Helpful things for action writers to remember
Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high youâre jumping/falling from. Thereâs a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.Â
Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. Itâs exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, youâre going to tire out really fast.Â
Arrows are very effective and you canât just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.Â
Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. Youâre giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless youâre trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, donât throw them.Â
Everyone has something called a âflinch responseâ when they fight. This is pretty much the brainâs way of telling you âget the fuck out of here or weâre gonna die.â Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.Â
ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but itâs actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighterâs efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesnât give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponentâs face.Â
Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
Fights get messy. Thereâs blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.Â
A serious battle also smells horrible. Thereâs lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the characterâs senses when theyâre in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.Â
If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade canât go through the cut you make. Youâll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.Â
ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when youâre shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means âthe amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.â To give you an idea of how that works, hereâs a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters.  (CLICK ME)
If an archer has to use a bow theyâre not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until theyâve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.Â
People bleed. If they get punched in the face, theyâll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, theyâll bleed accordingly. And if theyâve been fighting for a while, theyâve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. Theyâre going to bleed a lot.Â
Hereâs a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)Â
If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything Iâve gotten wrong here.Â
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