Making a Fight Scene Seem Real

QUESTION: I'm writing a fight scene, and I'm having a horrible time making it real. I've never hit anyone or been hit. How do I make it real?

That's a good question. If the scene and actions don't seem real to you, you can't make it real to the reader.

One way to make a fight real for you is to choreograph it by yourself or with the help of a friend or family member.

You play the hero and have the other person be his opponent. Don't just figure out the blows and what the other person will be doing. 

Imagine yourself hitting that person. What are you feeling? Where would your hand hit? How would that feel to you? 

If your hero is a trained fighter, how would his feelings differ?

Imagine how it would sound. To do this, hit your fist hard against your other hand and listen. 

Also ask friends if they have ever hit someone and how did it feel?

You may never have been hit, but you have been hurt. Remember how it felt when you were hit in the face while you were trying to diaper a rowdy toddler who clobbered you with his foot.  Or that baseball that hit you in the face or chest. Increase the sensation, and you've got some idea of what it feels like to be hit in a fight.

Mapping Out a Fight Scene

Once you have figured out what the characters have to lose in a fight scene, you must decide on each character's special abilities, weapons, etc. 

Your viewpoint character/hero's special abilities, weapons, and skills should have been set up long before this fight scene so it won't look like you pulled new abilities or weapons out of the air for your own convenience. 

List the special abilities of the viewpoint character then give his opponent a skill or weapon that is equal to or slightly better than his. Equal powers make interesting contests. Extremely unequal powers make for a dull fight.

Now, you can map out the coming fight. Remember that the hero must barely survive each kind of attack, and he must start running out of options. 

Especially in the final showdown, the hero must be forced to go beyond his abilities and must face some element of his ultimate fear. He must do what he considers unthinkable or impossible to win.

In an unpublished novel, I had a hero who must face a were-dragon. This was the climatic fight between the two characters, winner take everything. The hero, who wants to die because his life will be a living hell, must survive for the sake of the woman he loves because her life is at stake, too.

I wanted him to face his weakness and fear of living as well as his own tendency to care more about himself than anyone else.

Since this is the climax of the novel, I wanted the fight to extend over several chapters, and I didn't want it to be boring and repetitive.

First, I thought about the weapons of a dragon -- claws, teeth, fire, size, and wings. Considering the dragon's many weapons and ways to fight, I realized that I could divide the fight into three acts.

The first act is ground-fought and will involve fire. The dragon will also use its human intelligence and voice as an emotional weapon.

The hero is tentative in his skill, and he's distanced himself from fights before so his weapon is a lance. He has a magical shield and armor which will help against the flame, but he can't survive the flame for long, and the dragon is creating a conflagration with the vegetation. 

The hero's uncertainty is also used against him by the dragon with its taunts until the hero acknowledges his feelings for his lover, and this allows her to bring magical rain.

In the second act, the dragon has lost its fire because of the heavy downpour which has soaked the terrain as well as dousing its flame so it takes flight, and the two battle.

I thought about flying warfare and the different ways a dragon can use its weapons in flight. I decided that the dragon would strafe the hero by using its claws to attack, and its wind in flight would be so strong the hero could barely stand to face it. The dragon would also use its weight to knock the hero down. 

After the initial fighting where the dragon uses these methods of attack, it manages to get the hero's shield which he's used against the claws and proceeds to shred him at each pass and exhaust him because of the heavy wind created by its wings. 

Barely staying on his feet because of exhaustion and blood loss, the hero finally retaliates by using the lance like a spear and throws it into the dragon's underbelly.

In the third act, the dragon can no longer fly because of damaged wings from the lance so he and the hero are forced to face each other in close quarters with no retreat. The hero uses a sword.

The hero now knows his own heart and has discovered his courage. He will no longer give up the fight. The dragon has discovered that it can die in this fight, and it's afraid for the first time, but it's forced to stay because the two are locked in a mythic pattern which neither can escape.

Since the battle is in close quarters, I thought about the dragon's different weapons, and the hero's battle plan. The hero must get close enough to stab into the dragon's heart, but the dragon uses its long neck, its size, and its speed to stay safe. The hero finally uses a distraction to shift the dragon's attention and stabs him.

Notice how I negated the different weapons of the dragon so that the fight itself changed dramatically, and the hero was forced to use different weapons, both physical and emotional, against each change. 

The battle is also hard fought on both sides, and the hero wins more from sheer cussedness than any skill or weapon.

What a Good Fight Scene Needs

A fight scene is put into the plot not only to liven up the action but also to move the plot forward. Figure out what is at stake for the viewpoint character and the other characters. Make the possible results of the fight, beyond dying, as dangerous as getting killed.

