Fight Scenes

[CandlestickJay]

Alright, apologies if there is already a topic on this. I looked around and didn't find one, so here goes.

Within the next five chapters of my WIP, I need a fight scene. Its for a YA fantasy (not high fantasy) genre novel. There is magyc, but its not the usual brand. I've never written a scene like this before, though i've read plenty.

I was wondering, if anyone with any kind of experience at writing any kind of small scale (4 good guys, four bad and very very large bad guys) could drop their techniques at writing this kind of thing, or any websites that may be able to help. I'm trying to read up on the different ways of writing these (from only technical stuff, to from one person's pov, switching around etc) but any information or advice ya'll could give me would most definitely be welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Jay

[blacbird]

For any kind of action scene, including fight scenes, control of POV is crucial. Credibility and verisimilitude depend on it. I've always felt that such scenes are most effective when rendered through a single character POV, be it first-person or third-limited. My prejudice, obviously, but for me as a reader, that's a lot more effective than presenting details from an omniscient or (God forbid) multiple-character viewpoint. Now, there might be reasons to present the action from the differing viewpoints of two characters (I wouldn't recommend more), but then they really become two separate scenes, juxtaposed.

caw

[Gillhoughly]

I tend to read how other writers do such scenes to get a feel for their technique. How Mike Hammer writes a fight is going to be different from how Raymond Chandler would do one.

Another good source would be autobiographies of people who might have been in fist fights. Errol Flynn's favorite way to get out of confrontations was to stomp hard on the other guy's instep then run like hell. He needed his face intact to keep working. (My Wicked, Wicked Ways--which is a heck of a good read!)

There are many ways to write a fight depending how deeply you are inside the skin of your viewpoint character.

You need not even get detailed about the specifics of the action, but keep things subjective to the physical impressions the MC is getting. The reader's only going to get what the MC knows, and he might not be able to keep tabs on the others.

The few fights I've ever been in were fast, and I was blinking too much to really see what was going on. It was hard to get enough air, cause you're moving flat out and busy. Bing-bang, and it was over. You only notice the bruises and ouchies after the adrenalin's worn off.

Talk to people who take martial arts or take a class for yourself to understand what it's like.

Good luck!

[Chasing the Horizon]

I'm not generally opposed to switching POVs mid-scene, but fight scenes aren't the place to be doing it. Any battle scene involving more than two combatants can quickly become very jumbled and confusing, and switching POVs is only going to make this worse.

Pacing in fight scenes needs to be very fast, so you have to concentrate exclusively on what your POV character would be experiencing and basically ignore the rest of the combatants when they're not interacting with the POV character. Fight scenes are not the place for any character to contemplate anything and you want to keep internal monologue to a bare minimum (or better yet, get rid of it altogether). There's no time to think, only to act. There's actually minimum time to feel as well, and with all the adrenaline it's not uncommon for someone to be injured and not even realize it until after the fight is over. Try to work in some of the other senses beyond sight and hearing as well (the smell of gun powder, taste of blood, etc.) to heighten the impact of the scene. Fights, particularly small-scale ones like what you're doing, are generally short-lived affairs, not going on for more than four or five pages (assuming it's a serious to-the-death battle without any regrouping/running breaks).

If your multiple combatants separate into different fights then you can switch POVs and have it work (usually using a return or scene break to separate them). In one of my big battle scenes I switch back and fourth between a fight on the quarterdeck and another on the gun deck, but this isn't so much switching POVs as it is switching between scenes which are happening simultaneously (like blacbird said). Done effectively, this can make the scene longer and more exciting without slowing it down or confusing anyone.

Most of what I've said is true for hand to hand combat and fights using distance weapons, but any battle involving magic or ships/vehicles is going to play very differently, so I'm basically assuming you're wanting help with a conventional fight scene.

