Impossible. Rowan yelped when they were hit with a blow over the eye. One just under the jaw. Another in the gut. And, lurched over, a kick, like a warning. And another. And another. It was too fast to be Jace. Way too fast. In seconds, Rowan was bowled over and bruised. Not Jace, they thought. Not Jace. "Grow up, Rowan." Kick. Squirm. And it began to fade. And fade slower. Until it was lights out, the plug had been pulled, and Rowan was left lying alone in the middle of the drive-in. Not Jace.

Another thing worth mentioning is to avoid telling feelings. Notice I didn't say, "Rowan was terrified" or "Rowan let out a yelp of fear" when writing this. I tried to convey emotions with the way I described the utter swiftness and strength of the attacker's motions, and with the quick thoughts rushing through Rowan's head as they submitted to them. In general, just try to pay attention to what you're writing and how you're writing it.

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Keep it moving! Keep it realistic. Nothing’s worse than a slow-moving and unrealistic fight scene.

Definitely! You have to make sure your fight scene is fast-paced and interesting to the reader. A boring fight scene is no good.

Just a general piece of advice when writing fight scenes: always make sure you don't have holes. By holes I mean places where point A and point B aren't connected, or places where point B is skipped right over to get to point C. These often show up as people being places they weren't a few seconds ago without any explanation as to how they got there, or objects randomly appearing. (Random example: "Lily grabbed the pot and flung it at her brother." But a pot was never mentioned before this. Where did it come from?)

Holes can be really easy to make, and hard to notice when you're reading over your own work, because it's from your imagination. You can see everything play out inside your head, regardless of what's written on the page or not. But for readers, sometimes it's harder to fill in those blanks, so it's best to watch out for them and make sure you don't have any. (This is especially important in action scenes, because of the fast pace. If you can't figure out who's where and who's doing what, it can get really confusing really fast).

That's my two cents. Happy writing :)

I try to keep the sentence length varied. I've heard a lot that fight scenes should have short choppy sentences, but I've found that messes with the flow. It starts to sound like a list. And, yeah, I agree, it's important to keep character movements consistent. If Character X has a dislocated shoulder, her balance is gonna be off and her swings might not land, for example. There's also loads of videos online for different fighting styles or weapons that can help give you a sense of how your characters might use them.