#Fight Scenes

[boardsdonthitback]

Jackie Chan - Police Story 4: First Strike (1996)

[deception-united]

Let's talk about fight scenes.

Writing fight scenes requires a delicate balance of action, emotion, and detail to keep readers engaged and immersed in the moment.

Here are some tips to craft compelling fight scenes:

Know your characters: Understand their fighting styles, strengths, and weaknesses—are they offensive, or defensive? Spontaneous, or strategic? Trigger-happy, or reluctant? Their personalities and motivations will influence their actions and decisions during the fight.

Create tension: Build tension leading up to the fight to increase the stakes and make the action more gripping. Foreshadowing, verbal sparring, or physical intimidation can all contribute to a sense of anticipation.

Use sensory details: Engage the reader's senses by describing the sights, sounds, smells, and physical sensations of the fight. This helps to create a vivid and immersive experience—but make sure not to overdo it. Too much detail can distract from the adrenaline of the fight.

Maintain clarity: Ensure that the action is easy to follow by using clear and concise language. Avoid overly complicated sentences or excessive description that could confuse readers.

Focus on emotions: Show the emotional impact of the fight on your characters. Describe their fear, anger, determination, or adrenaline rush to make the scene more compelling and relatable.

Include strategic elements: Incorporate tactics, strategy, and improvisation into the fight to make it more dynamic and realistic. Think about how your characters use their surroundings, weapons, or special abilities to gain an advantage.

Balance dialogue and action: Intersperse dialogue with action to break up the fight scene and provide insight into the characters' thoughts and intentions. Dialogue can also reveal or support the characters' personalities and motivations.

Keep it concise: While it's important to provide enough detail to immerse readers in the action, avoid unnecessary padding or overly long fight scenes. Keep the pacing brisk to maintain momentum and keep readers hooked.

Show the consequences: Illustrate the aftermath of the fight, including injuries, emotional trauma, or changes in relationships between characters. This adds depth to the scene and helps to drive the story forward.

Hope this helped ❤

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Writing Notes: Fight Scene

How to Write a Convincing Fight Scene

In practice, writing a realistic fight scene for your novel is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

That’s because fight scenes can be boring to read.

A movie allows the audience to take a passive stance and have the action wash over them.

In contrast, reading a fight scene requires the audience to activate their imagination.

The audience must participate in constructing the fight scene from your clues and seeing it play out in their mind’s eye.

That’s a lot more difficult than getting it fed to you visually.

Below are strategies for writing fight scenes.

Fight Scenes Should Move the Story Forward

The very first rule for fight writing (and writing any scene in general) is to ensure that it moves the story forward.

Say “no” to gratuitous fight scenes that only show off fancy moves or writing skills.

Here’s the easiest way to find out if your fight scene moves the story:

Delete it.

Now, read the scene before and the scene after.

Can you still make sense of what happened?

If the fight caused some type of transition in your story, keep it in.

And remember: Not all transitions are physical. Some are mental.

You don’t always have to discuss the physical aftermath.

You can also explore the mental fallout after a fight.

This can be how the fight moves the story forward.

Fight Scenes Should Improve Characterization

Because reading a fight scene can get boring quickly, it’s important that you focus on more than the bare-knuckle action.

Use fights as a way to explore your character(s) and provide more insight on the following:

Why does the character make the choices that they make in the fight?

How does each choice reinforce their characterization?

How does each choice impact their internal and/ or external goals?

Is this conflict getting the character closer or further away from their goals? How?

What are the stakes for each character? What do they stand to win/lose?

What type of fighter is the character? What are their physical or mental abilities? (Remember that not every protagonist will be a trained assassin, so they’re prone to make sloppy mistakes during a fight.)

Use the fight scene to reveal necessary information about the characters.

Be sure to give the reader a glimpse into the character’s soul and not just into their fighting skills.

Fight Scenes Shouldn't Slow the Pace

In movies and especially in real life, fights go by quickly.

But in literature, fight scenes can slow the pace.

That’s because you have to write all of the details and the reader has to reconstruct the scene in their minds.

However, if you employ certain literary devices into your narrative, you can actually create a taut fight scene.

