We're gettin' bloody. We're talking about fight scenes!
by Jenna Moreci
1. Do your research. Is your protagonist a trained fighter? Are they in an army? Do they fight in any type of fighting style? If any of these are true and you yourself are not an expert on fighting tactics, you're gonna have to do some research. Study terminology, stances, and weapons.
2. Don't use all your research. Say what? You do all of that research, and you're not even going to use it? Hear me out. When you research fighting techniques, you're going to learn a lot of really technical crap, and the last thing you want your fight to be is technical. Only apply what parts of your research is absolutely necessary.
3. Use powerful verbs. You'll learn different types of hits and maneuvers, all of which have great practical terminology, but do you want your fight to be practical, or do you want it to be gnarly? The more intense your fight is, the more powerful you want your verbs to be. If your characters are just sparring or training, then sure use fancy-dancy words, but your character is fighting for their life try to use words that sound hard and painful. Verbs that make you go oooh: pound, jab, slam, shove, crush, hurtle, dive, smash, etc.
4. Describe the emotion. Make your protagonist scared. Make them unsure of themselves. Make them desperate to survive. Fear just makes your character real; it makes them relatable. Or have them be pissed the F off. Maybe your character gets caught up in all the killing, they feel nothing; they are just completely numb and adrenalized. Emotions went out the window, and they've gone full machine. Whatever emotion you choose, you want to describe it, and you want to describe the physical manifestation it takes (hands trembling with rage, a heart-racing with fear, lungs surging, brow sweating, etc.).
5. Describe the pain. It's a fight, right? Getting hit or stabbed... hurts, so you should probably mention that. Describing the physical pain is only going to make the fight that much more intense. You want your reader to feel that hit. Get dirty. Describe the shooting pain, throbbing, aching, and stinging. And there are a lot of other elements that accompany pain. Is there mouth filling with blood? Do they have a limp? Is there vision blurred? You want your readers thinking, "Oh, that didn't sound good. Is she going to be okay?"
6. What are the stakes? What is the protagonist fighting for or against? The higher the stakes, the more intense the fight should be. Readers don't care about the fight if there's nothing to lose. Now, you don't have to explicitly state the stakes. There doesn't need to be some "winner gets to live, loser gets to die" explanation. That would be weird. But the reader needs to be aware that the protagonist needs to win this fight.
7. Give the protagonist a worthy opponent. In order to write a good fight scene, your antagonist should be as strong or stronger than your hero. They need to be a legitimate threat, or else what the heck is the point? So how do you show that your antagonist is a formidable opponent? You make your hero struggle. You bang them up a little before they hit their stride. Get them to the point where both the protagonist and the reader think, "Oh crap. They're going to lose bad!"
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writing 4 𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜: WRITING ADVICE TO MAKE YOU A BETTER WRITER
Non-FictionWriting is hard. Being a writer is even harder. But with "Writing 4 Writers," you CAN become a better writer. Every time I sit down to write, I reference this collection of writing advice from a variety of blogs, writers, and YouTubers: Jenna Moreci...