I love writing fight scenes and my betas say I'm good at them, but I'm unpublished so I may be wrong and actually have no idea what I'm doing. Just a general disclaimer. :)

[blacbird]

You need not even get detailed about the specifics of the action, but keep things subjective to the physical impressions the MC is getting. The reader's only going to get what the MC knows, and he might not be able to keep tabs on the others.

Yes. Exactly. What I was trying to say, but didn't do as well.

caw

[Voyager]

I had to write a fight scene once. I put in a bunch of movies and just started describing the actions and movement on a note pad. After I had about 20 pages, I pretty much knew what I wanted to describe and how to do it. It was a swordfight so I watched the fight scenes from movies like Last Samurai and Lord of the Rings.

[Zelenka]

I tend to read how other writers do such scenes to get a feel for their technique. How Mike Hammer writes a fight is going to be different from how Raymond Chandler would do one.

Another good source would be autobiographies of people who might have been in fist fights. Errol Flynn's favorite way to get out of confrontations was to stomp hard on the other guy's instep then run like hell. He needed his face intact to keep working. (My Wicked, Wicked Ways--which is a heck of a good read!)

There are many ways to write a fight depending how deeply you are inside the skin of your viewpoint character.

You need not even get detailed about the specifics of the action, but keep things subjective to the physical impressions the MC is getting. The reader's only going to get what the MC knows, and he might not be able to keep tabs on the others.

The few fights I've ever been in were fast, and I was blinking too much to really see what was going on. It was hard to get enough air, cause you're moving flat out and busy. Bing-bang, and it was over. You only notice the bruises and ouchies after the adrenalin's worn off.

Talk to people who take martial arts or take a class for yourself to understand what it's like.

Good luck!

That's pretty much what I was going to say. I have a few books I've found with really good fight scenes in them and I have a look at those to see how the author did it.

I kind of look at fight scenes the same way as sex scenes - I can only write them from my POV character's perspective and I tend to focus more on what's going through the character's head than the physicalities of it. Like sex scenes, I think a fight could easily end up boring if it's a blow by blow description. If I'm following the character and experiencing what he / she experiences, then I'm drawn into it more, I think.

I did have a real problem with my magical fight scenes in my current WIP, especially the duel that takes place. I ended up blocking it out and then thinking about how the magic actually affected the environment, for instance my magic leaves a weird smell on the air when a spell is cast, the way a gunshot would leave a smell and smoke. Don't know if that's of any help.

ETA - blocking as in mapping out each move, I mean.

[DVGuru]

I'm of the opinion that long fight scenes belong in movies, and short ones belong in novels. Blow by blow descriptions of fights don't do it for me, and that's coming from a huge fan of gratuitous violence.

[Judg]

I am impressed by the quality of advice given in this thread...

[wayndom]

From what I've read and written, I'd say KEEP IT SIMPLE.

One of my favorite novels is Gorky Park, but there's a fight scene in it that I find completely unintelligible. Smith tries to do the fight from Arkady's POV, but it's confusing and unsatisfying (since you can't really "see" what's going on).

I had a scene in my novel THOR where the German shepherd hero fights with a werewolf. I had to rewrite it several times before it made any sense to readers.

I would absolutely advise against changing POV's in a fight scene -- they're too inherently confusing to begin with. If I ever have to write a fight scene again, I'll make sure it's a short fight with a quick outcome. Nothing unrealistic about that.

[PeeDee]

We talked about fight scenes a bit yesterday, in another thread. Here's the thread (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81703), and here's my bit.

Question 2) Right. Fight scenes. The biggest problem I have with fight scenes is that too many people pull their inspiration from movies and comic books, rather than other books. As a result, you can practically see the author trying so hard to pan the camera around the fight scene, to set the stage, to do cool special effects moves...except it just doesn't apply the same in a book. Books pull their "wow" from things which do not include Neo and Agent Smith hitting each other so hard that it creates a shock-wave of water.

This is because while books affect other things -- emotions, ideas, views of the world -- so strongly that you go "I want to write that!" it's the movies and comics and TV shows which affect our fight scenes and make us go "Wow, I want to do THAT!" It just doesn't work.

