I need help with fight scenes.

I think violence in first person is easier! You don't have to describe the choreography, just the narrator's impressions, but these can be miced with feelings and confusion and everything else.

Just climb into the head of the character and describe what he/she experiences. And this is a great place to play with pace, as things in a fight can appear to happen terrifyingly rapidly or terrifyingly slowly.

Do it exactly as you would a say gun fight, only substitute *blasted a fireball her way* instead of *squeezed off a head shot*

A fight is a fight. Don't sweat it, imagine it in your head and write what you see there. Then come back later and edit it.

watch some cartoons...

Moved at OP's request.

Fight scenes are about the only scenes for which I am likely to use a layering approach. First pass I might put in what happens (who does what to whom with what and how hard). Second I add sensory/descriptive info. Third I add emotions. If it's a big scene I intercut the what's going on with what it feels like and work to keep it sharp and suitably edgy.
I thnk the trick is to get every thing you can picture and imagine in there,on the page. Oh and the other thing - fight scenes aren't automatically exciting you have to get the rhythm of them right or they can be just another type of dull. HTH.

Though the GG (good gal) can use her mind as a weapon, I think she'd be more comfortable using her hands as guidance for her weapons/defense like Sue Storm of Fantastic 4. She'd also need to or feel the need to duck--whether the threat is real from the BG (bad gal) 0r not, reflex makes us duck. She'd move to a better vantage point or roll, jump, spin out of the way or to get off a force beam shot.

Can the flames follow a curve--hope not, not until the end anyway? Same for blocking forcefields--straight line of sight work. Can rock stop the flames -only minor or med. ones, the black ones will burn through? Does correspondingly harder acts wear the fighters out? They should--no one has an inexhaustable supply of energy.

Fights start with the combatants taking the measure of each other's skills--light hits, you find out the strengths and the weaknesses, if you're bad you'll involve a non-com to distract or wear down the good while you get to a better vantage, do worse damage, escape, feign weakness, etc.

Make a drawing of the rough area they fight in with walls, trees, bystanders etc. from your work. Grids are good because you can rough out feet/yards between combatants:
BG red ink, GG green ink.

Break the fight down to small bits 4 strikes total:
BG: flame 6" across for 20' adds taunting line
GG: blocks with force shield and retorts
BG: flames 18" across like battering ram
GG: ducks, rolls comes up on the side to hit BG with force field

Keep the actions varied and increasingly harder to fend off/give out. The fighters will get hurt, the GG more so, usually. How will you end it? 1 or both wounded, death? A draw, one escapes--flees?

You had me at "The sexy blonde with disgustingly big breasts."

-Derek

Read "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy.

Steal everything you can. Add psychic powers.

The main characteristic of a newbie warrior is to let fly with everything he or she has at the first sight of the enemy. This is why a large part of military training is how to shoot in short bursts, as the instictive reaction is to just hold down the trigger. "Spray and pray" they call it. So if the magic system has limits i.e. limited number of shots/spells or it exhausts the user mentally and/or physically, this would be the first mistake the heroine makes. Once she spots the threat she is likely to empty her psychic quiver and the be forced to run and hide to recuperate or she would just lose the fight and you would have to find a way for her to escape.

BlueLucario said:

Awesome! I like it.

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I'm not sure sure they BOTH would have the same approach.

The best female charecter I ever came up with was the sort that would go all out to obliterate the enemy the very moment she knew that a fight was on.

Makes it very difficult to get those snappy one-liners out... impossible, really. Says a lot that this was still a hell of a good charecter, I reckon.

Anyhow...
Perfect match of opposing powers, btw. You have the flashy, dangerous villian (everyone is afraid of getting burned!) and the heroin has abilities that are much more versatile. A psycic can "see" where someone is standing without looking, for instance. As a last resort, she could wrap one of those shields around the enemy, like a bubble. That way, the very next fireball she throws will explode in her face.
"Gee, you just went from blonde to bald in .3 seconds... bravo!"

dpaterso said:

You had me at "The sexy blonde with disgustingly big breasts."

-Derek

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I second that. Any idea of a fight scene went right out of my head.

Okay...and then I started thinking: since I don't have any sexy blonde bad-guys, sexy blondes generally do okay in my texts. Maybe I need more talking cats and bigger, more evil tits?

dpaterso said:

You had me at "The sexy blonde with disgustingly big breasts."

-Derek

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She had me at "talking cat" I love talking cats!

Can the heroine project force fields? Maybe she could send some of those flames back on the villian. Or she could user her power to pop a manhole cover off and block with that. Anyway, just visualize it all, move by move. Then write it and pare id down to where it has a good rythm and flow. Make sure your hero is on the run, scorched and in dire straights, then pulls out a win unexpectedly (unless she's not to win at all). Not sure what the cat's going to do, cats are notoriously nervous about fire weapons. Except firecats, but that's another story.