This is the beginning of a fight scene in STAR-CROSSED. Kellen is being transported by two soldiers to his first owner and a life as a sex slave, and one decides to try him herself.

When she invaded his mouth, Kellen heaved with nausea. For the first time, he understood the violation of rape. He fell backwards onto the floorboard with her on top of him. She weighed more than he did. Her hand slid into his pants.

As she touched him, he realized that it would be die or escape. No middle ground of surviving in the harem was acceptable to him. He hit her then, a killing blow to the throat. She gurgled and arced like a woman in orgasm and went limp.

For Kellen, at this moment, death is preferable to what is in store for him, and escape or death are his only options, and the reader knows this, too.

The fight should also offer at least one or two pieces of the viewpoint character's emotional puzzle to the reader as well as telling the reader something about the opponent. 

In this scene from THE ONCE AND FUTURE QUEEN, I wanted to show my hero Val's skill at stopping a fight, not in winning one. He's facing his rival for the Queen in an exhibition match that quickly turns real. Prince Gregory also shows his true nature in this fight.

During the first blows, Val concentrated on his defense and let his muscles settle into the rhythm of swordplay. 

After several minutes of attempting to get past his defenses, Prince Gregory began to batter at him as if to pound him into the ground. The prince had expected a quick defeat and easy humiliation, not an equal opponent, and his simmering anger about Fira now boiled. He wouldn't be content with pretend wounds and victory; he was out for blood.

The crowd, who had chattered and cheered their local favorite, became completely silent, and the air rang with the tintinnabulation of the singing blades and the hoarse rasp of both fighters' breathes.

Val thought desperately for a way out of the mess. 

Gregory's weapon slipped past his defenses and slashed toward his throat. Val dodged, laughing as if having a marvelous time. He praised loudly, "A wonderful strategy."

When Gregory slashed backhanded in a return blow, Val thrust his blade vertically and caught it before it cut him in half. "Excellent. Excellent. You're one of the finest swordsmen I've ever seen."

Gregory blinked as if coming out of a daze but continued to go for blood.

Val laughed and spouted praise for almost a minute before the prince's attack began to ease in its brutality. Their weapons caught each other high in the air, and they stood belly to belly, face to face.

Gregory whispered, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Dying is a messy, bloody, ugly thing. I don't want to kill you in front of Fira, and I don't particularly want to die in front of her either. Where I come from that's not acceptable. If we must fight, we do it without a female audience."

The boy glanced toward Fira who stood white and silent, her hands clinched in painful distress. "I had forgotten...." He danced away, bringing his sword forward. "Another time then."

Life Experience and Writing

QUESTION:  Do I really need real world experiences to write fiction?  In other words, can I write a fight scene if I’ve never hit anyone or been hit?

Real life experiences can certainly inform your fiction and give it realism, but I don’t think it is absolutely necessary.

I have written space battles without being an astronaut, diving scenes and I can't swim, and fight scenes using swords, fists, and futuristic weapons, and I have never used any of them.  (I am a pretty good shot, though.)

I've never had the first reader tell me that I got any of my fight or action scenes wrong.

I have never been punched, but I used to ride.  I have had a horse smash her head into me. I've been kicked, knocked into a tree, and have had a six-hundred pound horse fall on me and step on me when she was getting up.  

All that has given me more than enough visceral information about taking physical abuse to use in my writing.

I got my diving scene right through research, then I ran the scene past friends who do dive to check for accuracy.  

However, the more you write about something in particular, say your main character is a diver who spends much of the novel underwater looking for a treasure, the more important having personal experience is.  

As a non-swimmer who has never dived, I would never choose a main character who spends important parts of the book underwater because no amount of research will keep those scenes as authentic as they need to be.

Creating a Character's Physical Actions

When I write physical fights like a sword battle, I picture the fight like it's a movie. I see what each character is doing and what is happening around them.

I also get up from the computer and pretend I'm holding a sword, imagine the opponent's move, and block it noting my balance, what I'm leaving open, and the possible return blow. 

To vary the fighting, I use the physical location of the hero. The floor may be bloody from his first opponent so the hero or villain may slip and fail to parry a blow, etc. If more than one good guy is fighting, the fighters may affect each other as an enemy steps into the hero's range, or he falls beside him. 

I rarely write out blow for blow because I think that's boring. Instead, I'll give occasional overviews of what's happening while staying in the character's viewpoint. For example, the hero is thinking about how his body is learning the rhythm of the fight, or he's aware of other fighters around him.