I have said it before: The smartest, best fight scene in recent years was in the movie Kingdom of Heaven (frankly, one of the best movies out there, and I wish Ridley Scott had made the Lord of the Rings. They would have been a different beast altogether). The wall is breached, the invading army is rushing in, we have already had a battle scene previously. The two armies rush to meet over the broken rubble of the wall. Our hero charges at the enemy...

...and the camera pulls up, and pulls away, and fades to black, and we come back after the ball.

That is the smartest fight scene I've ever seen.

Read Terry Pratchett. If you watch carefully, you'll notice that fight scenes, and tense scenes, and loud scenes, he tends to skip them entirely. He then has a conversation scene -- which he excels at-- afterward which gives you what you needed to know from the fight. You get the build up, you get the aftermath, the fight takes care of itself in your mind, mostly.

That said, writing fight scenes is perfectly fine. Just remember: In a book, we are caring about the characters.

I recently got stumped in my Roman novel because I had reached the page where the battle starts, the biggest battle in the book. I knew how the battle went. But I wasn't writing it. Why not? Because I had no character story in there, aside from "hack and slash until the reinforcements arrive," and that does nothing. Then, an old character plot I couldn't work in anywhere else made itself known and fitted into the battle. The battle scene, about six thousand words, ran itself off in a couple of hours.

And that's all I know about battle scenes.

[jodiodi]

The only thing I can add (something a judge in a writing contest I entered told me) is to keep the sentences very short in fight scenes to convey the urgency and confusion that real fights have. I've always written violence including epic battles and one-on-one fights. Even if I have a cast of thousands, stick with at least your MCs PoV for the fight. He/she can note seeing one of the other characters from time to time, but we don't need to see what everyone's doing simultaneously.

Good luck.

[III]

Great advice above. I'd add a seemingly silly piece of advice. Get 8 GI Joe action figures and physically plot/act out the fight scene.

Co-ordinating the timing of the fights is very important and can be very tricky and there are lots of details that you can miss if you don't properly visualize the scene beforehand. Does one of the fights end first and the winner double up on someone else? Do any of the fights bump into each other? How much space do they have to maneuver? What objects are in the room/nearby that would impact the fight?

Acting out the scene with dolls can solidify alot of those types of details. Just make sure your door is closed while you're doing it.

[Namatu]

Good advice here. I concur with the single POV. Don't make it too detailed, but some basic and simple actions can add a sufficient amount of spice. Usually I use my knowledge of martial arts. If I'm stuck with a vague idea of something cool, I ask a friend who knows more than me if she'll demonstrate on me. :D

[CandlestickJay]

Wow, this helps enormously! Thank you all so much for your advice, now I can't wait to get started! I think i'm definitely gonna try to dolls idea. I'm such a visual person (when I don't see the words in my head, it plays out like I'm watching a movie that I've never seen before....weird.) that this may actually help me. Plus I'm a theatre nerd, so maybe I'll even make a set. That'd be cool.

But anyways, some great advice here, and I just wanted to say thanks for helping me out! I hope other people find this helpful as well!

[Dave.C.Robinson]

I second the idea of short sentences; I'd also make judicious use of sentence fragments as well. Combat is chaotic and the last thing you want the reader to do is take a breath. Keep things coming at them fast. A good fight scene is not a sequence of events, it's a series of images and impressions that add up to violence.

[Rowdymama]

I believe an observer is the best person to report on the overall fight. But if your MC MUST be in the fight, don't let him/er get hit, because once you get hit, you are on the ground, in pain and kind of fuzzy-headed, and your nose may be bleeding all over your shirt, your eyes are watering, you may feel like throwing up, and all you want to do is crawl under the nearest picnic table and hide. As a reader, I'd rather know how the fight affected one character, than to be delivered a blow-by-blow. Make it realistic, PLEASE.

