the essentials of writing FIGHT SCENES!
I realized that there weren’t a lot of fight scene tutorials on here that addressed a lot of the common mistakes of fight scenes. I have a non-zero amount of experience with Krav Maga and have been told I’m very good with fight scenes so I thought I might as well write out a little advice
Keep in mind that this is best suited to “nasty hand to hand street fighting” and even then there are probably better people to ask about it. But here goes.
What’s the One Important Thing I’d have you remember?
Best piece of fight scene advice I’ve ever heard: Violence is fast. Whenever people are involved in some kind of accident or tragedy, what they say is “It happened so fast!” So no matter what, think fast. The main mistake I see with fight scenes is unrealistic description, and it comes from a lack of understanding of a fight being a very altered state of consciousness, where your character is at the limits of their ability to process shit. So:
How to Describe a Fight Scene!
The Language: Go for the strongest verbs you can find and use them. Think slam, crash, smash, pound, grind, shove, ram, claw, rip, gouge, bash…You want very verb driven writing. This is the time to pull out that thesaurus and that list of 500 verbs to use in writing or whatever. Don’t let adjectives and adverbs carry the weight. “She punched him hard in the gut” needs to be “She slammed a fist into his gut.” Or better, let the fist be the subject: “Her fist slammed in his gut.” If there’s any time to adhere hardcore to active voice, it’s now. Also notice that I shortened “into” to “in”- it’s best to go with language that’s as short and well, punchy, grammar be damned. This is also why I go with “gut” rather than “stomach.” Sentence fragments and em-dashes and such are your friends. Cut out articles and conjunctions wherever you can. And try to keep the subject and verb of every action close together–it’s much more direct and better able to connote that intense aggression that you want.
So, you might have something like this: “As she tried to throw a punch at his face, he dodged aside, moving in, his body twisting, to kick her in the ribs.”
You might notice the following issues: The verbs are fairly weak- tried, moving. “Dodged” is good but the others fall flat. There are a lot of extraneous words. And the clause at the beginning makes the sentence feel too indirect.
So these are the changes I would make: “Her fist darted for his face. He dodged aside. Slipped closer, twisted–his heel crashed into ribcage.”
That’s the technical stuff out of the way. Now for some more general advice on fights:
In a fight, you really don’t think. There are two things your brain can do: percieve and respond. In such an adrenaline-fueled survival situation, you’re a bundle of instinctive reaction and OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK. A skilled fighter doesn’t mentally remember techniques, the techniques are just the first response that springs out at an attack because they’re second nature. And the thing is, you CAN’T remember techniques in the fight. Adrenaline makes you big stupid. Brain is a faraway land, but body is here, in danger, and trying to stay alive. This is what I mean by your character being at the limits of their processing—they have very little room to think because they’re in survival mode.
That’s why you practice techniques One Fuckthousand Times in martial arts. It’s actually wild how little conscious thought there is to it. I’m always going to remember the time when I, a smol orange belt, was sparring with a larger guy and his fist was flying at my face and I just…wove underneath it. Without even thinking. Pure instinct. I had two guys like, beaming at me and pounding me on the back at the breakthrough but I was confused at the time because it felt like a complete accident. So what you should get out of this is—yeah, no internal monologue! Write what your character perceives and write what they respond.
Description of any kind, but especially visual description, will be highly fragmented. If your character is in a fight with another character, they’re not going to be extensively perceiving their surroundings and noticing the thick curtains of ivy on the walls or whatever. Their focus will be. On the fight. Part of the reason for this is that adrenaline makes you focus hard on threats and kind of cancels out irrelevant data. I want to point out visual description specifically as an area of concern though because for one thing, your field of view is going to be limited as you try to protect your head and face, you’re going to need to pay attention to your aggressor and anticipate their next move, and finally, if you get punched in the face or have anything come close to hitting you there you’re going to be blinded temporarily because you’ll instinctively shut your eyes. NO SCENERY! If your character’s getting pummeled in the face they’re probably not noticing the vicious gleam in their adversary’s eyes outside of a quick glimpse. Imagine the whole thing is being filmed through a panicking amateur’s shaky camera.
