Approach to writing combat

A couple of threads were started here a while back about combat:

Battle Scenes:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16623

and

Individual Combat:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17967

These might help.

In my personal view, I'm more interested in higher level description than a blow by blow account.

I interviewed a new author, Kameron Franklin, who published through Wizards of the Coast. He told me that after submitting his manuscript his editor wanted more out of his fight scenes. He told him to think about a Jackie Chan movie, play the fight scenes through his head and try to out that on the page.

I definitely believe in detailed fight scenes. I like to read enough detail that it plays out as rythmically in the page and in my head.

It needs to be visual, and the prose needs to contain the tension as concisely as possible.

Choreography is important, but technical jargon should be accessible to the widest audience.

It's wierd when i write. I know how every battle and fight will happen in my novels but it's the in between i have to think of. I usually get a mental image of what i want in my head. I found a new tool to. It's an animation program called maya. If i get frustrated i use the program to animate what i want. Then i examine my product and write down what i see. I can usually see it in my head.


Pretend your watching a movie in your head and write down everything you see. Then you can either add to something or take out something.

I'm in the same situation as Adam_Atlantian. I know everything that will happen in a fight scene but I have troubles with what happens in between that leads to those battles.

I'm writing an Alternative History set in late 15th century Europe. It's a bit different than strict fantasy, because I can read accounts of real battles and then imagine what the battles could have been like. I don't go too deep into the battle, since I strictly use one POV and therefore can't cover the entire battle. I am strictly into the main character's immediate opponents. The only time the entire field is covered is when my character simply commands from a high place and doesn't participate. That's rare, though. 15th century leaders are more popular when they actually participate.


David

Be sure to view some episodes of Battle Detectives. They go over some of the mundane things that most people don't realize affect how a battle will develop and even who will win. It's really useful and can be incorporated into your story.

dante-x said:

Would anyone care to share their strategies for writing or outlining combat? I saw a thread where Zornhau lent some great insights, but didn't want to hijack the author's (DamaNegra's) thread requesting critique.

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IMvHO

Treat combat as a conversation. Keep the actions separate from each other, except where they overlap. Tie combat style to personality and physique.

If you don't know enough to write blow by blow, find ways of evoking the flow of combat, and avoid stereotyped descriptions, especially "At last he saw an opening..."

Try to get the feel for what a particular combat form hinges on. For example, German Longsword is about seizing and keeping the iniative, burying the other chap in a flurry of economical attacks from all sides, not leaving him time to think, so that his defence gets wilder and wilder, leaving wider and wider openings, until-

Be sure to punctuate the evocative passages with specific plays or moves: "Blades blurred yadayada back and forth across the courtyard yadayada sparks flying yada drove pommel into chin." Wherever possible, end combat with a specific exchange from within the system in question. There are plenty of sources for these online and off.

Never, ever, end a combat using the dirt in face technique (or I shall come after you).

Don't forget the blood, sweat, pain, ache, heat, fear, breathing and mental focus.

Remember, above all else, the words of Sword Master Hanko Dobringer 1389: If it were not an art, then the strong would always prevail.

dante-x said:

I'm heading out to Shaolin temple in a couple weeks, I think. I'll hopefully get some inspiration from the "monks" demonstrating their skills their.

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Enjoy. Try to capture some specific start and finish moves. Bear in mind that in most real fights, the first blow is also the last. Look for the "friction" - where things go wrong.

On the other hand, don't discount everything you've everr seen in a movie. I had a fight with a man back in 1975 where he came at me unexpectedly by unending a table I was sitting at causing me to be sent to the floor. Okay, that's cliche number one.

Then he tried to stomp on my chest with one foot. That's cliche number two.

So help me, I actually saw that coming and managed to grab his foot with both hands to twist and force him off balance and away from me. Yep, that's cliche number three.

It was all the time I needed to get to my feet at which point he took off running. That was the end of the fight.

An interesting life, that one! You must tell us more.

Your example rather illustrates why the extra-system cliches (ESCs) shouldn't dominate a fictional fight.
I'm not saying that ESCs don't ever work, just that they're rarely as decisive as the films and books make out. Most martial arts are built from the stuff which is decisive.

Interesting. Would that be true of pro vs amateur? Presumably most martial artists could put down an untrained thug in one move?

I certainly wouldn't expect a real longsword fight to last more than a couple of hits. On reflection, I'm less sure of unarmed styles.

DamaNegra said:

I'm in the same situation as Adam_Atlantian. I know everything that will happen in a fight scene but I have troubles with what happens in between that leads to those battles.

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Are you talking about one-on-one fight scenes, or battles between armies?

