the misery of fight scenes

I actually love writing fight scenes, but I find it takes me far more drafts to get them right than almost anything else. On average, I think I do at least five revisions, at least one of which is a complete chuck-and-redo.

Has it become easier over time? Not so much. But I do recognize now that my hamfisted first pass is a necessary step toward getting what I want, so I get less aggravated with myself.

In my opinion, Joe Abercrombie often writes superb fight scenes, particularly in his First Law fantasy trilogy, and I find myself re-reading passages just to savor that aspect. His fight scenes are often quite cinematic -- the sights, sounds and smells of it bloom as I read them -- but also full of a chaotic, gritty realism that I don't often read (or see in the cinema). People trip over rocks as they back away, fumble their weapons, nearly stab themselves (or crap themselves), freeze up in a sheer panic, bite their opponent in the face (because that's all they have the option of doing in the moment), and otherwise behave very unlike your typical heroic sword-slingers.

[QUOTE="Before They Are Hanged" by Joe Abercrombie]
Something flashed overhead and splashed into the water beside them. Dow gave him a parting shove then sprang away, charging up the bank with a roar. West struggled after him, clawing the heavy sword up out of the mud and lifting it high, the blood pulsing in his head, howling meaningless sounds at the top of his lungs.

The muddy ground sped by underneath him. He crashed through bushes and rotten wood into the open. He saw Dow hack a gawping Northman down with his axe. Dark blood leapt into the air, black spots against the tangle of branches and white sky. Trees and rocks and shaggy men jolted and wobbled, his own breath roaring in his ears like a storm. Someone loomed up and he swung the sword at them, felt it bite. Blood spattered into West's face and he reeled, and spat, and blinked, slid onto his side and scrambled up. His head was full of wailing and crying, clashing metal and cracking bone.

Chop. Hack. Snarl.

Someone staggered hear him, clutching at an arrow in his chest. West's sword split his skull open down to the mouth. The corpse jerked, twisting the blade from his hand, He stumbled in the dirt, half fell, lashed out at a passing body with his fist. Something crashed into him and flung him back against a tree, knocking the air from his lungs in a breathy wheeze. Someone had him fast around the chest, pinning his arms, trying to crush the life out of him.

West craned forward, and sank his teeth into the man's lip, felt them meet in the middle. He screamed and punched but West hardly felt the blows. He spat out the flap of flesh and butted him in the face. The man squirmed and yelped, blood leaking out of his torn mouth. West clamped his teeth round his nose, growling like a mad dog.

Bite. Bite. Bite.

His mouth filled with blood. He could hear screaming in his ears, but all that mattered was to squeeze his jaws together, tighter and tighter. He twisted his head away and the man reeled back, clutching at his face. An arrow came out of nowhere and thudded into his ribs, he fell to his knees. West dived on him, grabbed hold of his tangled hair with clutching hands and smashed his face into the ground, again and again.

"It's done."

West's hands jerked back, grasping claws full of blood and ripped-out hair. He struggled up, gasping, eyes bulging.

Everything was still. The world had stopped reeling. Spots of snow filtered gently down into the clearing, settling across the wet earth, the scattered gear, the stretched-out bodies, and the men still standing. Tul was not far away, staring at him. Threetrees was behind, sword in hand. Pike's pink slab of a face had something close to a wince on it, one bloody fist squeezed around his arm. They were all looking. All looking at him. Dow raised his hand, pointing at West. He tipped his head back and started to laugh. "You bit him? You bit his fucking nose off? I knew you were a mad bastard!"
[/QUOTE]

I love writing action scenes. The biggest thing that helps me is sticking firmly in the head of my POV character. Don't focus on the larger movements of battle. The reader should see the battle as the character sees it. Anything beyond their immediate vicinity is just a chaotic storm of noise and movement. By doing this, you can make the scenes feel a lot less overwhelming to write, though the sheer chaos is usually overwhelming for your characters. Also remember to use all the senses in a battle. Yes, there are sights and sounds. But what sensations does the character experience? How does the battlefield smell?