I try to avoid using technical terms to describe the fight because I'm writing as much for those unfamiliar with swordplay as those who are, but I try to be accurate about how to use the weapon, and I use a sprinkling of correct terminology to make it seem more realistic. 

I've never fought with a sword, but I've held a number in my hand, and I've watched others fight with them. I try to remember the weight of the weapon, the sound a fighter makes as he swings the heavy sword, and the sheer weariness of the weight of fighting something or someone above you. 

I also include different senses in the description. What is the character hearing? Feeling? Smelling? Tasting? 

This method also works with fist fights and other man to man combat.

Sex and Action Scenes

Recently, I read a paranormal novel about a romantic couple fighting demons. During the action scenes, they were so busy fantasizing about the other’s crotch that I wondered at the brains and survival skills of these people. In the real world, a fighter who is busy thinking about sex before and during a fight is a dead fighter.

The pace was also ruined because the constant sexual elements and sexual introspection distracted from the peril.

Brief bits of body language--a touch, a smile, or caress, as well as brief snippets of romantic dialogue can keep the sexual tension and caring evident without bringing the story to a dead halt.

Wait until a lull in the fighting to put your couple in a safe hiding place where they can repair their wounds and chase each other around the bed.

The important thing to remember is that even in a romantic story, sex shouldn’t be paramount in action scenes, but after the battle is won, all that extra adrenaline is a nice appetizer to sex. 

Character Emotions During Action Scenes

 The viewpoint character's emotions and senses must be as much at play in a fight or action scene as his body and weapons. 

I make a special effort to include all the senses in my descriptions. What does he hear? See? Smell? Taste? Feel?

How do he react to killing someone? The death of a friend?

Adding emotion isn't an either/or situation. It's just as vital to add emotional layers to the physical action as it is to have brief moments of introspection when the battle isn't going on.

Characterization also isn't just introspection. It's characters interacting with each other and revealing themselves in bits and pieces.

Your band of adventurers may not sit around "sharing their feelings" in touchie-feelie moments like a Dr. Phil show, but they've been around each other enough to know that one hates the bad guys because they murdered his wife and kids, and he's liable to attack without thought and ruin their surprise attack.

He may be clutching the sword at his side, his other hand opening and closing in nervous energy, and another adventurer may warn him to relax and may mention the wife and kiddies.

The image of his wife's raped and brutalized body could flash through his mind, and he fights his raw anger and lust to kill. That won't slow the action down like having a long interior flashback of him finding his family's bodies, and his vow of revenge. Instead, it adds to the excitement of the coming action because the reader now questions whether this guy will lose his cool and get everyone killed.

An even better way to present this information is to put it in an earlier scene that isn't action intensive so the reader will know the details and will only need a slight reminder of this character's motivation and tendency to attack without thought.

Remember, though, that a character's emotions are meant to increase the intensity of the scene, not slow it down or mar its pacing.

The Physical Limitations of Power

Movies like THE FANTASTIC FOUR (2005 version) and SPIDER MAN seem to get the emotional cost of power right. For example, Peter Parker and Ben Grimm face emotional difficulties by having that second identity and the need to save the world, one villain at a time. 

Peter has a rough time with relationships and finances because he's always running off to wear that red spider suit, and he has a weird, but not likely tendency, to have friends and professors who have a supervillian within or as a member of the family. 

Poor Ben Grimm gets changed into The Thing who makes the Incredible Hulk look like the Incredible Hunk, and at two tons with massive hands, he finds the simplest task like eating or lifting a coffee cup just about impossible. He also loses his wife who can't deal with his physical change, and he's stared at and shunned.

What these movies and the comics they are based on sometimes don't get right is the physical cost of having a superpower.

Johnny Storm, The Human Torch, of THE FANTASTIC FOUR, is a perfect example. He puts out an incredible amount of heat when he ignites himself and flies. At the end of the movie, he is involved in a long chase scene then becomes a supernova, but he is only winded by the end of the final confrontation with Dr. Doom.

Where does this energy come from, and why isn't he starving or weak after such an expenditure? 

The reality is that he should be since these comics are based on pseudo-science, and energy isn't infinite even in pseudo-science.

By giving a superhero limitations in power, the writer is also making the story more exciting because a certain weakness means possible defeat.

Just think of Superman and Kryptonite. Superman isn't very exciting when he's fighting criminals because we know all the bullets will bounce off the chest but toss in Kryptonite, and he's as mortal as the rest of us. 

In your own writing, remember to include the physical cost as well as the emotional cost for your characters, superheroes or not, and your story will be much more exciting.

Now, "Flame On!" but remember to have your character completely depleted and moving on courage by the end of the final fight and have him stop by the all-you-can-eat buffet to celebrate his victory.