Here are some tips:

Write in shorter sentences. Shorter sentences are easier to digest. It also speeds up the pace of a story.

Mix action with dialogue. Don’t just write long descriptions of what’s happening. Also, share the verbal exchange between your characters.

Don’t focus too much on what’s going on inside the character’s mind. Introspection happens before and after a fight, not during.

Keep the fight short. Fights should never go on for pages (unless you’re discussing an epic battle between armies, and not individuals).

Hit ’Em With All the Senses

One of the best ways to get visceral when describing a fight is to activate every sense possible.

This includes sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.

Think of how you can use these five descriptors in your writing to immediately transport the reader to the scene.

Sight 

Perhaps the most obvious.

You’ll describe exactly what the characters are seeing and what the reader should pay attention to in the scene.

Hearing 

Is a little more delicate.

A fight scene is a perfect time to introduce onomatopoeia into your narrative.

Onomatopoeia - a word that sounds like what it is describing.

Try using more subtle examples, such as:

Boom, Clang, Clap, Clatter, Click, Crack, Creak, Crunk, Fizzle, Gargle, Groan, Grunt, Gurgle, Hiss, Howl, Hum, Knock, Plod, Rattle, Roar, Rustle, Sizzle, Smack, Splash, Splatter, Squeal, Tap, Thud, Thumb, Whine, Whisper

Taste 

Be careful with going abstract here.

Instead of using phrases like, “he could taste fear in the air,”

go for something more concrete like, “blood mixed with strawberry lip gloss was a strange taste.”

Touch 

Perhaps one of the easiest senses to convey.

Describe how the characters feel and interact with each other physically.

Smell 

You often see or hear a fight, but can you smell it?

In person, what would the fight smell like? Probably sweat.

Consider other scents, such as the ambient aroma in the scene.

Example: If the fight takes place in a car garage, there may be the lingering scent of motor oil and tire rubber.

Don’t be afraid to add that into the scene to introduce a different dimension.

When Writing a Fight Scene, Edit, Edit, Edit

A good story is an edited one.

The same rule applies to fight scenes.

A sloppy fight scene can slow the pace of your story and/or confuse the reader.

When editing your fight scene, keep the following in mind:

Don’t include a blow by blow of what happens in the fight. After your initial draft, remove non-essential details that can slow down reading.

Delete flowery language. Extra words drag the pace. Remove every single word that you can.

Consolidate characters to reduce reader confusion and frustration.

Source ⚜ Fight Scenes (Part 2) ⚜ Words for your Fight Scenes Word Lists: Fight ⚜ Poking/Hitting ⚜ Panting ⚜ Running ⚜ Pain

[art-appreciation-dog]

Monkey Wrench !

[writers-potion]

Writing Group vs. Group & One vs. Many Fight Scenes

Group vs. Group

To win the readers' sympathies, make sure there are more (and stronger) bad guys than good guys.

Portray a strong "them versus us" mindset. Sometimes, this is a microcosm of a larger religious, social, racial conflict.

Visual clues are often used to emphasize the divide between the two groups: black coats versus white suits, jeans against shorts, etc. They'll have different weapons, use different languages or speech patterns.

Each group will have a leader who spearheads strategies and motivates the rest. This can be an established leader like the eldet sibling, the head girl of the school, etc. Or someone who has the respect of the others and takes charge spontaneously when the situation rises.

The Point of View

Group fights are easiest to write in omniscient PoV

Otherwise, choose a PoV character who is invovled in most action, and restrict yourself to their line of vision. You can take short breaks (like two seconds after he kills his immediate opponent) to account for how his comrads are doing.

One vs. Group

1 vs. many fights where the single person comes up triumphant are fun, but hardly plausible. The key is to provide an illusion of reality.

Keep the number of opponents realistic: three, not thirty.

He would be more highly trained/have special powers than all of his opponents.

He is positioned in such as way that all of his opponents come at him from only one direction (like having his back to a wall), or he stands in a higher terrains from where he can keep an eye on all of them.

She identifies the group's leader and takes him out first.

She creates a situation which forces the group to spread out, or hits when they are already dispersed rather than tightly knit together.