I would also make sure to include occasional thoughts from your characters during the battle. This is easy to overdo, though, so you need to be careful about it.

Ditto what Maryn said about fight scenes. It goes for physical action scenes in general, as well, even if they aren't fights. POV, POV, POV. The biggest problem I've seen with fight scenes is over-detailed description that violates the common sense of the POV. My rule of thumb is: If reading the fight scene takes longer than the fight did, the scene is over-written.

And, as Maryn said, choreograph it physically so you make sure the movements are in fact doable and make sense. You don't, however, need to put all that choreography into the prose.

caw

Yes, I love writing fight scenes too. I actually have had to go back and cut them down because it can get overboard sometimes. But yes, I think the more you do it, the easier it should get for you.

Ack, I hate writing fight scenes too, although usually once they're down and I reread, I usually feel they're not too bad LOL. I think Maryn's advice is spot on. Choreographing in my head, or even with notes if it's really involved, is the first thing I do. Just so I know who is where and doing what. And sometimes I'll even just go ahead and write it like that for the first draft. But later, I always go back to make sure I'm really into the POV's character head, writing what they're feeling, what they're seeing, what they're hearing, and knowing that there may be other fighting going on that they're not seeing or getting a clear picture of. The most important thing is just that it doesn't come off as a list of step-by-step moves, and to do that, you have to be mindful of the POV.

That said, yeah. I still hate writing them, and I've been writing them for ten years or more.

Love them. I have a big knife scene in the historical and had to figure out how to make it work without a real victor because I was saving the foe for the MC to put down. I am pleased with what I came up with.

I can pretty well picture fight scenes in my head -- all those Bruce and Brandon Lee, Al Leong, and Chuck Norris fight scenes have come in good use.

I've written quite a few, in one book in particular, but I don't find them easy or, in most instances, interesting to read. That blow by blow stuff, even in movies, I tend to skip those scenes if I'm able to. What I had to do to engage myself was to go into the heads of the combatants, so it ends up to be less an action scene and more of an introspection. OP, if you're having difficulty, it could be that you don't find it very interesting either.

The hardest part for me is imagining, then getting down, all the chaos and incongruous stuff that happens when a character is in a crowded, noisy, life-threatening situation and things are coming at them out of nowhere and they have to act on instinct more than cooly think and process where the next threat is coming from in a sequential manner.

Introversion said:

In my opinion, Joe Abercrombie often writes superb fight scenes, particularly in his First Law fantasy trilogy, and I find myself re-reading passages just to savor that aspect. His fight scenes are often quite cinematic -- the sights, sounds and smells of it bloom as I read them -- but also full of a chaotic, gritty realism that I don't often read (or see in the cinema). People trip over rocks as they back away, fumble their weapons, nearly stab themselves (or crap themselves), freeze up in a sheer panic, bite their opponent in the face (because that's all they have the option of doing in the moment), and otherwise behave very unlike your typical heroic sword-slingers.

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I agree, and he also keeps the pov well grounded, so it's always from the perspective of the character and not popping out into a god's eye view of things. I'll get one of his books out when I need to write a fight scene of my own, not to copy, but to remind myself of how to keep things centered on what my pov character knows, senses and feels without confusing the reader as to what's going on overall.

Some other authors whose fight and battle scenes I like to revisit are CJ Cherryh's (hers are generally SF, but she captures a good feel for the action, chaos and confusion) and Bernard Cornwell, who writes historical fiction.

The only advice I can offer is to try and keep things fairly simple and don't get caught up in what are sometimes termed stage directions. You don't need to describe the way the pov character adjusts their stance or executes parries mechanistically. I've read a few authors who, in my opinion, are too keen to show the reader about their own expertise with some martial art or another, and they tend to bog the narrative down with terminology and painstaking detail and to lose the sensory and emotional impact of being in a fight for their life. Skirmishes and battles aren't going to be like one-on-one combat either.