The first one? I can't separate the plot mechanism of a fight from the characters, myself. How they fight, when/if, with whom, and what style all derives from their culture, personality, training, values.
Ex: I have a protag who is a warrior & very skilled, but he refuses to fight another man, who he knows has very little skill, because he's pretty sure he would kill him; this reflects his sense of fairness, honor and mercy. However, when the idiot jumps him anyway, he does fight - and wins, and lets the guy go with a warning not to try it again. Ever.

I'm not a fighter (though I have fought off a few men in my time - and won) but I have been an athlete/dancer, so that helps me understand physical movement. Since I have my own personal "military expert" - a former Marine & current Reservist - I ask him questions & get feedback on my ideas. Helps mucho. I don't put in fights just for the sake of doing it - it has to integral to the plot and characters. A reason for it.

As for the second questioni - armies in battle? Tougher, at least for me. An awareness of history, dynamics between nations/tribes/races, are what help me. Again, enter the History Channel (and my resident expert)

I think it's fun to write the battles. I wrote my first army battle scene today and i had a blast. It ended in a third party genetically engineered set of five soldiers defeating the army. Now i'm gonna introduce the new party and display their threat to the bad guys and the good guys. should be fun.

Next i have to do a scene where a mountain complex gets attacked by a small group of very powerful witches, Shadows, and the Greek god Hypnos.

I love this writing thing. I cant imagine doing anything else at this point.

the ink is in my veins!

I presume then that they had the advantage of cover, concealment, superior ground, superior technology, an endless supply of ammunition, surprise, and struck first, right?

Yes, I know it's possible for one man to hold off several hundred given the right circumstances since it's actually happened. However, even if they're genetically engineered, that doesn't make them tireless. At best, they'd last longer in a standup fight than an ordinary man. It's just that if an actual army is sent against them, the odds still favor the army winning because it's composed of thousands. If not, then at some point, someone will recognize the futility and just drop a very big bomb on them.

dante-x said:

Right, back to writing. I guess I am thinking that in the more protracted duels/matches, it might be better to gloss over a lot of the realistic stuff that the reader might find less interesting and just hit the high notes.

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IMvHO, that depends in part on the genre, but mainly on the nature of the mini arcs making up each fight: each mini arc being a struggle leading up to a reversal.

The struggle can be internal - do I have the courage to pull off this move? - or external - I keep pounding your shield with my axe, making splinters fly off with every strike. You keep trying, but failing to seize back the initiative. In either case, the protagonist adopts a strategy and pursues it against opposition until a reversal.

Reversals - the high notes - are the moment when something significant changes. In unarmoured longsword, these come with almost every blow. In unarmed combat, or armoured sword and shield (god forbid) these can happen minutes, or even hours apart.

I suspect that in good combat writing, mini-arcs have roughly the same wordage, regardless of elapsed fiction time. Thus - writing off the top of my head - I would tend to handle a 2-second fight like this:
And a ten minute fight like this:
Both contain two mini-arcs. The second covers a much greater time period, but is only 50% longer, which probably suggests that the first requires a little more detail.

Would anybody do it differently?

Zornhau clearly has spent some great amount of time considering these kinds of scenes.

As a fantasy author, I actually try to avoid fight scenes and war scenes entirely. You can't completely, but when I do have them I also follow a very important rule: Keep it simple, stupid.

Short, terse sentences. Easy, not-fancy body mechanics. Tactics that even a layman could understand.

Why would I do that with my black belt and nearly ten years of various martial arts training and my family's vast military experiences to rely on?

Fight scenes are no places to go into the fancy details of body mechanics or tactics. The scenes need to be paced appropriately. Keeping the details simple, simple, simple ensures that a reader without my training and experience and research tools doesn't get caught up confused over the details.

The more elaborate your fight scene, the more difficult it's going to be for an inexperienced reader to follow.

Also:
The scene above with genetically engineered soldiers doesn't make sense at all. Soldiers are trained to be autonomous thinking units, not mindless fodder. They tend not to charge blindly into certain death.

Gun combat isn't really about killing, but about cover fire, and flanking and outmanuevering. You're not trying to charge head-on into anything. You're trying to lay suppressive fire down, so your team can move around the battlefield, and out-manuever the enemy, for a clean kill shot. this is why five men, no matter how bio-engineered will never beat a thousand. There's no way on earth or jupiter that five super-beings can outmanuever an entire army. The army will pin the five guys down, with suppressive cover fire and if they cannot make a clean kill, they will use grenades, rockets, and/or call in an airstrike. The five super-soldiers will be fighting from the worst position: while making a "strategic advance to the rear" (as my dad, a retired Lt. Col. puts it ). All it takes, in that case, is a team of helicopters to airstrike the five guys who've been seriously pinned down with 1000 guns worth of supprressive fire.

