Getting motivated to write battle scenes

I have some fisticuffs in the superhero book I am writing. I tend to listen to music to get into a mood for anything, but especially these scenes. A lot of imagery and movement comes to me in the music, and I can build around that.

Epic dramatic instrumentals put me in the mood. Horns, staccato choir chants and timpanis for the win!

blackcat777 said:

Would anyone care to share anything that motivates them to write battle scenes?

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The need for a paycheck?
If we're talking about inspiration though... reading a great battle scene is the only thing that inspires me to write one myself. Or watching swordfighting scenes from movies.
Music just makes me tap my fingers along with the rhythm, so that precludes writing

Do you intend to write the swordfighting blow by blow? Maybe that idea is making it seem too tedious to write. Perhaps try a different approach and start with the bigger picture, rather than a description of every move.

lol! If you find out, let me know OP. I detest fight scenes with a passion. I also don't enjoy Abercrombie; maybe that's why.

What helped me most was finding a CP who is great at fight scenes but doesn't enjoy dialogue, and she's basically yin to my yang type thing.

Robert E Howard's Conan stories are great for this. Some of the best fight scenes I've read.

Read writers who write great battle scenes. Bernard Cornwell would be one of those. Watch movies with the type of battle scenes you want to write. Steep yourself in research on technique and battle lore. And finally, remember that the battles need to be about something. They're part of the story, too. I'm actually a bit surprised that you can write around them, because I should think that what happens to your characters in the midst of the battle is going to be carried forward into the story. Nothing should be without personal consequences, least of all a battle.

Hrm. I would have said sex scenes are more about emotional reactions, or perhaps that's just my preference. I like books to have sex if it's not cheesily done, but I tend to skip or skim fight scenes, and especially battle ones (!).

blackcat777 said:

The other thing about it is I've always considered writing combat and writing sex to be the same "kind" of writing, lots of action/reaction structure.

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Speaking generally here; your comment there simply sparked something for me.

Sex is far less about mechanics and action/reaction, and far more (as Harlequin said) about emotion. Which doesn't necessarily mean love. It can be affectionate, passionate, adversarial, cold, manipulative, or a power play. It's entirely possible to write an effective, powerful sex scene with little to no mention of body parts and mechanics. Because most of the time, who does what to whom is not really what the scene is about. Above all, it is personal and the experience unique to the participants. Story characters enter sexual encounters with agendas and baggage. The question is, how much of that baggage gets unpacked and either dealt with or left messily displayed, and how much do they carry out again, untouched, to weigh them down another day? And do they acquire new baggage from this encounter?

Interestingly, fights and battles (physical violence, IOW) operate similarly, at least from an emotion standpoint. The encounter is personal to the character, and there are agendas, baggage, and consequences. So it's not just about choreography. Someone's life (or an army's victory) are not all that's at stake or that needs to be explored.

Ran across this--author Marie Brennan's guide to writing fight scenes. Some might find it useful.

I know like nothing about martial arts and I hate writing fight scenes so. freaking. much. Besides putting on a swelling orchestral action movie soundtrack, which helps, I do a lot of my research on the MMA Bro section of YouTube. There's admittedly a lot of garbage here, but YouTube vids really let me visualize the scene. It also has the capability of being played back in very slow motion so you can see exactly where all those flying fists and feet are actually landing.

Wuxia films are great for off-the-wall gorgeous fight choreography if you're less concerned with realism.

The waiting before the fight starts is the worst part of the fight. That gives you time to think about how scared you are. and puckers your anus.

I always quite liked Wolfe's fight scenes. The entire thing will often be a few lines at most, told with casual indifference. But that's not appropriate for every book.

Motivates? If you need motivation to write the scene, maybe you need to change the plot up a little. Chances are that if you're not enjoying writing it that we're not going to enjoy reading it.

Or, like Curlz said, you're doing it for a paycheck. That's perfectly reasonable, too. Writing should only be done for fun or profit, and ideally both.

That said, I love getting myself psyched up to write an awesome fight scene. If I need ideas, I search for "awesome _________ fight scene" (no quotation marks) in YouTube, with the blank filled in with the weapons I'm using in the scene. And for music, here's my fight scene playlist:

Dropkick Murphys - The Boys Are Back
Matias Puumala - The Art Of War
The Offspring - Staring at the Sun
Linkin Park - Bleed It Out
Evanescence - Lies
Power Symphony - The Way of the Sword
Dragonforce - Heart of a Dragon (or any Dragonforce song, really...they're all part of the same long song, just chopped up on different albums)

Well I read about warfare for literally hours of the day a minimum of five days a week, always have, always will. I'm always checking in to the infinite battlefields whirling around my not too shattered skull! Best thing to do is learn as much as you can, the motivation will be there if you are seeking out the violence and the method behind the barbaric barbecues with regularity, that's how you find what can work and what won't, if you try to create a battle just for the sake of it, it won't be a very authentic one!