Also the shorter the better. Long cool fight scenes might rock in movies, but to read them and to keep track of what is happening to whom is an exhausting process for a reader. Short and sweet does it. If you need the fight to go on for a long time, you could do a few specific moves then write something, "She chased her across the field towards the pond, where again they exchanged blows." Maybe a few more specific moves then: "The fight raged on and on. They were both sweaty and exhausted, but neither was going to be the first to give in."

Keep it simple. This is actually one of the few times where you can afford to tell, not show.

BlueLucario said:

Oh I also forgot to ask. It sounds sort of weird but, but could I make a character say the name of the attack that they are about to use?

Mike had his legs spread apart. He raised his hands toward the sun. He concentrated hard, forming a large yellow

"ENERGY BALL!" He bellowed and threw it at the dragon.

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Energy ball? Now you've got me visualizing something...but still not quite a fight:

The sexy blond had her legs spread apart. She pulled her shoulders back. "Energy ball?" she suggested.

BlueLucario said:

Oh I also forgot to ask. It sounds sort of weird but, but could I make a character say the name of the attack that they are about to use?

Mike had his legs spread apart. He raised his hands toward the sun. He concentrated hard, forming a large yellow

"ENERGY BALL!" He bellowed and threw it at the dragon.

I've never seen that in books lately.

"Thunderstrike"

"Dragon Strike" said Beowulf, as he thrusted the golden sword at the dragon.

Should I do something like that?

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Thrusting always seems good as far as it goes. Perhaps more exactly:

"I hope this works!" screamed Skippy as he thrust the bucket under the spigot.

BlueLucario said:

No I mean when you watch Anime, the fighters say the name of their attack before they use it. Is that a good idea to do it in books?

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It's a matter of taste. Personally I think it is funnier if the magician does their work silently and if the effects are spectacular then somebody can say "What was that?" And then there can be a sporting discussion of the pros and cons of raw photonic heat balls versus some with a few wild heavy ions tossed in for the extra damage they can do to somebody who puts up an antielectromagnetic barrier etc. etc.

Higgins said:

It's a matter of taste. Personally I think it is funnier if the magician does their work silently and if the effects are spectacular then somebody can say "What was that?" And then there can be a sporting discussion of the pros and cons of raw photonic heat balls versus some with a few wild heavy ions tossed in for the extra damage they can do to somebody who puts up an antielectromagnetic barrier etc. etc.

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That would be hilarious to have a couple wizards on the sidelines arguing over what's going on and whether it was the best way to do it -- plus you'd have your fight described in the process. Doesn't help with this fight scene, but definately a good idea.

I guess the cat could through in some snide comments about what's going on.

BlueLucario said:

No I mean when you watch Anime, the fighters say the name of their attack before they use it. Is that a good idea to do it in books?

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Have you tried reading fantasy novels to see if any other authors do this?

hammerklavier said:

That would be hilarious to have a couple wizards on the sidelines arguing over what's going on and whether it was the best way to do it -- plus you'd have your fight described in the process. Doesn't help with this fight scene, but definately a good idea.

I guess the cat could through in some snide comments about what's going on.

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I have a scene pretty like that in my historical fantasy, with a pair of wizards having a formal duel, which eventually spirals out of control and ends up as an all-out fight, whilst their colleagues discuss who well they're doing etc. That magical system involved drawing symbols as part of it, though, so no 'voicing' which spell was used. My sidelines wizards kind of provided the commentary and identified the names of the spells that way.

It was actually the hardest scene to write in the whole book and I spent ages putting it off. In the end, Blue, what I did was to block it as if it was a movie first off, figure out who moved where and each spell that went back and forth, and then when I had that written down I thought about how to make that interesting and how to relate it to what the characters are thinking / feeling. Like rather than just saying 'he threw a fire spell at him', I linked that in with how much he hated his opponent and had him wanting to singe the other's girly haircut, that sort of thing.

Another good idea is to make a drawing / map of the location of the fight. Maybe it's because my background is in theatre, but I find it really helpful to plot out action scenes if I know exactly where everything is and what it looks like in the place. That might give you ideas for things to use too, as in stuff the bad girl can pick up and throw or blow up or whatever.

Other senses can help too - if your heroine is throwing fireballs around, does the smell of burning eventually get really bad, or something like that?

I'll also second starting slowly and building up. Granted, mine was a duel that started with basically a few spells flung back and forth, trying to do better than the other guy, then broke down into chaos later on, but I think it works well to vary the pace andd intensity of a fight if it's going to be a long scene.