Tips for Writing Fight Scenes

Fight scenes, like love scenes, must drive the story forward. They must create change either by resolving something or by complicating something. Change advances the story. If your fight is gratuitous, if it isn't serving a purpose, cut it.

Keep these points in mind when creating your believable and exciting fight scenes.

Characterization: How a character reacts to a confrontation depends on who he or she is, what’s at stake, and their attitude or philosophy about fighting. Are they aggressive, passive, do they use force only when necessary? Knowing the character’s background is key. Is your character an experienced fighter? What kind of instruction does she have? What is her skill level? Someone with no training might fight back if attacked, but she won’t use complicated techniques an experienced fighter might use.

Keep in mind there are many distinct systems of combat practices, and each has unique emphases. A boxer fights differently than a karate practitioner. A karate practitioner fights differently than a grappler. A grappler fights differently from [insert your style of choice here]. Does your character have police, military, or combat training? Are they comfortable wielding a knife, a broadsword, a semi-automatic weapon, a raygun, or perhaps a magic wand?

Understanding your characters and their philosophy, their fighting system, and their skill level will allow you to write realistic fight scenes.

Setting: Location, terrain, lighting, and weather conditions are important to consider when planning your fight scene. Avoid describing the setting in detail, though, or your pacing will slow. Include only what will affect the fight. Your character probably doesn’t care if dawn’s golden light casts a warm glow on his opponent’s pockmarked face. However, he does care if the light compromises his vision or depth perception. The character may also take note of his surroundings as he looks for an exit, additional danger, or a weapon to utilize.

Use the location to create unique fights. If your characters are outside a home, they can throw each other into the side of the house, a tree, a car parked in the driveway, the rose bushes, a swing set. This is your chance to create an exciting and unique fight scene. Have fun with it.

Is the terrain rocky, slippery, or wet? Unstable footing may change the way a person fights, or perhaps your characters slip and fall and have to continue battling it out on the ground.

Emotion: Be sure to include your character’s emotional state. What’s at stake? What will it mean if she wins the fight? What will it mean if she loses? Emotion creates suspense. It connects the reader to the characters. It makes the reader root for a character’s success or demise. Emotion can be demonstrated through dialog, physical action, internal sensations, and thoughts. Warning: Too much introspection can slow your pacing.

Action – Reaction: Action comes before reaction. Cause is followed by effect. This is especially important in a fight scene. Blood gushed from his nose when she punched him should be flipped to show the action first. She punched him. Blood gushed from his nose. When the reader experiences the action as it unfolds, they will have an emotional response to the action right along with the characters.

Pacing: Fights are dynamic and fast, therefore, the action should be conveyed quickly. You want the reader to feel they are a part of the fight or at least watching it. Taking too long to describe an action slows down the visual image in the mind’s eye, thus slows the pacing. You can create the illusion of action unfolding in real time by using short and medium length sentences as well as sentence fragments.

Be careful not to structure all sentences the same, as a lack of variation could lead to choppy, robotic and monotonous prose.

Clarity/ Word Choice: Be straightforward and to the point. Describing your fight choreography in minute detail slows pacing. Avoid getting too technical so your fight scene doesn’t read like a training manual.

If you want to showcase a particular technique in the final battle scene, explain it or refer to it earlier in the story, perhaps in a training session. For example, in the original Karate Kid movie, we saw Mr. Miyagi practicing the crane technique. Daniel asked him about it and we learned that, “If do right, no can defend.” So when Daniel settled himself into the crane stance in the final scene, we knew this awesome move would make him a winner. In another example, who could forget the five-point palm exploding heart technique in Kill Bill? If these techniques weren’t explained until they were used in the story, the pacing would halt and their significance would be lost.

Use expressive words and strong action verbs to paint a clear image and to evoke an emotional response in the reader. A fight should create reader urgency to keep them turning the pages to find out what happens next. The reader should feel the excitement and energy of the action, not confusion over the words used to describe it.

Dialog: Combatants are not going to engage in a long discussion while fighting. That can come pre-fight when they are gearing up for the confrontation (sizing each other up and down, posturing, etc) or post-fight when the opponent is no longer in a position to attack. There is room for terse dialog in a heated battle. However, fighters won't waste precious energy and breath waxing poetic in a monolog.
Unless...your monolog's purpose is to highlight one character's arrogance, endurance, and skill over another character's exhaustion. Or for comedic effect as in the sword fight scene in The Princess Bride.  
 

Climatic Battle: The main fight against the villain should come at the climax, and should be the biggest, most difficult fight in the story. If the most exciting fight is with a minion earlier in the book, it makes the climax appear dull in comparison. Many times the main character has to fight the villain earlier in the book, but at that point he/she hasn’t grown yet. The main character shouldn’t be able to defeat the villain until the completion of his/her character arc.

Choreography: Do you want your fight to be a quick exchange of a few blows or an epic battle? If a character wants to sneak up on his victim and quietly knock him out, he might use a choke hold until the victim passes out. For more action and movement, you can choreograph a fight scene with punches, blocks, kicks, and throws. Or maybe your characters are weapon-wielding gladiators. The specific techniques your battle calls for will depend on the character’s training and skill level.

Pay attention to the characters’ distance from each other. If they are further away, they might use weapons or kicks for reach. When closer they can punch, block, and slug it out. If very close, they can uppercut under the chin, into the neck, or into the groin. Elbows and knees are good for in-close fighting. Maybe a character takes the other guy down and they start grappling (wrestling). Arm bars, locks, or chokes can be used either on the ground or standing. The possibilities are only limited to your imagination.

Remember your fight scene must drive your story forward. The fighting must be within character and believable. If you aren’t sure something will work, get out of the chair, find a willing partner, and experiment with your fight choreography together.

What are some of your tips for writing fight scenes?

~K.M. Fawcett
Captive (The Survival Race series book 1)  
A rookie cop and an alpha gladiator band together to escape their alien captors in a chilling race for survival and soon discover freedom isn’t all they desire.