Recently, I have found myself in multiple situations where I’ve been shoulder-tapped to look over the fight scenes of others. It’s ironic that I’ve developed a knack (and a love) for those action-pumping scenes that often result in carnage and death. I’ve come a long way since my husband’s single feedback line of my high fantasy novel (feedback given nearly 8 years ago now): “Your fight scenes suck.”
(Geez… Love you too, hubby.)
However, as much as that original critique strung, I persevered, and analyzed to death what makes a good fight or action scene. (Pun intended.) Now, nearly 8 years later, those action-filled scenes that get the heart pumping pour out of me with ease—and the body count rises significantly.
I do have a background in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts.
Before I get too carried away with explaining to others what makes a good fight scene, I should point out that I actually do have a background in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts.
As a child, growing up in the USA, my mother insisted that I knew how to defend myself, even if it was kicking at someone’s knee joint and crippling them, so I could run away. By the time I was 10, I understood exactly how to wield a punch or a kick that took advantage of my own body weight. I had been over the drills so many times, they became instinct.
As a teen, I was in the unfortunate situation where I actually had to use the skills I learnt as a child, and truthfully, I couldn’t tell you what happened. (I’ll come back to this little story in a moment.)
From my late teens to mid-twenties, I studied martial arts. I learnt how to wield a staff and a sword. I was encouraged to learn how to use knives (though I’ve never thrown one). However, I will gladly admit that most of my training was with fist and foot, learning how the body moved, and how to move with it. (In modern, everyday settings, fist and foot is about the only weapons you have.)
All of the fighting skills I have learnt over the years was so I hopefully would never need to use them. Yet, all of this knowledge and personal experience does go into my own writing. Sometimes, having first-hand knowledge helps you to capture what the body and mind is really going through.
Fighting is pure instinct.
Fighting is 100% instinct.
When it matters the most, there is no grace or beauty to fighting. It’s brutal, it’s fast, and you don’t have time to think. Everything that you do in a fight is 100% instinct.
That fight that I found myself in as a teen… I saw someone being kicked who was unconscious on the ground. Being who I am, I said to the assailants that they should pick on someone who actually had a chance at defending themselves. I have no clue what happened after that. My memory kicks in again when I was in the principal’s office (yes, this happened at school), and there was a line of boys with blood noses sitting next to me—and there wasn’t a scratch on me.
I don’t recall the fight itself because of something known as Fight-or-Flight.
Fight-or-Flight is a real thing.
The body has this amazing drug it produces when needed called adrenaline. It’s an instant wake-up drug. Your senses become heightened, and your heart races ahead. Your body does what it needs to do to stay alive.
Your mind goes along for the ride.
When you are confronted with a scenario where the adrenaline kicks in and you go into fight-or-flight, you literally have only two reactions: fight or run for your life. Exactly which you will do, and how you do it, will depend on the situation and personal training.
Military and police will train, doing the same moves over and over again, all in the attempt to train the body in what it needs to do. It’s about developing muscle memory. This is vital, because when you need those moves, when in a state of fight-or-flight, there is no time to think—you have to just react. However, until you are actual faced with those situations that you’ve trained for, you don’t know how you’ll react.
Fear could be fueled by the adrenaline, forcing the flight to kick in, where you hide in a corner and freeze. Yet, the meekest of personalities could turn into a lion before you know it. Fight-or-flight is truly unpredictable.
To make matters worse, if the scene turns into extreme danger, your brain actually does temporarily blackout, and your muscle memory takes over. Hence, why soldiers and police constantly train in the tactics they use.
As a writer, we can use fight-or-flight to your advantage. If you are not comfortable with writing the blow-by-blow account of the fight that takes place, you don’t have to. (Not that you should do that anyway.) Because of the way the human brain actually works in these scenarios, you can focus on the internal fear or anger, whichever the scene dictates.
Fight scenes all come from fear or anger.
Within today’s market, emotion is a huge part of writing. Fight scenes are no different: they too need to be filled with emotional impact.
If you’re going to write a fight scene, there will only be two emotions that you will draw on: fear or anger. To truly create that heart-pumping action, you actually need a combination of the two. (High impact action scenes will also draw on other emotions, but fear and anger will be there somewhere.)
At the start of the fight, your character might be extremely angry (why are they fighting in the first place), but as the fight progresses, they might fear that they will lose, fueling their desire to win even more. Or they might be terrified and hiding in the corner, but at some point, they start berating themselves for their actions, leading them to that sense of anger. Or they think the whole thing is insane and crazy, and they just keep running, until they can finally get even with the villain that set them up.
The trained warrior will be able to maintain a level of control over their emotions, grounding themselves in the beginning stages of anger. There will be a level of hatred to what they are doing, and the anger will simmer in the background. For the characters who are cold and calculating, there will be a hint of hatred and anger combined (be it for what they are doing, or for the person that they are fighting against).
If there is zero emotion in that scene, then the scene will not resonate with readers; it will fall flat. If the action scene is important enough to put on paper, then ensure you add the emotion.
Perspective changes everything.
In practice, you will find three different perspectives used when writing a fight (or high action) scene. I'm not referring to whether a narrative voice is using first-, second- or third-person. I'm talking about the level of descriptions given, and how you allow your reader to view the fight.