He uses a weapon which can take out several opponents at once. The most effective one for this would be a machine gun, or the hero holding two swords, one in each hand.

If you want the bad guys to come at the hero one by one, some ideas:

The hero has aken p position in a place where only one villain can squeeze through at one time

The attackers don't arrive simultaneously. They come running, and each attacks as soon as they reach the hero.

The gang has a code of honor which demands 1:1 fights.

The fight is an initiation requirment where the newbie must prove themselves in 1:1 combat with all of the established members.

Some tips:

If a hero with superior arms taking on many who are unarmed will make the readers see him as a butcher, and their sympathies will be lost for good.

If he take out too many opponents at once, the readers wouldn't feel like he has really put up a fight. If your hero has a superpower that allows him to do this, establish the boundaries of this power and push the hero to the limit.

If the novel has too many 1:many scenes, it will lose its dramatic effect, and worse, seem unrealistic as you move along.

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[angstdelights]

The Wheel Of Time 1x07

[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.

[frownyalfred]

feel free to ignore this if it's an inappropriate/rude question (i don't wanna make you uncomfortable or be weird) but has getting punched in the face changed the way you wrote certain scenes, since u have first hand experience and all that?

i haven't gotten hit in the face in years (i got smacked in the face by a door ~5-6 years ago and might've gotten a bit of a concussion but that's neither here nor there) but i distinctly remember being confused and upset, so id assume it's like that but 300% worse

It’s definitely changed how I’ve approached writing them, though I don’t know if it actually changed what I ended up writing. It’s made me more sensitive to head trauma and what happens when you get hit.

If you’re writing characters who are used to getting hit in the face, or those who train for it, etc, they might not have the same reaction (crying, freezing, losing consciousness) but they might be trying to brace themselves so they don’t have it.

Pain is a spectrum, but it’s also something that you can prime yourself for. Half of the pain from getting hit in the face I think is the shock of it. It hurts really badly, really suddenly, and most people don’t have a ton of experience with it.

And yeah. If you get punched hard enough in the nose to break it, that’ll hurt no matter who you are.

[boardsdonthitback]

Julie Estelle - The Raid 2: Berandal (2014)

[deception-united]

Hello! I really like your blog because it has helped me give more shape to my stories, however, it is too difficult for me to make fight scenes: from the movements to describing it so that readers know what action the character is doing.

So do you have any advice for this disgraced soul on how to write an action and/or fight scene?

Hi, thanks for asking! I do have a couple posts about fight scenes and how to make them realistic, but here are a few more tips you might find helpful.

Purpose:

Before you dive in, make sure the fight scene helps advance the plot or reveal information, instead of adding it in just for the sake of excitement or change of pace. Use it to showcase the strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and growth of the characters involved. Once you have this down, you can move on to actually plotting the scene itself.

Setting:

Before you start writing the scene, try to visualise where it's taking place and be clear about it. Oftentimes when I'm reading a novel or fic, one character will throw a punch and the other will trip over a wire I didn't know was there, cause I thought this was happening in a forest clearing. Walk through it in your mind—know the layout of wherever they're at, any objects they have near them (that could be used as weapons or to defend themselves. Remember that), and the positions of the characters themselves to avoid confusion for the reader and to make it all more immersive.

Characters:

Keep in mind the skills, weapons, motivations, and experience of each of the characters involved. This will make sure the scene is realistic and aligns with the rest of the story—a petite little girl taking down three large men single-handedly is impressive, okay, but it's probably not going to happen. Unless there's some reason behind it which is explained in the story, in which case I'm all for it. In any case, take their fighting abilities into account so it lines up with their established background and training, if they had any.

Describe actions:

When describing the characters' movements and actions, replace any terse verb with description. For example, in a fight between characters A and B, rather than "A punched B", dissect the action and describe it and its effect: "A's fist connected with B's jaw, sending them stumbling back." This can make the difference between a dry play-by-play and a fight scene that keeps readers engaged.

Describe sensations:

Incorporating sounds, sights, feelings, the thoughts racing through the character's brain, and other sensations like this can really serve to elevate the scene—describe the clash of steel on steel, the racing heart, muscles burning with fatigue, the sight of blood gushing, all of that. Limiting it to just who did what will make the scene fall flat.

