Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Justin’s example of how not to write a multi-enemy fight scene was more detailed than the blow-by-blow gaming replays the guy I knew in high school used to do. I know he meant it to be a bad example, but… If that sort of blow-by-blow came to me when I was writing the rough draft, I’d write it down. This is the sort of thing revisions are great at fixing. {smile} While revising, I’d ask myself which blows are important to the narrative.

1) The opening salvo is important, since without that, you don’t have a fight. So is engaging particularly important opponents.

2) Deciding blows in the main battle and sub-battles are important, too. If it knocks out the main opponent, or a major underling in the way of getting at the main opponent, it’s important. If it knocks out enough soliders, any remaining ones aren’t a real threat, at least in the immediate area, that’s important, too. I suppose it could mean something else, as long as it ends the battle, or a major part of it.

3) Intermediate blows that change the course of a fight. These need to affect a key fighter in a major way. Disarming blows, and others that make them change weapons. So would ones that remove helmets, break shields, knock out tanks, and remove other important protective devices, including protective spells. Wounds that force them to change their fighting style (like broken limbs) are pretty important, too. So is something that actually knocks someone out of commission, even if they recover and rejoin the fight before the end.

I’d use anything else sparingly. Even first blood is rarely important except in a duel where folks are taking time to scope out fighting styles and such. Anyway, I’d try to summarize the rest of the battle.

I don’t know how well this would work. It only just occured to me, and I don’t have much experience with writing fights. This approach may be too deliberate to keep the writing fresh. However, I think that concentrating on the important blows in a battle would be more interesting than a more detailed description. {Smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

And now I have to go back and make sure I didn’t say “and then.” Pretty sure I didn’t

I agree, all too often, exciting action scenes turn out to be anything but. I like it when the author stays in the reader’s head. And I kinda like it when the hero loses.

Hmm. This kind of makes me want to reread that scene in The Three Musketeers when D’Artagnan schedules himself to duel each of the musketeers, and they all end up battling the Cardinal’s men.

This relates, as it happens, to the writing of battles, in which hundreds and maybe thousands of individual fights are happening simultaneously. You will note how often those scenes are told from the point of view of a general or bystander (or god). That was my solution in Slaves of the Shinar, and as I had two principal characters, i always had one who was on the outside making judgments about the meaning of what was happening.

But in a two (or more) on one fight, you are in trouble. The more people involved, the more you will inherently fall into the trap of “and then.” You know how it goes. He hit the man with the gun in the jaw, and then turned in time to stab the woman running up behind him, and then swiveled back to face the gunman, and then looked over his shoulder to make sure the woman really was dead, and then kicked the gunman in the crotch, and then beat it for the door. A big yawner.

I have no real advice for how to deal with such an occasion except to say, the writer ought to consider having his protagonist either win each fight with a single blow, or lose in a moment (this determined by the fact that your protagonist is either the world’s greatest badass, or hopelessly outmatched raising the tension).

And, most importantly, as a writer you should ask yourself whether such a scene actually forwards the story, telling us something about the meaning of life (I know, too big, but you get what I mean maybe), as understood in the mind of your character, or whether this is really just what you imagine the world’s coolest video game would be like – hint, do not be like later Matrix movies.

I found it helpful to concentrate on two people at once during a fight scene. After all, the protagonist can really only concentrate on the person directly opposite him, even if he is being beset 3 on one. This way, a blow can come flying in from behind or beside him when he loses sight of his other opponent.

If you keep your point of view “high and tight” behind the protagonist’s eyeballs, it really helps.