I received a very nice letter recently from a polite young lady
who confessed that she had the following difficulty:
I don't usually write people C&C, figuring they don't need
it from a squirt like me, but I'm having a slight problem. I'm working
on an original anime-ish series as a brain and writing exercise that
involves martial arts, but I can't write fight scenes. Not one little
bit, I've never even been in a school yard brawl. You, on the other
hand, seem to have a real handle on them, and I'd be willing to start a
religion where you are the messiah if you'd give me some tips and
tell me what the hell a roundhouse kick is and stuff like that. Thank
you!
Sincerely,
Abby Zackin
I started writing her a reply, and it turned out to be quite a bit longer
than I'd anticipated. Since there are probably a few writers out there
who are struggling with similar difficulties, I figured I'd re-post my
response to her question. Abby wrote me a very kind thank-you note
and give me her permission to print her letter here. So anyway, I
hope this comes in handy for some of you...
- - - - - -
No need to go so far as the religion thing - I don't think I'm qualified
to be a messiah. I have this nasty allergy about being nailed to things.
But since you asked so nicely, here are some...
-----------------------------
FIGHT SCENE TIPS
-----------------------------
You don't have to actually be a fighter in order to write a decent
fight scene. I have taken some martial arts, and I would recommend
that to anyone (for purposes of spiritual and physical development, not
necessarily for writing). If you're feeling ambitious you might try to
seek out and talk to some people who are competitors in martial arts.
You needn't be afraid of this - if you simply tell them that you're trying
to write fight scenes but you don't have much first-hand experience,
it's almost a sure thing they'll be happy to talk to you. You'll find out
some very interesting stuff.
Or you could read a book about it. There are plenty of books about
martial arts, and they'll give you diagrams of things like roundhouse
kicks (a kick that comes from the side with a lot of force, using
the rotation of the hips to increase the power of the blow), snap
kicks (a very fast strike where most of the movement comes from
the knee, rather than the hip), and axe kicks (a kick that involves
raising your foot over a foe then bringing it down in a chopping motion,
hitting with the heel - which hurts like a bitch if you get tagged by
one, I might add).
If you find it interesting, you'll probably enjoy studying the various
martial arts styles. You'll learn to understand the difference between
the sharp, forthright power of tae kwon do, the acrobatic grace of
kung fu, and the serene, circular energy of aikido. The more you
know, the more you can include in your writing. You do not have
to be an expert - I'm certainly not. But a little research can go a
long way. This is especially true if you're writing an anime-based
story, where the martial arts are generally exaggerated (to different
degrees, based on the series). You can mix in a little bit of reality
with a lot of fantasy to come up with a good scene.
That being said, here are a few things I like to do, and which might
benefit you if you try them:
1) Keep Your Characters in the Forefront:
It's very unlikely that someone's reading a story to get an analytical
breakdown of a martial arts duel. So if your fight scene starts to get
too deep into "Ranma threw several quick jabs, countered his foe's
kicks, sidestepped two meters and tried another combination" sort
of stuff, you need to balance it out by telling the reader what Ranma
(or whoever) is feeling. Is he mad? Is he in control? Is his foe
dangerous, or is he a joke? Why is he fighting? How does it feel
for him when he lands a really good shot? How much does it hurt
when his foe unexpectedly drops a piano on his head? Does that
piss him off?
If you're good at detailing the thoughts and emotions of a character,
you can even get by with a bare minimum of descriptive narration
depicting what's going on in the fight. In fanfiction, especially, the
audience already has a good picture of what the characters look like
and how they fight. The character's feelings may well be significantly
more important than what he or she is doing in a given combat.
For example, you have a scene where Ranma is fighting against
Happosai because the old lecher wounded Akane. Ranma's motivation
is what we want to see here, the palpable rage throbbing in his head,
making his heart thunder in his chest. You can just tell us that he
"fought like a demon, a hurricane, a man possessed by an angel of
vengeance," and leave the rest to our imaginations. You can craft
an evocative battle scene with no real martial arts description at all.
2) Arrange Your Adjectives, Manage Your Metaphors:
When you're describing the actions and movements of a combat
scene, you'll need to throw in a lot of narrative color to keep it from
getting too dry and technical. That means you'll be using a lot of
adjectives and metaphors. If you manage these narrative tools
properly, you can put together a powerful scene.
One of the key rules is not to get repetitive. If you see a certain
adjective or phrase more than once in a paragraph, it's too much.
Some words shouldn't show up more than once per scene. And
if you've got a long story, you need to vary up the phrases you
employ, even if you're describing the same thing multiple times.
(I remember the first time I recognized this truth, back when I was
very young and reading the Terry Brooks "Shanarra" books. I don't
remember the name of his druid character anymore, but I DO recall
that every time the druid got into a fight we would see the following
phrase describing his magic: "Blue fire lanced from his fingertips."
Over and over, sometimes several times in the same scene. It got
very frustrating. "Really!? The fire was BLUE, you say? And it
was LANCING? From where? From his FINGERTIPS? NO!!!"
Just goes to show you that even the pros aren't perfect. I should
mention that, apart from that problem, I mostly enjoyed those
books.)
Now, in order to manage your language, you'll need to command a
large vocabulary. There is, I'm afraid, no way around this. It is a
constant, life-long process. Fortunately, if you love writing, you
probably love words. You learn to cherish them, to get to know their
strengths and weaknesses, to hold onto them fiercely and make
them your own. The more you use them in your everyday speech,
the better they will serve you in your writing.