[David I]

The only thing I can add (something a judge in a writing contest I entered told me) is to keep the sentences very short in fight scenes to convey the urgency and confusion that real fights have.

This can also be done quite effectively by going exactly the opposite direction, though. A really good run-on sentence that sometimes spins on the balls of its feet and lunges in another direction can be just the thing. Adds a variation in pace--but you have to be in pretty close POV for it to work.

Not for the timid, though.

[Rowdymama]

Exactly. If you want to speed things up, use longer sentences with plenty of verbs. Short, punchy sentences are great in their place, but every period slows things down. A good way to render hesitation, confusion, etc., though.

[J. R. Tomlin]

It's a matter of style, I suppose. I pretty strongly disagree about long sentences in fight scenes. Those seem to me to be slowed to a crawl by long, ponderous sentences. For most writing I like a mix. But for fights, the shorter the better.

[Rowdymama]

If the sequence is written well, it will not be ponderous. As I said, use plenty of verbs, and cut all extraneous words. Besides, there's the matter of flow. For example, which flows better to you:

"George snatched up his cudgel and aimed a blow at the creature's head, but the arm came up and blocked it, causing the weapon to fly out of George's hand."

" George immediately snatched up his cudgel. He aimed a blow. The creature's arm came up. It blocked it. The cudgel flew back. It flew out of George's hand."

To me, the answer is obvious, but it may not be to others. So maybe it is a matter of style.

[Wraith]

What about a combo of both:

"George snatched up his cudgel and aimed a blow at the creature's head, but the arm came up and blocked it. The weapon flew out of George's hand."

Too many short sentences, and it comes out as choppy; too many long ones and you lose the sense of action. I agree with Rowdymama that long phrases aren't necessary ponderous - the key is the rythm, the balance of short and long ones. It's a matter of style, in the end - I always write fights in rather long phrases, that's just the way it flows for me (sort of like DavidI said, I just hope it works), but I'll balance with shorter and simpler ones, which have a dramatic effect by comparison.

I think the same stuff about balance is necessary in the actual account of the fight: you need to show the action, but rather than a blow-by-blow, the feelings of the POV character should tinge the description, making it intense. Creating the atmosphere of a battle can also be tricky - depending on how dark/detailed you want to go.

I tend to try for simple, but striking words to create vivid pictures of what's going on without slowing down the pace. I have no clue if that works, though, and also, when I write a tense scene I'm hardly conscious of what exactly I'm doing.

Just my two cents (or less). :D

[Rowdymama]

Very astute, Wraith! I learned something from your post. You are absolutely right; a combo is exactly what is called for. What do you think of that, J. R.?

[David I]

I think variation is the key.

But I wasn't simply speaking of including longer sentences, but literal run-on sentences with impressions and summarized dialogue and action all mixed together. I have one in my recent novel that is an entire paragraph and runs 106 words. If you send a sentence stumbling along as if it can't even bother to be properly punctuated, it can have a sort of delirious rushed feel, especially if done in a very close-in POV.

Mind you, I don't keep on going like that. The next sentence was long, but not that long, and less quirly in punctuation, and the one after that shorter and more conventional, and then it culminates in a series of sentence fragments--sort of the equivalent of panting for breath.

You have to earn this sort of thing with the proper build-up. And if you do it poorly, you will look silly.

But, as Arthur Miller said, the best writing is always on the very edge of embarrassing the writer...

[Wraith]

I think variation is the key.

But I wasn't simply speaking of including longer sentences, but literal run-on sentences with impressions and summarized dialogue and action all mixed together. I have one in my recent novel that is an entire paragraph and runs 106 words. If you send a sentence stumbling along as if it can't even bother to be properly punctuated, it can have a sort of delirious rushed feel, especially if done in a very close-in POV.

Mind you, I don't keep on going like that. The next sentence was long, but not that long, and less quirly in punctuation, and the one after that shorter and more conventional, and then it culminates in a series of sentence fragments--sort of the equivalent of panting for breath.