3rding (or 4thing?) the use of props and laying out the scene

When you have enough posts (50) (ETA: oops. I must have looked at the wrong post. You clearly have enough to post in SYW. Sorry about that.), why not post one of your fight scenes in Share Your Work and invite people to comment on it? We'd be able to offer much more specific suggestions, then.

In general, though--

--Unless you're using the omniscient POV, write from within the POV of the character involved.

--Include sensual details (sounds, smells, sensations, etc.).

--Remember that a fight is also a conversation, even if no words are spoken. There are motives and agendas involved.

--Describe some movements specifically, but unless it's truly necessary to show what a character is doing with his right hand and his left foot, try to avoid over-choreographing.

--If it's a long fight, you can summarize parts of it.

--Despite common advice to the contrary, long flowing sentences can actually be very effective in describing breathless, one-thing-happening-after-another action sequences. Bernard Cornwell does this superbly. But always balance long sentences with shorter ones.

Harlequin said:

Ranged and gun fights generally are fun to read--space for dialogue and tension and thought. Melee is just... Very immediate.

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IME that's exactly what makes it difficult: making it engaging enough for the reader while still preserving the sense of how quickly it all goes in real time. I think that's part of why a very close perspective so often works well: when you're dealing with the immediacy of a single person's experience, you can indulge in a little time dilation.

I generally find a song that fits the pace of the fight and choreograph the motion of the characters to it. That helps get the beats down.

Introversion said:

In my opinion, Joe Abercrombie often writes superb fight scenes, particularly in his First Law fantasy trilogy, and I find myself re-reading passages just to savor that aspect.

Click to expand...

Abercrombie is the best at fight scenes imo. There are so many from his books that standout for me. It would be a very good idea to read some of his work if you haven't already. Read them like you are studying a text book for an exam. Look at how he sets them up with tension, covers the action and focuses the pov characters. Look at his paragraph formation and how he throws in internal monologue or straight dialogue.

The best way for learning this kind of stuff is by reading the best. Not that I've re-read and re-read and re-read some of them myself...

Harlequin said:

Most SYW seems to be early chapters; it might be odd to put something near the end of a MS up for critique, I dunno. Otoh it would mostly be focusing on the fight so might be worth doing.

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It's true that most people use it for their opening scenes, but I don't think there's any rule that you can't use it for a specific, troublesome scene.

I find that fight scenes have gotten easier to write over time. I helped that along by:

1) Watching scenes in movies and thinking about how I would describe what was happening in words. (Start small. If you were telling a friend about the scene what are the things that would stand out to you? Which points seem to carry the action and are not just filler. Then think about how you would describe each of those points in detail, what sort of passages would surround the key points to convey the mood and speed of the fight.)

2) When I get to a fight scene in my stories, I stop and think about what I want to happen. Who wins? Who is injured and how badly? Are the people fighting mismatched? (I have a scene in one book where the narrator is facing off against an assassin. She knows a little about fighting but also knows the closer she gets the worse her chances will be because she's not trained to kill. So she uses magic to throw all the small objects in the room at him at once and then hits him in the head with the edge of a metal wash basin. But I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get through the hurdle of her being significantly mismatched, and how to set up her magic abilities so that the reader wouldn't feel like it was coming out of nowhere.)

3) Once I have my goals for the scene in mind, I start running through how to make it happen. And I run through it many times in my head before I start putting it on paper. (Which is kind of optional, but I like to be able to "see" a scene before I write it.)

4) Then I write it out and revise as necessary as many times as it takes to get it to the point where it feels right and reads well.

It has gotten quicker and easier over time though. But I still find myself following most of the steps. (I watch a lot of action movies so I don't particularly make a special effort with that first one anymore, it just happens.)

I enjoy writing fight scenes. I like watching the scene play out in my head, and translating that onto the page.

In what I've written so far, I know basically where I want the fight to end up, but I don't start out knowing how I'm going to get there. So I think out how each participant is going to react to what's gone so far, and go from there. Sometimes that even changes the end result, because that's just what works. It's a process I really enjoy.

