How To Create A Well-Written Fight Scene
Fight scenes are an essential aspect of any book, however, they can be very complicated to pull off. Authors need to create a realistic fight while also showcasing the character’s emotions and thoughts, as well as describing any necessary information. This can be hard to pull off without the right guidelines, and can often result in an overly long and complicated fight scene that bores your readers.
Unsure how to write a fight scene? Here are some tips to get you started.
Mix Action With Dialogue
When writing a fight scene it’s essential to create a balance of description and dialogue. Dialogue helps showcase your character’s thoughts or any important information, but the description is where you showcase the action.
When writing dialogues in fight scenes, always make sure you keep the sentences short and detailed. There’s no need to use descriptive words or long wound-out sentences. Your readers don’t need entire paragraphs of dialogue, they just need to know the gist of it.
When writing descriptions in fight scenes, keep the sentences short and impactful—as if you were hitting your reader with bullets.
Saying something like “my lungs screamed for oxygen as I jumped left and right to dodge the bullets, but the adrenaline overshadowed my need for oxygen” would get your point across, but something like “my breathing was ragged. My heart beat to the sound of a thousand drums as I dodged one bullet after the other. But I loved it.” sounds more impactful.
It’s also important to take word choice into consideration. “My lungs screamed for air” is a good figure of speech but saying ‘my heart beat to the sound of a thousand drums’ makes your readers feel a sense of excitement or adrenaline when they think of beating drums.
Keep It Short
Fight scenes aren’t meant to be long or drawn out! You can only write so many kicks and punches before your readers get bored and start skimming the scene. This is why it’s important to keep your fight scenes as short as possible.
When writing a fight scene, you should ask yourself how this scene is going to further your story or plot. Does this scene showcase a new characteristic of your protagonist or antagonist? Do one of the characters reveal essential information that couldn’t be revealed in any other scene? Is an important character injured, does something happen to significantly impact a character?
If your answer to all of these questions was no, then you should probably go back and reread your fight scene to try and decipher the purpose of that scene, and whether it actually needs to be in your book.
If you’re certain this fight scene needs to be in your book, then try rereading the scene multiple times and highlight bits that feel boring or repetitive or bits you would probably cut out if this wasn’t your WIP and you weren’t proud of that piece of description or dialogue. Then reread those specific areas, and either edit them or completely cut them out.
Describe The Action Not Their Thoughts
One big mistaken writers often make when writing fight scenes is describing the character’s thoughts rather than the actual fight.
It is a good practice to occasionally describe your character’s thoughts and feelings when writing a fight scene, however, only describing their thoughts throughout the entire scene can get boring and rob your readers of the actual action they are looking for.
Here is a piece of writing that would describe the thoughts: “I felt my heart race as I watched the enemy draw closer. I braced myself for impact as she raised her leg to land a kick against my abdomen, but nothing could prepare me for the pain that followed.”
The paragraph above describes the character’s feelings and opinions, however, it does little to showcase the action and actual heart of the fight.
Here is a short example of a piece of writing that would describe the action: “My heart skipped a beat as I watched the enemy draw closer. Their agile feet jumped from left to right, dodging any blade I could throw their way until they were right before me. A sharp whoosh of air echoed across the back alley, but even that wasn’t enough to prepare me for the pain that followed.”
Does the above paragraph describe the character’s thoughts or feelings? Yes. However, it also focuses more on the actual fight and what’s going on rather than the character’s inner dialogue.
When writing a fight scene, remember to focus on the external action rather than internal dialogue.
Use The Five Senses
When writing fight scenes it is essential to describe more than just what your character can see. Show us what they’re feeling. What can they hear? Can they smell or taste something? Do they feel rough concrete below their fingers? Is the air corrupted with the putrid smell of burning flesh? Do birds of prey let out sharp calls above their head as they circle the corpses laid out before the hero?
Using all five senses helps immerse your readers and makes them feel like they’re in the scene. This also allows you to describe the fight in more detail and give your readers a taste of the character’s emotions.
Make them taste blood when they’re stabbed, or hear the slight fizzle and pop of acid as the enemy throws vials at the protagonists.
Don’t tell your readers what your character can see, show them what your character is experiencing.
Edit, Then Edit Some More
I would like to end this blog post with an essential piece of advice every writer must heed. You need to edit your fight scenes!
I cannot stress how important it is to polish these scenes to the best of your abilities! Outside of SPAG, you also need to consider word choice, pacing, tone, and voice. Saying your character is bleeding sounds boring compared to “blood spurted from the gaps between their fingers”. It’s also important to take your length and amount of words into account.
Are you over-describing? Are you under-describing? Are you describing the wrong things? You need to go back and peel through your fight scenes at least twice—once as a writer, and once as a reader. It is important to keep an open mind while editing. I know parting with a good piece of dialogue or description can be tough, but making that choice is worth it if it betters your WIP, if only just a little.
I hope this blog on how to create a well-written fight scene will help you in your writing journey. Be sure to comment any tips of your own to help your fellow authors prosper, and follow my blog for new blog updates every Monday and Thursday.
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