Them’s Fightin’ Words – Guest Post by AJ Scudiere

BAM! Splat! Pow!
Punched, shot, exploded, shredded, rolled, kicked, stabbed . . .

What are good fighting words? What makes a good fight? Should it be real? Supernatural? Painful? Showy?

There are so many options that sometimes it’s hard to figure it out.

Maybe you know exactly how the fight should go, but not how to write it out. Or maybe you did write it out and your beta-reader said, “I thought he was on the other side of the room?”

Are there rules to fight scenes? Actually, there kinda are. Like with most writing, there’s no universal version, and you can certainly write whatever you want. But if you want a cadre of loyal fans, or even just a happy audience, there are some thing you need to adhere to.

1)   Set your rules and stick to them – If it’s a supernatural fight, that’s fine, but gravity is gravity. If you have it, you have to have it. If you don’t, you don’t. If you have a boxer, he fights differently than a wrestler. Realistic or sensational, stick with what you pick!

2)   Work in your setting – For some writers, location is a character all its own. For fight scenes, nothing is truer. An alley fight is different than a cage match, even when the exact same things happen.

3)   Avoid technical terms – Most of the time we only need to know that dude #1 kicked dude #2 in the head. It’s probably better to say “the side of his foot connected to the second man’s head” than “he used a roundhouse kick.” Remember “roundhouse” means different things to different fighters, so you could be confusing readers more than helping them with any terminology.

4)   Don’t lose the fighters in the fight – We still want to relate to the characters even though they are getting the ever-loving snot kicked out of them. Remember we want to feel our heads snap back, our fingers crunch as they connect with solid bone, or our arms reverberate from the recoil of a gun . . . all from the safety of our comfiest reading spot, of course.

5)   Clarity is the name of the game – Confused readers put down books. They don’t know who won the fight or how she wound up on top strangling him. We don’t need every detail, but be sure to tell us that the enemy troop marched up the hill while you were raining arrows down on them.

It’s tempting to avoid fight scenes, but whether it’s a slap, a punch, or an alien invasion most of us will need one sooner or later. The best way to write them is to watch a real fight. TV and movie versions are so far from reality that writing that kind of scene will lose any reader who knows a thing or two about actual fighting. Check out how the feet move, what the tactical troop movements are, ask an expert when you can. As always, we usually don’t know what we don’t know.

So often we are told to write what we know? Why? Perhaps you can just learn what you want to write. A good fight scene – whether full troop movement, hand to hand, or just incredibly tense – can bring a story to life.

The best fighting words are the simple ones, the unique ones, the vivid ones. The best fight scenes bring the reader in and invite them to stay, despite that last punch that made their heads snap back. 

Authors Combat Academy is where you can register for this exciting event.  Fifteen speakers will be attending to share with you how to make your fight scenes so memorable that your readers will be turned into die-hard fans that want to read every book you write. (Lisa Binion)

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