Fight scenes

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In my latest submission, I tried to do a fight scene for only the second time, and I'm not sure how well I carried it off. What do you guys think of fight scenes, what does a good one look like?

A well written fight scene

Jemima Tychonaut's picture

A well written fight scene can be that rarest of gems. What looks easy to watch on the screen can be very difficult to turn into words. I thought you did well for only your second fight scene, not getting bogged down too much in extraneous detail and focusing on the key parts of the action.



"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Fight scenes

Can be hard. You have to see all of it, the surroundings, the opponents, even the unexpected things that crop up.

My best advice there is to simply watch the fight in your head, then try to get that down. Like describing a movie.

But it you can't see the fight, chances are your scene won't work.

With inflation, that's my ten cent's worth here.

Maggie

A good fight scene,

Extravagance's picture

or at least the aftermath of one, contains various-sized blood-splattered chunks of the bodies of feminazis, carved up by sword-wielding badass MegaTomboys. Also feminazi bodies with blood pooled around them and huge chunks bitten out of their throats by Cat-MegaTomboys. >:(
For good measure, a bleeding-to-death feminazi who lives just long enough to tell the MegaTomboys (Regular and Cat varieties) where to find her leaders. :)

Catfolk Pride.PNG

comment...

Kalkin62's picture

Probably the best fight sequence I've read in the last few years was in a short story called The Fool Jobs by Joe Abercrombie. I found it in volume five of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year (edited by Jonathan Strahan). It's been printed at least one other place as well. Chances are that the compilation should be available from your local library by this point. I would think anyway.

The story offers a heart-in-your-mouth, grittily realistic account of a small armed group conducting a raid on a well guarded village. The story has a visceral intensity that just blew me away. There wasn't a whole lot of wild magic or anything, mostly it was a fairly simple, tight third person account of what the raid was like on a second by second basis.

The story gave me very much the same feeling I get when watching the fight sequences in something like Band of Brothers.

Alternativily, you could take a look at Ashleigh Blayze's Legacy of the Anari story. That has some excellent fight scenes as well.

Sleethr's Whisper isn't bad either.

With both of those, you'll have to read a bit to get to the fight sequences, but they're well done once you reach them.