You have to earn this sort of thing with the proper build-up. And if you do it poorly, you will look silly.

But, as Arthur Miller said, the best writing is always on the very edge of embarrassing the writer...
I'm really curious how that sounds in your writing! Cause it seems a bit similar to what I sometimes do. I think of it as my 'hallucinatory' voice - it works in strange scenes where everything's kinda mixed and confusing (for the characters), or in really fast-paced ones. I tend to write very simple then, but in long flowing phrases that mix action and feelings; they have a strange tone and sometimes repetitive structure - makes them alert, but easy to overdo. I generally slip in and out of it without noticing, though - I only noticed in re-reads. But the whole story is rather surreal, so I guess it's not that strange.

And nice quote, that one. How come you're always the one with the quotes? :tongue

Sorry to go off-topic. Ahem...fight scenes.

[David I]

I generally slip in and out of it without noticing, though - I only noticed in re-reads.

Yeah, I think we're talking about the same thing here--where the change in pacing and perception in the scene drive the writing style.

And nice quote, that one. How come you're always the one with the quotes?

Because I'm a chicken. I need to collect things like that Miller quote to make me braver.

[Wraith]

Because I'm a chicken. I need to collect things like that Miller quote to make me braver.
That I can understand! Same reason why I collect AW posts. And writing demotivators (they do cheer me up you know ;)). Thanks for sharing your collection with the world.

[Spiny Norman]

I do pretty much what David I does. It's a heated jumble of experiences and action, running on as the character struggles to understand what's going on and what he's doing. Making it sparse and simple seems to take, well, the fight out of it. If the reader feels breathless at the end then they feel like the character, which is suiting. Ending it with a simple, dark observation or description such as, "He stood over them in the shadows. He heard no breathing, no moaning. And he began to run," or the like usually caps it off pretty good.

[Perle_Rare]

One of PeeDee's recommendations above (but I don't know how to quote a quote :Shrug:) is skipping the scene altogether. If done well, as a reader, I don't have any problem with that.

However, I've recently read a book where the author repeatedly used this trick. The MC fainted or was knocked unconscious at the beginning of most of the fights or dangerous scenes. In every case, he had to be told afterwards what he'd missed through dialogue. Got really frustrating after a few times. It's hard to relate to an MC that you can't trust to keep on his feet at least once in the book.

[Rowdymama]

Well, I think it depends on whether it's just a fight, or the climatic battle of a war. If I had followed a war through a book only to be deprived of the final battle, I would cast the book in the wastebasket. In my fantasy-for-youth book I made exactly that mistake, and readers rightly expressed strong disappointment.

If a simple fight didn't change the story much, talking about it afterward would be OK with me, but if it was important and left out, I would be dismayed.

[Jack Nog]

PeeDee -- I have said it before: The smartest, best fight scene in recent years was in the movie Kingdom of Heaven (frankly, one of the best movies out there, and I wish Ridley Scott had made the Lord of the Rings. They would have been a different beast altogether). The wall is breached, the invading army is rushing in, we have already had a battle scene previously. The two armies rush to meet over the broken rubble of the wall. Our hero charges at the enemy...

...and the camera pulls up, and pulls away, and fades to black, and we come back after the ball.

That is the smartest fight scene I've ever seen.

Read Terry Pratchett. If you watch carefully, you'll notice that fight scenes, and tense scenes, and loud scenes, he tends to skip them entirely. He then has a conversation scene -- which he excels at-- afterward which gives you what you needed to know from the fight. You get the build up, you get the aftermath, the fight takes care of itself in your mind, mostly.

That said, writing fight scenes is perfectly fine. Just remember: In a book, we are caring about the characters.

