Eight Tips For Writing an Epic Fight Scene
Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash
Many writers find fight scenes notoriously tricky to write. With sky-high stakes, fast-paced action, and your characters’ adrenaline running high, it’s no wonder that translating characters’ physical and emotional experiences onto the page can prove difficult in these scenes.
Here’s the good news: No matter if you’re writing a sword fight, a bar room brawl, or a magical duel for the ages, today I have eight tips that will help you nail your novel’s epic fight scene.
Tip #1: Identify the purpose of your scene
A good fight scene is never just about the action, no matter how thrilling. Good scenes always serve a greater narrative purpose. Fight scenes in particular can establish and complicate threads of tension, deepen world-building, pave the way for future conflict, and lend to readers’ understanding of your characters.
Tip #2: Be realistic
Your newly-trained soldier or inexperienced brawler isn’t going to knock out your story’s Big Bad with a quick one-two punch. Not realistically.
When crafting fight scenes, always take characters’ skills and circumstances into account. What are your rivals’ strengths and weaknesses? What weapons do they have at their disposal? Do any of them have a damning tell?
Even a seasoned assassin will have trouble maintaining endurance in a fight if they’re bleeding from a bullet wound, and fresh emotional trauma will weaken the vast majority of fighters as surely as any physical injury.
Don’t forget to take the setting of your scene into account as well. High ground will almost always be advantageous, while rocky terrain or a jeering crowd can throw the most experienced fighter off his feet.
Tip #3: Know your weapons
You don't need to be an expert on weaponry or fighting styles to craft an epic fight scene, but you should have a decent handle on the tools and techniques your characters might use.
Simply put? Do your research. Using appropriate terminology can lend some much needed realism to your fight scene, as can striving for accuracy where your characters’ skills, weapons, and fighting styles are concerned.
Tip #4: Establish stakes
If you want readers to tear through the pages of your fight scene, then give them a reason to care about what happens next by establishing what your characters stand to lose.
Characters’ typically face the threat of injury, death, or capture in a fight scene, but the stakes that truly grip readers are often emotional. A character might stand to lose something or someone they love, for example, or the fight might present them with a moral dilemma that tears at their conscience.
Tip #5: Be a painter, not a choreographer
Most fights play out swiftly. To echo that pace on the page, resist the urge to relay your fight blow by blow. Instead, paint a picture that allows readers to choreograph the scene for themselves. Believe me: they’ve seen enough fight scenes on the big screen to fill in the gaps.
What does painting a picture of your fight scene look like? First, establish your scene’s key beats. What are the most important moments of your fight? These are the turning points you’ll bring to life on the page with evocative language that matches the tone of your scene.
For example, if your character is skillfully cutting their way through the battlefield, then you might write something along the lines of:
"His sword cut a sly path before him, darting between rib and collarbone and spleen like a silvery trout beneath the surface of a river."
Or, if your character is scrambling to survive, you might use language such as:
"Like a spider, his arms and legs darted out, desperately seeking the slick metal of his gun but finding only cold tile. Terror mounted in his throat as the attacker’s footsteps drew near. He was no spider. He was the godforsaken fly caught in its web.”
Note that both of these examples make use of metaphor. You don't have to include metaphors in your own fight scenes, but know that they can create powerful imagery in readers’ minds.
Tip #6: Note important sensory information
Speaking of evocative language, let's talk about the five senses. Because fight scenes typically need tight pacing, there often isn’t room to describe anything beyond what the point-of-view character is experiencing. So make use of your character’s senses to draw readers deeper into the scene:
Sight: the glint of sunlight on a dagger
Taste: the sour taste of fear on their tongue
Scent: the bright, coppery scent of fresh blood
Sound: the sharp pat-pat of a semi-automatic rifle
Touch: the crunch of knuckle against bone
When writing sensory information, remember to keep things personal. Don’t describe what an onlooker would see. Get inside your point-of-view character’s head using Deep Point-Of-View techniques to help readers place themselves in your character’s shoes.
Tip #7: Mind your writing style
The language you use throughout your fight scene can have a big impact on its success, right down to the nuts and bolts. Consider word choice. A fight scene isn't the time to pull stylistic punches. Make a point of ditching flimsy verbs and other vocabulary, favoring language that carries ruthless weight.
Weak Word Choice
I used my sword to deflect his.
Frantically, she tried to move out his reach.
He shot desperately at the line of soldiers.
She slapped me across the face.
Strong Word Choice
I parried his blade.
She scrambled back.
Heart pounding, he loosed a wild spray of bullets.
Her open palm flashed out, and pain blazed across my cheekbone.
Note how several of these examples make use of “Show, Don’t Tell” principles.
When considering your writing style, give some thought to sentence structure as well. Writers are commonly advised to use short sentences and fragments during fight scenes to relay the rapid-fire pace of the action. While this tip will work well in some fight scenes, it won’t be the right choice for others.
Instead, consider the tone of your scene. If your swordsman is cutting his way through the battlefield, then using longer, more lyrical sentences can relay the flow and ease of his skill. Remember the example shared above:
"His sword cut a sly path before him, darting between rib and collarbone and spleen like a silvery trout beneath the surface of a river."
If your fight is more frantic, then short sentences and fragments can convey its pace well, but don’t feel that you need to chop up your sentence structure with heavy punctuation. Linking short clauses into longer sentences can also indicate quick pacing. For example:
"He landed a fist to my gut, then another, and another. I gasped, heaving. And then the bastard’s lips curled into a wicked smile, and I began to pray."
Tip #8: Don’t gloss over consequences
The violence of a fight scene doesn't end with the final blow. Glossing over the consequences of conflict and trauma can only hurt the realism of your scene.
So after your character pulls the trigger, consider their physical and emotional wounds. How will they address these consequences? Are they in shock? Will they weep or heave or offer prayers? Do they need to see a doctor?
Don’t forget about the long-term consequences. Did the fight make your main character a wanted man? Did they ruin a relationship with a friend? Will they get expelled from school or fired from a job?
Whatever the case, don’t gloss over the impact of the fight to simply move on to the next thrilling scene. Follow up on its stakes and consequences, and your fight scene will pack a powerful punch.
Finally, remember that the magic of writing happens in revision. Just as your badass assassin didn’t develop her blade-twirling skills overnight, you aren’t going to nail your fight scene on the first try.
So get it down on the page, then focus on cutting and stabbing. Before you know it, you’ll have one epic fight scene that readers will devour with nail-biting glee.