Hope this helped! Happy writing ❤

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[literaryvein-reblogs]

More Writing Notes: On Fight Scenes

5 Tips for Your Novel’s Fight Scenes

Only Choose to Fight Characters That Your Readers Care About

In order to create an effective, heart-tugging scene, your reader needs to actually care about at least one of the people in the fight scene.

Choose the Right Perspective

When penning your fight scene, think of the reader’s perspective.

Even if you’re writing from third person universal, you should choose a specific character and describe the actions from his or her perspective.

The reader needs to have someone to root for and again, this is best done by choosing the point of view of one character.

Bring the Reader Into the Action

Because the reader will need to use your cues to reconstruct the fight scene in their mind, you should invite them to actively participate in the story.

Set the scene, provide minimal stage direction, and then leave the fine details up to the reader’s imagination.

Don’t get too precise with the fight descriptions.

Avoid Confusion

Fights can get confusing quickly.

Make it clear what’s happening in the beginning by showing exactly who’s involved in the fight and their physical relation to each other.

Also, remove extra characters that can negatively impact the pacing of your story.

Discuss the Aftermath

Now that the fight is over, what happens next?

How did the characters fare?

Remember to explore characterization and how the fight has affected each character’s internal and external goals.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes: Fight Scenes (pt. 1) ⚜ Words for your Fight Scenes Word Lists: Fight ⚜ Poking/Hitting ⚜ Panting ⚜ Running ⚜ Pain

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fuck yeah action scenes

[writers-potion]

Fight Scenes Involving Disabled Characters

This was inspired by a comment on one of my eariler posts by @rubyjewelqueen!

Level of Fighting Involved

Depending on the condition your character has, you'll want to adjust how physically strenuous the fight scenes are going to be. This can be done by:

Giving your disabled character a partner who'll take the worst of the fighting while the disabled character does what they can.

Giving them a partner/team they can call if they're in danger, which means they'll just have to hold on until backup comes.

Using the geographic location to limit the kind of attacks the opponent can launch.

Providing your disabled character with cool weapons (if you're writing sci-fi or fantasy, magical weapons are also an option)

Think about your character's capabilities:

Loss or Deformity of Limbs can be overcome by targeted physical training to make most of existing body parts, plus synthetic limbs if that's an option.

Muscular Dystrophy allows low-intensity exercises like walking and swimming. Your character might need breathing assistance as respiratory muscles weaken which means they won't be doing much sprinting. Braces/mobility aids needed.

Neuro Musculo Disability where there are no physical deformities but an inability to to perform controlled movements can plausibly be overcome with physical training and inventing new ways to grip and swing weapons meant for able people.

Conditions that affect one's energy and strength like CFS/POTS will be able to defend themselves quite well, but probably only for like 3-5 minutes before they need to recover for days. A rush of adrenaline and extreme anxiety will help them fight quite intensely, but you'll have to consider how much training they can get with their condition. Martial art skills that need hours of practice may be out of reach for them.

Weapons

The possibilities here are endless. Feel free to invent, or use everyday items as weapons. Just to list some common ones:

Canes, hiking poles, blades hidden in boots & at the end of walking sticks, hooked canes, T-bar cane, crutches

Self-defense items like pepper spray, stun guns, personal alarms

Daggers and light blades rather than swords, chakras they can throw around

Prosthetic can be used as weapons in dire circumstances. Your character may regret it afterwards.

handguns.

Adaptive Martial Arts

With more than 180 types and martial arts styles practiced worldwide, it’s nearly impossible to define a blanket answer to inclusion. But adaptive martial arts aim to help disabled people build physical strength.

Have a martial arts guru who is disabled themselves, and teach your hero how to fight.

Pick the martial arts that doesn't emphasize a particular skill your character doesn't have. For example, karate/kickboxing/ taekwondo emphasizes kicking which won't be possible for someone on a wheelchair. Might be better to avoid ones that involve lots of grappling. Jujitsu seems quite adaptable.

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fight scenes from The Legend of Korra