I recently got stumped in my Roman novel because I had reached the page where the battle starts, the biggest battle in the book. I knew how the battle went. But I wasn't writing it. Why not? Because I had no character story in there, aside from "hack and slash until the reinforcements arrive," and that does nothing. Then, an old character plot I couldn't work in anywhere else made itself known and fitted into the battle. The battle scene, about six thousand words, ran itself off in a couple of hours.

And that's all I know about battle scenes.

I have to agree with this. I can't write a blow for blow scene to save my life. I tend to draw them out over several pages and let's be honest-who wants to read a fight scene for several pages.

But go to the fadetoblack method and picture your hero/MC after the fight. Exhausted, reflective, pressed down by the weight of killing or the loss of adrenalin or battle-rage. THAT is the story.

I've seen this example twice. My wife got me started on that series by Diana Gabaldon (chick-lit with some history). I can't remember which book, but it was the battle of Culloden. She gave all the lead up, and if I remember correctly, the initial charge. Next thing you know, the MC is waking up and starts remembering..and then the key...trying to forget. As the story moves on-and possibly more in subsequent books, you learn exactly what happened. Much as I didn't care for the books, I thought this was brilliant.

I'll also cite the late Robert Jordan in his book The Fires of Heaven (At least I think it was this book). While in his other books there are some fight scenes described blow for blow (individual and larger scale) in this particular book, he discussed some tactics, some blows and army movements. It came to a point where one of his MC's (there are a couple, don't ya know) was allowed several paragraphs until the confrontation with one of the main antagonists of the book. The scene cut out and renewed at the campfire celebration that night. You knew they'd won, but how did the MC fare, how he fought, this was all revealed in flashbacks and memory from that character's perspective. Thoughts about how the MC couldn't believe he'd won, or the antagonist fought like a demon were simple, straightforward, but produced a vision of a heated battle no matter that the battle was long over. Another brilliant example.

I just took my meds...sorry this is so long!

[ishtar'sgate]

I probably did it all wrong but I had a couple of places in my medieval novel where I needed scenes like this. I read nonfiction accounts of actual battles and imagined what it would have felt like to have been there and then told it from one person's POV.
Linnea

[swvaughn]

I write fight scenes. Lots of 'em. I have a series about street fighters, you see...

So (almost) all of my fight scenes are one-on-one, and invariably from one person's POV. Not always the winner, either -- so sometimes it does end when the POV character gets KO'd.

One of the things I try to remember is to engage lots of senses. Following the action is important, but you can use that sparingly (so you don't end up with blow-by-blow stuff) in favor of concentrating on sounds (the crowd, flesh meeting flesh, grunts and sighs and hard breathing), smell/taste (sweat and blood, usually) and most importantly, sensation (how does your POV character feel when he gets clocked in the jaw? What does it feel like to punch bone, or miss a jab and slip?). Emotion is important, too. Is your character confident? Terrified? Pissed out of his mind? Too drunk to realize he's just had four ribs broken?

My biggest problem is that there are only so many synonyms for "punch" :D

[Wraith]

I write fight scenes. Lots of 'em. I have a series about street fighters, you see...

So (almost) all of my fight scenes are one-on-one, and invariably from one person's POV. Not always the winner, either -- so sometimes it does end when the POV character gets KO'd.

One of the things I try to remember is to engage lots of senses. Following the action is important, but you can use that sparingly (so you don't end up with blow-by-blow stuff) in favor of concentrating on sounds (the crowd, flesh meeting flesh, grunts and sighs and hard breathing), smell/taste (sweat and blood, usually) and most importantly, sensation (how does your POV character feel when he gets clocked in the jaw? What does it feel like to punch bone, or miss a jab and slip?). Emotion is important, too. Is your character confident? Terrified? Pissed out of his mind? Too drunk to realize he's just had four ribs broken?