Some people may make fun of this. "What's with all them big words?"
they'll ask in thick, derisive drawls, as they glare suspiciously at you
with their beady, glazed eyes and hork a wads of tobacco-laced
spittle onto the sidewalk. It's easy to ignore such people, once you
realize that they are pitiful in their myopic, atavistic stupidity. It would
be a mercy to simply shoot them through the lungs. But there are
laws about that, so just smile and let it pass. And keep building
your vocabulary like a muscle.
Anyway, enough preaching.
Another guideline which stems from the principle of not being repetitive
is to save your powerful descriptions for when you really need them.
For instance, let's say you want to describe several loud noises in
the course of a single fight scene. If you use say the sound is "loud
as a thunderclap" the first time, when really it's only a mid-sized noise,
you've wasted a good phrase that you could have put to better use later.
Recognize which descriptions convey really powerful images, and
horde them for when you really need them.
Concerning adjectives, I find that you can get a lot of mileage out of paying
attention to how words sound. There's a clunky term called "onomatopoeia" -
it refers to words which sound like the noise they are attempting to describe.
"Cuckoo" is the classic example, but there are many others - "hiss," "boom,"
"buzz," "tinkle," and so forth and so on. Get to know these words, and
you'll discover they can be very effective.
Once you get into the habit of really paying attention to your vocabulary,
you'll start to get into a groove. You'll know that "leap," "bound," and
"vault" all describe virtually the same action, but they convey different
emotions and images to the reader. You'll see that there's a time to use
"break," and a time when you need to resort to "shatter." You'll start
to see how you can describe the same action in one way to make it
seem funny and in a different way to make it seem terrifying.
Remember, it's all in the wrist.
3) Make Room for Key Actions
This is a more specific idea than some of my other general blabberings
above. In a fight scene, you'll probably come across certain moments
where something important happens, something which turns the course
of the fight or makes a huge difference. Give such events their own space.
Put the descriptive sentence on its own paragraph. That way, it stands
out for the reader, and isn't lost in the overall rush of the narrative. Take
this passage as an example:
"Ranma circled his adversary, favoring his aching knee and watching like
a hawk for an opening. Tarou sneered as he advanced, his eyes gleaming
with malice and delight. <He thinks he's got the upper hand,> Ranma
thought. <He don't know about the new technique I've been workin' on,
though.> The battered young fighter took a deep breath and concentrated,
struggling to summon forth the necessary focus to unleash this devastating
new attack. Suddenly, a thunderous roar echoed through the sultry air.
Ranma's heart caught in his throat. <It can't be! Not now!> He and Tarou whirled
as one to see the tyrannosaurs erupt from the thick undergrowth, bearing down
on them with a mouth full of gleaming daggers."
Compared to...
"Ranma circled his adversary, favoring his aching knee and watching like
a hawk for an opening. Tarou sneered as he advanced, his eyes gleaming
with malice and delight. <He thinks he's got the upper hand,> Ranma
thought. <He don't know about the new technique I've been workin' on,
though.> The battered young fighter took a deep breath and concentrated,
struggling to summon forth the necessary focus to unleash this devastating
new attack.
Suddenly, a thunderous roar echoed through the sultry air.
Ranma's heart caught in his throat. <It can't be! Not now!> He and Tarou whirled
as one to see the tyrannosaurs erupt from the thick undergrowth, bearing down
on them with a mouth full of gleaming white daggers."
On the other hand, you can overuse this, so it loses its impact...
"Ranma circled his adversary, favoring his aching knee and watching like
a hawk for an opening. Tarou sneered as he advanced, his eyes gleaming
with malice and delight.
<He thinks he's got the upper hand,> Ranma thought. <He don't know about
the new technique I've been workin' on, though.>
The battered young fighter took a deep breath and concentrated,
struggling to summon forth the necessary focus to unleash this devastating
new attack.
Suddenly, a thunderous roar echoed through the sultry air.
Ranma's heart caught in his throat.
<It can't be! Not now!>
He and Tarou whirled as one to see the tyrannosaurs erupt from the thick undergrowth,
bearing down on them with a mouth full of gleaming daggers."
That last one, I think, is overdone. The thunderous roar sentence doesn't stand
out anymore, as it should.
4) Visualizing the Scene
You'll have a very hard time conveying a scene to a reader if you don't have a clear
idea of what's happening in your own mind. I've read a LOT of action sequences
like that. In any given scene, you should probably have more detail in your own
mind than you ever put onto the page.
Here's an exercise to help you practice this: write a fight scene you've already
seen. Pull a scene from an anime or movie you like and write it, as of you were
writing your own story which contained that scene. Don't assume your readers
have seen the sequence in question. You'll find yourself wondering how to convey
a certain movement, how to express different actions, how to get across the
drama of the fight in words instead of pictures. Don't worry about plagiarism -
this is just for practice. It's a way to find your comfort level with action sequences.
You know, even if you find that you don't enjoy writing fight scenes, you can
still turn that to your advantage. Our own fanfic community has a prime
example - RpM, who authored "The More Things Change," "The Pursuit of
Happiness," and a whole library of other stories, admits that he absolutely
hates writing fight scenes. Yet he is astonishingly good at them (and continues
to write stories which feature martial arts tournaments and showdowns between
armored vigilantes and meglomaniacal super villains, so he's obviously not
trying to avoid them). So there's no reason to give up hope, even if you don't
enjoy writing fights.
And remember, just keep practicing.
-----
Grayson Towler
grayson@rigroup.net
http://www.rigroup.com/~grayson/relentless