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General Discussion / Re: Writing Styles: Fight Scenes Part 1 - Action Sequence
« Last post by Phoenix_Falcone on Today at 03:35:52 PM »Reading through this has been rather enlightening. Unlike your previous threads in this series, where I've mostly agreed and used the same techniques to write my work, this thread seems rather foreign to me. None of my fights are written anywhere near this structured, and I certainly do not map the fight out prior to writing it. It's akin to the sort of "stream of consciousness", but not as random as that. Just simply writing the fight as it comes to mind, and writing each action based on the previous one.
My thought process around writing a fight scene is this: a real fight, when both fighters feel like they can win, even a professional one, is random and chaotic. Unskilled fights are full of flailing arms and legs and desperate tactics trying to compensate for their lack of ability. They are all heart and not much in the way of strategy. Professional fights certainly are more strategy based, but any elite athlete knows that they cannot be predictable if they want to win more often than they lose, and elite level fighting is no different. If an opponent knows what you're going to do, the easier it is for them to beat you. None of it is choreographed, so in my opinion, why should I write a fight scene like that.
My methodology, which I understand may not work for everyone, basically sees me write the fight as I imagine it happening in my head. I play it out as if I was fighting myself, and every time an action happens, I'd snapshot it and imagine how the other character would react to that situation based on that snapshot.
For example, lets say Person A has Person B in a headlock. What possible ways would Person B be able to get out of that situation based on who they are and what their skill level is? Lets say I decide that Person B throws a wild punch that hits A in the face. How, then, does Person A react to that? Their head recoils and they scream out, perhaps some hair flying around, and does it loosen the headlock enough for Person B to escape? Or do they manage to hold on.
For me, this method of writing the scene as I play it out in my head, allows me to be more fluid with the action, and also incorporate the environment into the scene. Also, in certain unreleased material I have written, it's allowed me to incorporate more complex fight scenes with more than two people, or even groups. In my head, this allows me to keep the fight interesting and not as repetitive, as I'm literally acting out every part of the fight in my brain, much more organically than if I was listing it out first as Kiva suggests. I feel like I can be much more realistic with the actions too (to a degree, there's some embellishment here and there), since I'd be imagining "myself" performing them. There's obviously nothing wrong with her approach either, use whatever works for you. I find that if I do it any other way, I end up making mistakes where things don't line up properly, or don't quite make sense.
I do tend to predetermine who wins though, I don't think you can really get around this. The whole idea is the fight needs to fit within the narrative you're writing, so you can't just randomly decide who wins outside of maybe some very specific scenarios. The result of the fight has to progress your story, otherwise you're just writing it for the sake of writing it. Ideally as well, the fight should reveal more about your characters, or reveal more of the story as the action is taking place. If we recall from one of the previous episodes in this series, Kiva talked about explaining through actions. There's no problem at all with doing that during a fight scene. Not to mention, there's plenty of scope for dialogue to happen (albeit simplified) within the fight too, especially if the fighters are taking breaks. Just beware, it's not realistic for a character to suddenly start a five minute monologue in the middle of a desperate fight scene...
The one downside I suppose is, it can sometimes get a bit laborious to write, as I end up writing the scene in a very stop-start way, as I'm writing an action, then thinking about it, then writing, etc etc. As I said, might not be for everyone, it's just how I go about it.
One other thing I would like to recommend, watch some videos of fights! If you want to get better at imagining what happens during a fight, or even just learning how a fight flows, or how fighters get out of holds etc, watch it happen. Not suggesting you watch anything you're uncomfortable with or wouldn't enjoy, but try and see what happens yourself, and really analyze the moves. Doesn't necessarily need to be just regular fights either, you can do this with sexfights and things of that nature if you're unfamiliar.
My thought process around writing a fight scene is this: a real fight, when both fighters feel like they can win, even a professional one, is random and chaotic. Unskilled fights are full of flailing arms and legs and desperate tactics trying to compensate for their lack of ability. They are all heart and not much in the way of strategy. Professional fights certainly are more strategy based, but any elite athlete knows that they cannot be predictable if they want to win more often than they lose, and elite level fighting is no different. If an opponent knows what you're going to do, the easier it is for them to beat you. None of it is choreographed, so in my opinion, why should I write a fight scene like that.
My methodology, which I understand may not work for everyone, basically sees me write the fight as I imagine it happening in my head. I play it out as if I was fighting myself, and every time an action happens, I'd snapshot it and imagine how the other character would react to that situation based on that snapshot.
For example, lets say Person A has Person B in a headlock. What possible ways would Person B be able to get out of that situation based on who they are and what their skill level is? Lets say I decide that Person B throws a wild punch that hits A in the face. How, then, does Person A react to that? Their head recoils and they scream out, perhaps some hair flying around, and does it loosen the headlock enough for Person B to escape? Or do they manage to hold on.
For me, this method of writing the scene as I play it out in my head, allows me to be more fluid with the action, and also incorporate the environment into the scene. Also, in certain unreleased material I have written, it's allowed me to incorporate more complex fight scenes with more than two people, or even groups. In my head, this allows me to keep the fight interesting and not as repetitive, as I'm literally acting out every part of the fight in my brain, much more organically than if I was listing it out first as Kiva suggests. I feel like I can be much more realistic with the actions too (to a degree, there's some embellishment here and there), since I'd be imagining "myself" performing them. There's obviously nothing wrong with her approach either, use whatever works for you. I find that if I do it any other way, I end up making mistakes where things don't line up properly, or don't quite make sense.
I do tend to predetermine who wins though, I don't think you can really get around this. The whole idea is the fight needs to fit within the narrative you're writing, so you can't just randomly decide who wins outside of maybe some very specific scenarios. The result of the fight has to progress your story, otherwise you're just writing it for the sake of writing it. Ideally as well, the fight should reveal more about your characters, or reveal more of the story as the action is taking place. If we recall from one of the previous episodes in this series, Kiva talked about explaining through actions. There's no problem at all with doing that during a fight scene. Not to mention, there's plenty of scope for dialogue to happen (albeit simplified) within the fight too, especially if the fighters are taking breaks. Just beware, it's not realistic for a character to suddenly start a five minute monologue in the middle of a desperate fight scene...
The one downside I suppose is, it can sometimes get a bit laborious to write, as I end up writing the scene in a very stop-start way, as I'm writing an action, then thinking about it, then writing, etc etc. As I said, might not be for everyone, it's just how I go about it.
One other thing I would like to recommend, watch some videos of fights! If you want to get better at imagining what happens during a fight, or even just learning how a fight flows, or how fighters get out of holds etc, watch it happen. Not suggesting you watch anything you're uncomfortable with or wouldn't enjoy, but try and see what happens yourself, and really analyze the moves. Doesn't necessarily need to be just regular fights either, you can do this with sexfights and things of that nature if you're unfamiliar.