My biggest problem is that there are only so many synonyms for "punch" :D

Wow, I had no idea one could be drunk enough not to notice braeking 4 ribs! :D

All awesome points, and I think they should be kept in mind when writing fantasy fights/battles too. Because there's that temptation to go with the flashy stuff in fantasy (fire balls and dragons and magic) and sometimes forget to make it realistic. There's no fantasy kind of pain/wound/hit that shouldn't give the character an identifiable sensation - one that could make the reader relate. (Even if it's something unusual, it should still be understandable from the head of your POV character, imo).

[J. R. Tomlin]

If the sequence is written well, it will not be ponderous. As I said, use plenty of verbs, and cut all extraneous words. Besides, there's the matter of flow. For example, which flows better to you:

"George snatched up his cudgel and aimed a blow at the creature's head, but the arm came up and blocked it, causing the weapon to fly out of George's hand."

" George immediately snatched up his cudgel. He aimed a blow. The creature's arm came up. It blocked it. The cudgel flew back. It flew out of George's hand."

To me, the answer is obvious, but it may not be to others. So maybe it is a matter of style.You need well written short sentences. You are shortening the sentences but in words like "immediately". The fact is that you TRIED to make the short sentences sound poorly written. Although I'm not really impressed with the long sentence at least it doesn't have silly stuff in it.

George grabbed his cudgel and swung. With a lunge, the ogre smashed into George's hand. George screamed. The cudgel flew across the room.

Still in need of polish but better.

I have to agree with this. I can't write a blow for blow scene to save my life. I tend to draw them out over several pages and let's be honest-who wants to read a fight scene for several pages.

Few fights--real fights--last very long. And since fights tend to be an important event, refusing to describe them is --well, to me it's being afraid to describe the important stuff.

One problem, of course, is that if you describe the fight you have to know enough about the KIND of fighting to describe it well. I know enough about sword fighting to describe it well. I avoid ever having my characters in a martial arts fight in one of my novels because I know little or nothing about them.

In describing a fight you have to be SUCCINCT. In the above example, one sentence is "he aimed". Well.... duh. I do sometimes use one word sentences. "Dodge. Parry. Swing. He sliced Jeremy's arm. Blood splattered." A fight goes fast. You don't have time for rhetoric and I go on the theory that your description shouldn't take longer than the fight.

I think we've watched too many prize fights which are artificially lengthened. A real fight is fast and dirty. One of my better fights was a sword fight near the end of my last novel. One of the PoV characters is fighting one of the main bad guys. Smash. Parry. The MC regains consciousness and stabs the bad guy in the back. End of fight. :D

[Jack Nog]

Few fights--real fights--last very long. And since fights tend to be an important event, refusing to describe them is --well, to me it's being afraid to describe the important stuff.

One problem, of course, is that if you describe the fight you have to know enough about the KIND of fighting to describe it well. I know enough about sword fighting to describe it well. I avoid ever having my characters in a martial arts fight in one of my novels because I know little or nothing about them.

In describing a fight you have to be SUCCINCT. In the above example, one sentence is "he aimed". Well.... duh. I do sometimes use one word sentences. "Dodge. Parry. Swing. He sliced Jeremy's arm. Blood splattered." A fight goes fast. You don't have time for rhetoric and I go on the theory that your description shouldn't take longer than the fight.

I think we've watched too many prize fights which are artificially lengthened. A real fight is fast and dirty. One of my better fights was a sword fight near the end of my last novel. One of the PoV characters is fighting one of the main bad guys. Smash. Parry. The MC regains consciousness and stabs the bad guy in the back. End of fight. :D

I couldn't agree more. That is why I stopped writing them altogether. I realized no one would find my description believable if it went on for ten, even five pages. Hollywood convinced me that two guys in a ring can go twelve rounds while punching each other with enough force to smash down a brick wall. Common sense really, but Rocky gets into you I guess.

[Soccer Mom]

There was a useful chat recently regarding action sequences. I'll see if I can locate where they stashed the transcripts.

Found it. The chat was with Steve Sears (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1489977&postcount=55). I learned a lot.

[Enzo]

Excellent thread. My WIP is my first thriller, and it'll have a couple of fights.