Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to write PHYSICAL FIGHTS/WEAPONS

I used to learn martial arts, so you can be sure the info in this post is legit. Please FOLLOW IT. I see fist fights written incorrectly, and it irks me to no end.

1. When you get hit in the face, it HURTS!
Even when wearing a helmet, getting punched in the face jostles you. Your vision gets fuzzy for a second as your brain tries to make sense of what's happening. It'll hurt for just a few moments before the adrenaline kicks in and numbs it so you can keep going. If your character gets hit in the face, make sure they don't just ignore it and keep on fighting like nothing happened. It happens in movies, but it's very unrealistic.

2. Fighting is mostly REACTION, not thinking!
When you're fighting with someone and are in the heat of throwing punches and kicks (or swords or whatever weapon your character is using), there is NO time to think. It's 99% reaction, 1% conscious thought. You can condition your reactions, though. Do a move a thousand times, and it'll become second nature. If you train yourself to attack with a spin kick when someone comes at you with a punch, you'll do it automatically, without thinking.

Usually, I win about half of my fights, more or less. Once I only had an hour of sleep the night before, and I won EVERY fight. I was moving so fast, and my reactions were right on point. It was astounding, but I realized I was fighting better because I wasn't thinking as I fought, like I usually did. I was simply reacting. When you think, you lose precious time to attack. Your reactions will be slower because you have to think about them first.

All too often, I see fight scenes where the MC is meticulously planning out each move in the heat of battle. That's NOT POSSIBLE. They can plan before the punches start flying, or if there's a short lull in attacks, but never WHILE attacking. Your brain just can't go that fast (at least mine doesn't. There could be people with superhuman brainpower that CAN think while fighting, but generally, so much adrenaline is being pumped into you that it's really hard to think straight. Your body will revert to simple reflexes for the most part. Again, you can train yourself to CHANGE those reflexes.)

3. Fights are not like Mortal Kombat.
You cannot fight at 100% until you die. You WILL get tired. Your muscles WILL hurt, and your reflexes WILL become sluggish. No one can function at 100% for more than a few seconds (again, there are some exceptions, like those people who can max out tredmills and run like 12 miles without breaking too much of a sweat. Those people are rare, so don't make EVERY character like that. Even making one character like that wouldn't be too believable to the general public, so use your discretion). When you're REALLY exhausted but still forced to fight, you can will a few bursts of your 100%, but those will not last too long, and you can't do it too often. You need a LOT of motivation to push harder when you can't breathe and your entire body is on fire from muscle fatigue.

Random biology of exercise: Most active processes in your body, including contracting your muscles, use a molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as energy. When a phosphate group is cleaved off, energy is released (and the resulting molecule is called adenosine diphosphate, or ADP). Your intramuscular store of ATP is very low, so your body primarily utilizes a metabolic process called anaerobic respiration (which consists of the phosphagen system and glycolysis) to make more ATP. But it's not 100% efficient (about 70-80% of the ATP created is actually given off as heat), so you won't be able to sprint full-out for more than a minute, if even that. If you've ever done or seen the Wingate Anaerobic Test (a person pedals on a special exercise bike full-out for 30 seconds), you'll notice how the force production generally peaks during the first five or ten seconds but then steadily decreases from there. A person cannot sustain their full force production for more than a few seconds unless they're some kind of superathlete because the demand for ATP exceeds the amount you can produce. And even superathletes won't be able to full-out sprint for half an hour.