Each perspective view has their uses, bringing a reader in at different points. To give you an idea on how each of these work, I’m going to pull on examples from the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (both the movies and the books).
(BTW, the narrative voice of Hunger Games is first person, present tense.)
Omniscient View: The God-like Eye that Sees All
The omnipotent view allows the reader to view multiple events at the same time (the overall view).
An omniscient fight scene will be told from a character who is watching the fight from a distance, seeing the action in multiple locations at once. The action will frequently swap between different elements, giving the reader an overview of everything that is happening. In these types of scenes, often the specifics are overlooked; it's all about the overall situation.
In Catching Fire (book and movie), Katniss witnesses the fights in the districts as she is giving her speeches about her victory. In District 11, she freaks out, because of what she sees from the window in the scene below her. As the reader, you witness the fight from the omniscient view, seeing the action in multiple locations at once, but the scene itself, and the emotion, is grounded within Katniss.
In Mocking Jay, you get another omniscient action scene, when she witnesses the hospital being bombed. All of the aftermath carnage is that omniscient view, distant and seeing multiple things at once, but the emotion is still within Katniss.
This omniscient view to a fight scene allows you, as a writer, to describe what is going on in multiple different areas at once, without forcing your character to get into the thick of the action. However, at some point in your narrative, unless your narrative is in third-person omniscient, that omniscient view needs to be switched off, and the character just needs to be in the action.
That hospital scene in Mocking Jay is a brilliant example on how the switch between the omniscient observer and the close perspective of the POV character can happen seamlessly.
Third-Person Separated: The Character in the Fight Who Observes Everything Around Them
In third-person separated fight scenes, your POV character may be in the fight, but they are observing what is going in their local vicinity.
Remembering that this is NOT relating to the narrative voice, but rather that perspective from which the reader experiences the fight. Third-person separated fight scenes are told from a character who is actually in the fight, but is continually observing what is going on around them. Unlike the omniscient view, this perspective is closer in, allowing the specifics to be given. The POV character's actions will be interspersed with the action of others nearby. However, any emotion will be rooted in the POV character.
Fight scenes written from the perspective of well-trained soldiers will likely fall into this category. In addition, this perspective allows for the blow-by-blow description of the action, if that is what you desire. The key aspect of this particular fight scene variant is that the POV character CANNOT blackout.
An example of this type of fight scene can be found in Mocking Jay, when Katniss and the team are in the outlier areas of the Capitol and find themselves in a real-life version of the games. Katniss is seeing those around her fall into various traps, and she's doing what she can to survive, helping others to survive with her. As a reader, you don't know what is going on outside Katniss's group, but you still know exactly what everyone around her is doing.
Another example can be found in Hunger Games, when Katniss is seeing those die in those first few moments of the games.
Fight scenes (and action scenes) written from a third-person separated perspective have the advantage of informing the readers of what is going on around the main character and defining the main character's reactions to those events.
(Again, remember that for this post, I'm not talking about whether a narrative is written in first-, second- or third-person. I'm referring to how your reader views the fight.)
First-Person or Angel-on-the-Shoulder: The Character Who is in the Thick of the Action and Fight-or-Flight has Kicked in
Angel-on-the-shoulder fight scenes focus entirely on the events that directly affect the POV character.
These scenes possess a narrow focus—almost like tunnel vision. The only action that a reader sees is that which directly affects the POV character. Events that are happening elsewhere get missed, and it's not until the fight is over that the reader learns the true magnitude of what it was that the POV character faced.
An example of this can be found in Hunger Games. When Katniss runs to the rescue of Rue, she finds herself in a fight with one of the other combatants. She does what is needed to survive, killing the other combatant, but it's not until after the fight is over that you learn Rue was empaled by the spear that was thrown.
This particular sort of fight scenes are the closest to reality, wherein the POV character is actually in the fight. You don't have time to think; you just react. You might get a glimpse of what is in the peripheral vision, but focus really is honed on what is directly in front of you.
I have found that the angel-on-the-shoulder fight scenes work best when you start with some description of the action, then shift the narrative to focus on the internal emotions. As a consequence, these fight scenes lend themselves the best to the concept of blackouts while fighting.
Fight Scenes in Film
When one sees a fight scene on screen (TV or movies), it is often of either the omniscient view or third-person separated. Focusing camera shots such that you only get the narrow perspective of what is happening directly around a character is not easy, but it has been done.
In Hunger Games (the movie), the director took advantage of the fuzzy focus to demontrate what Katniss was feeling when she let loose the tracker jackers on the combatants from Districts 1 and 2.
The best example of a first-person fight scene in film that I have ever seen is actually from the Season 6 finale of The Game of Thrones (a scene known as the Battle of the Bastards). A large portion of the fight focuses on Snow and what is happening around him. Often you don't see the action until a split-second before he does. This scene shows the real power of an angel-on-the-shoulder fight scene. I have included a link to the scene below. The first-person perspective begins at approximately the 1:00 timestamp and continues until 3:20. WARNING: DO NOT watch this video if you are the slightest bit squeamish. Game of Thrones is known for its extreme graphic content.