Hone in hard on your character’s body in your descriptions. They’re inhabiting their body in a super intense way and most of your description will probably lean toward the tactile. This not only includes the awareness of pain or of being hit, but also the movement and coordination of their muscles and how they are working together, their breathing, potentially exhaustion or fatigue. Martial arts allows you to experience how your body produces force—to percieve the flow of power through your entire torso that culminates in a punch. This feeling can add a lot to a description of a fight. A punch or a kick’s power doesn’t come from muscular strength of your limbs, but originates throughout your body and the ability to coordinate that and draw it together into a single hard point of power involves a lot of consciousness of your body, which also becomes second nature.
Almost the entirety of your character’s focus will be firmly in their body. They are perceiving their adversary’s movements, but that is sharply edged with their own reactions to them.
I feel like people often don’t realize how intense taking a hit in a fight can be. A punch to the face or head is blinding and dizzying; taking a hit to the temple will snap your head aside and put you completely out of it for a second. Descriptions of these things need to be very grounded and intense to feel right. Getting hit in the chest hard enough can knock the wind out of you. Getting hit in the gut WILL make you retch or throw up. A hard kick to the gut is like instant vomit. (There’s another post with really excellent descriptions about what certain blows feel like so I’ll leave this at that.)
Your character will perceive pain, both the force of the blow they take and a sense of the scale or breadth of the pain, but adrenaline will keep them going through it to a degree that isn’t possible when not pumped full of adrenaline. Your character will probably know that they’ve been injured (oh fuck, that was a nasty hit to the side) but AFTER the fight, expect the real pain to suddenly hit (oh fuck, there’s a giant bruise over my side and it’s aching so deep I can barely move).
Adrenaline makes you straight up loopy sometimes. Y’all know how much I hate anecdotal evidence, but one of my former instructors told a story about how he was mugged, got slammed against the sidewalk and briefly blacked out, fought back, and then just…decided to go to work. He thought he was fine. A few hours later, paramedics were asking him questions and he was completely incoherent. He had a severe concussion but the adrenaline rush had caused a delay in the damage really hitting, to the point that he was just like “heh, I can go straight to work, I’m fine!”
A fight is probably going to be over pretty quickly: Movies are deceptive about this but it’s not super realistic to have two characters tangling with each other for like…ten minutes straight. You get tired. You get sloppy. And there’s only so much damage you can take.
Fancy kicks not recommended: They look nice on screen, sure. But having your leg above your waist for any length of time is one hell of a risk when your opponent can grab it and slam you to the floor like a sack of concrete mix. HOWEVER, kicks can be fight enders. A heel kick will break ribs easily.
Dirty fighting: This is the Kravist in me, but knees to the groin are valid and will completely immobilize a testicle-having attacker. Elbows are also highly destructive, but you tend not to see them in movie fights much. Biting is valid and bites can be very nasty. Gouging eyes is very effective. It’s also easier than you would think to rip the skin off someone’s face with your nails if you’re already going feral. A good punch to the throat might end a fight.
Blocking or dodging blows: Your character can deflect a punch or a knife attack to the upper body with forearms, and your arms will cushion a blow to the head as well. You can also duck your head around an attempted blow to the face. It’s important, though, to think of your two characters’ actions as interlocking rather than alternating—a character going in for a hit will at least briefly have one of their limbs extended instead of protecting the body, and the other character will be taking that opening. Have them dodge the blow and slide into their own opportunity in a single movement.
Shit Happens: A fight is not an equation where you plug in the size and weight of both adversaries and get the result. Again, this is the Kravist in me, but the only law is Murphy’s law. An attempt to land a blow can go sour and break somebody’s wrist. An attacker can trip and fall. Puddles and improvised weapons and getting blood or sweat in your eyes can all be wild cards. An experienced fighter can get fucked up by someone smaller and less experienced than they because of luck. That said, though, experience is what helps you adapt to the Murphy’s-law-ness of everything.
Yeah that’s what I’ve got, enjoy ur violence
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