Writing Fight Scenes: Introduction

NOTE: You can now buy the revised and expanded version of this blog series as an ebook, in both epub and mobi formats.



This month's SF Novelists post is a bit different, because it's the launching point for a series I'll be doing over here on LJ for the next indeterminate amount of time.

At Sirens this past month, I did a workshop on writing fight scenes, and promised those who weren't able to attend that I'd be posting the material online. That begins today, and will be continuing for a while. Check out the aforementioned post for sort of an anecdote-cum-mission statement, then head behind the cut for a bit more about me and why I'm interested in this subject, plus an outline of how I'm going to approach this.

( I've always loved fight scenes. )

What I'll do, in all likelihood, is divide this series into three rough stages. The first will be theoretical in nature, talking about the role a fight plays in the story. The second will be about the structure of the fight itself: practicalities of deciding what happens, and how. The third will be about getting the fight onto the page: craft-level issues of what to say about the combat. Each of those stages will probably have multiple posts. We may or may not have a running "sample scene" that gets developed during the course of the series; I did that for the workshop, and may repeat it here.

I'm not sure how long the entire series will take -- how many posts, and how often they will happen. Two a week sounds like a good thing to aim for, but we'll see how that fares through the holidays. Anyway, I'll group them all under a tag, so you can find the whole set easily if you want.

You are welcome at any point to ask questions, offer examples, correct me where I'm wrong, or hash out any scenes you're working on yourself. I'm more than happy to give any help I can.

Writing Fight Scenes: my philosophy

NOTE: You can now buy the revised and expanded version of this blog series as an ebook, in both epub and mobi formats.



[This is a post in my series on how to write fight scenes. Other installments may be found under the tag.]

So you're working on a story, and there comes a point where it really ought to have a fight scene. But you're sitting there thinking, "I'm not a martial artist! I'm not an SCA member! I have no idea how to fight!" Or maybe you're thinking, "Fight scenes are so boring. I'd rather just skip over this and get back to the actual story." Or something else that makes you dread writing that scene, rather than looking forward to it with anticipation.

Don't worry, dear reader. I'm from the Internet, and I'm here to help. <g>

To the first group, I say: the details of how to fight are possibly the least important component of a fight scene. The important components are the same ones you're already grappling with in the rest of your writing, namely, description, pacing, characterization, and all that good stuff.

To the second group, I say: it's only boring if the author does it wrong.

( Cut for length. )

So. If your scene is important enough to merit actual time in the novel (or on the screen or whatever), then there's something important going on in it, that has less to do with strikes and blocks, and more to do with the progress of the story. You can get surprisingly far by focusing on the latter, instead of the former, though we'll talk in due course about how to do both.

In the meanwhile, stay tuned for the next post, in which I will discuss the most important question to answer for any fight scene. Until then . . . .