Back when the War in Iraq II was just beginning, Newsweek ran a fascinating outline of the American war machine and why we wouldn't just win the war, but we'd devastate the enemy with minimal loss of life in open combat. It laid out all of our different technologies (the de-classified ones) and it showed how these different tools work together on the battlefield. Go look for it in the archives of your local library. I don't remember the date, but it's worth the dig if you're writing modern and future combat scenes.

Yes, funnily enough since I write sword and sorcery, I've put some effort into my own theory of combat writing. Ask me in 2 years whether it works

I'm curious:
Can you expand on this?

dante-x said:

Hrm... their seems to be a pervasive opinion that most fights end in one blow. I have been, shamefully perhaps, in more scraps than I care to mention. Out of those I've watched very few ended in a single blow

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Besides disparity of skill, it also depends on whether the fighters are 'duelling' or 'warring'. Ia bar fight, you want to win but you don't (generally) want to kill the guy. The more self-censoring, the longer it takes to determine the winner.

D_mn good point.

Even true for longsword fights - best to avoid nasty feuds.

Even if the five guys each have a weapon system, tank, helicopter, whatever, there is still one critical factor that will prevent them from winning. Logistics. Tanks can carry only so much ammunition. Not because of the weight factor, but because of the bulk factor. Both factors figure into what a helicopter can carry. Same with jets. Same with foot soldiers.

When I fought in Vietnam, I carried two weapons, an M14E2 rifle with automatic fire and an M60 machine gun. Both had to be carried with slings for mobile use from the hip. For the rifle, I had 23 magazines of 20 rounds each. For the M60, I had an assault belt locked in the weapon and two hundred-round belts crisscrossed on my chest. There was no way I could run fast with those and that doesn't count the two survival knives, switchblade, and grenades I also carried. Another soldier was detailed to carry an ammo box with more belt ammunition for the M60. Why was I given two primary weapons? The commander knew that I shot to kill and wanted maximum firepower in the hands of someone willing to use it.

This is why your five guys will fail. If you add up the rounds I carried, you'd come up with approximately 700. I almost always had some tucked in my pockets or helmet band. I will guarantee you that most armies number more than 700 and that's not taking into account how many of those rounds will be misses or only good enough to wound someone without putting them out of action.

Your average modern tank carries 60 to 100 rounds for its main gun, generally closer to 60. Depending upon what else is installed, it might carry grenade launchers with possibly just as many rounds. For machine guns, probably not more than 5,000 rounds. This is because that ammunition also has to share the same space with the people operating the vehicle. You also have to consider how fast it can move and how far on its fuel capacity. Most modern tanks get about 1 mile to every two gallons. Their speeds range from a top of 30 mph to as much as 60 mph. Hitting a target while you're sitting still is difficult. It's even more difficult when you're on the move and few tank models are designed for main gun use on the move. I know this because I was also a tank commander for two years while I was in the military. At that time, though the Soviets possessed more tanks, ours could outshoot them because ours possessed a greater effective range along with greater accuracy and faster reload. On a flat plain, they would have to cross a mile of our range just to reach their own extreme range before they could even think about returning fire. If you watched any of the Gulf War I news footage, you might have some appreciation for just how lopsided it was between Soviet-made tanks and US tanks.

This is just further proof of why five guys will fail. Essentially, the only way they can win is if they possess a stealth vehicle and nuclear, laser, or sonic weapons that can knock out large units in a single pre-emptive attack. There might be other weapons, such as an air-fuel bomb, that might also fit the bill, but even those weapons do not totally obliterate everything since armies tend to be spread out and wouldn't concentrate until they were upon you at which point a weapon of mass destruction would also tend to hit your own five guys.

zornhau said:

Yes, funnily enough since I write sword and sorcery, I've put some effort into my own theory of combat writing. Ask me in 2 years whether it works



I'm curious:

As a fantasy author, I actually try to avoid fight scenes and war scenes entirely.



​

Can you expand on this?

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Oh, I can always wax long-winded on any topic. Usually, no one in their right mind invites it.

I think of fight scenes like punctuation marks that defuse the tension. The plot moves and twists and builds tension and builds tension and then the violence is very brief, simple and powerful, and releases the pent-up tensions.

A good example is "Pulp Fiction". We all remember the scenes of violence, but much of the movie is spent talking around the guns. The violence occurs as the punctuation marks of conversations. Even the end scene with Pumpkin and HunnyBunny's robbery, the guns aren't actually fired. They just wave through the air and ramp up the tension when one character behaves contrary to the wishes of the people with the guns.

The tension is the focus, not the violence. In short: More tension=better writing. Less violence=less release of tension. Thus, less violence=better writing.

Make sense?