Surprisingly, because I have a background in martial arts and in the outlaw biker world, fighting scenes are hard to write for me as well.

In real life, so much of what happens is instinct - muscle memory, there's a billion things going on but at the same time nothing is happening. Most if not all fights are over quickly, so they have to be stretched fictionally for a reader to understand. Battles are a different story - where there's gun play and a bunch of things going on all at once. I was involved with one of those just once (thankfully), and really my thoughts during the assault were only along the line of "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..."

So what I write is not real - there's thoughts, strategies, goals, needs, etc that I include that are utterly absent at the heat of the moment in reality. Like someone mentioned previously, I choreograph the scene and draw it out so the MC can be thinking while it's going on.

I write in violent venues so fight scenes are a stable for me, and I enjoy them. What has helped me get nuances down is to buy Cold steel wasters (practice weapons) and practice the various moves myself (I live in the country).

But to me they are very easy to write. My tough point is covering entering cities and new places where you have to juggle the scene, bystanders, and the MC's reactions.

indianroads said:

Surprisingly, because I have a background in martial arts and in the outlaw biker world, fighting scenes are hard to write for me as well.

In real life, so much of what happens is instinct - muscle memory, there's a billion things going on but at the same time nothing is happening. Most if not all fights are over quickly, so they have to be stretched fictionally for a reader to understand. Battles are a different story - where there's gun play and a bunch of things going on all at once. I was involved with one of those just once (thankfully), and really my thoughts during the assault were only along the line of "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..."

So what I write is not real - there's thoughts, strategies, goals, needs, etc that I include that are utterly absent at the heat of the moment in reality. Like someone mentioned previously, I choreograph the scene and draw it out so the MC can be thinking while it's going on.

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I concur with most of this post, except for the bolded clause in the final sentence. Reality is that the POV character won't be doing much cogitating while the fight is going on, as you noted earlier. The thinking will come after the fight is concluded, usually. My preference, both as writer and as reader, is to render such action scenes, as they are happening, within the experience of the POV character.I'll here cite a couple of examples from one of my own unpublishable novels:

Very carefully, Saint emerged from the low door and stood up. “All clear, Smitty,” he said quietly, “no dogs.” He took a step forward, and Smitty stepped out of the bunker.
Light became dark, up became down, and a lot of things moved fast and randomly, accompanied by a symphony of thumps and clanking metal and meaningless loud guttural voices. Next thing Saint knew, he was on the ground, fighting for breath, held down by many hands and at least one booted foot in the middle of his back.
“Don’t you move a eyelash,” a firm voice ordered. Saint felt a cold piece of metal jammed against his temple, his eyes so wide no eyelash could have moved if it had wanted to.



Saint couldn’t remember getting to his feet, but he damn sure was up, and in the lowest crouch possible, hauling ass. Louder reports signaled heavier weapons joining the fray, and something whooshed overhead followed instantly by a shattering boom in the trees toward which Saint scrambled. That had to be a rocket-propelled grenade. Whatever the captain’s Stroll in the Park had run into, it was bigger than his patrol was. From behind came heavier fire from a machine gun. The line of trees and dense brush, better concealment at least, lay only twenty meters or so away, but Saint’s feet were encased in cement.
Time.
Slowed.
Way.
Down.
The air became as thick as water. All he could see was a particular cluster of leaves at the end of an impossibly long tunnel stretching ahead of him, leaves that seemed never to come closer. Under the clamor of the big noises rounds slapped the vegetation with the sound of scattered, apathetic applause.

caw

blacbird said:

I concur with most of this post, except for the bolded clause in the final sentence. Reality is that the POV character won't be doing much cogitating while the fight is going on, as you noted earlier. The thinking will come after the fight is concluded, usually. My preference, both as writer and as reader, is to render such action scenes, as they are happening, within the experience of the POV character.I'll here cite a couple of examples from one of my own unpublishable novels:

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Those are fantastic. Which is pretty much what I always think whenever I see samples of your writing. I don't get "unpublishable." I just don't.