Q: I was writing the other day and it dawned on me that I don’t have a lot… of, I don’t have ANY experience writing combat. My idea has characters that fight using guns, typical melee weapons like bats or brass knuckles, but they also have enhanced senses and physical strength, as well as rudimentary elemental control, all in varying combinations. I’m wondering, are there any overarching principles that allow an author to write compelling combat scenes that highlight the extraordinary nature of these abilities, while grounding them in the real world (or at the least, the world I’ve developed).

– Dale

Hey Dale – thanks for your question.

For me, fight scenes are not interesting, per se. Unlike a movie, where there can be cool choreography, effects, and explosions, books don’t really have that. Books don’t do visuals well. 

What books do well, however, is emotion. The key to writing a great fight scene in a book is all in the set-up. Have you established why readers should want your protagonist to win? What’s the stakes if they lose? Who’s counting on them to win? Is it clear that the opponent is stronger than them? Does this fight symbolise something greater than merely a combat between protagonist and antagonist? Can it reflect a wider societal conflict, symbolise a moment of growth (or regression), and say something complex about the human condition?

If you can build the fight up to be meaningful, then fight scenes will be interesting. Now, you might say that this means you’ve got to do a lot of work to earn each fight scene – and that’s sort of the point. Action by itself does not a good book make. Action that progresses the plot, or is a logical reaction to what has happened before – that’s the kind of action that excites readers. 

In terms of magic, cool weapons, etc, here’s some pointers:

• Make sure readers understand the limits of the powers, particularly if the main character is using them to escape from trouble. I don’t mind antagonists having unexplained powers, but it’s usually unsatisfying for a protagonist to display previously-undiscovered abilities. 
• Avoid bogging fight scenes down in tons of description. It’s more gripping to say ‘they grappled’, rather than describing the exact positioning and movement of their fists, etc. 
• Like with everything else in a story, you want to be clear. Make sure readers understand the geography of a place before they start using that geography in their fight. 
• Unlike movies, books generally don’t do well at having a single hero mow down a hoard of faceless villains. Again – you don’t have visuals, but you do have emotions. So focus on stuff that’s emotional – a scene of two estranged brothers slugging it out in a rainy street behind a pub to try and resolve their angry relationship is going to win for me every time, compared to a gun-toting hero blasting a mass of charging zombies. 
• This might just be me personally, but I love fight scenes that come after me begging for them to happen for 50, 100, 200 pages, etc … it’s really satisfying to make readers want to see X attack Y on page 50, but not let the fight begin until page 300 – provided you’re not drawing out things for the sake of it, of course. But this is coming back to the idea of build-ups and payoffs. It’s a little like a rollercoaster – the higher you can convince people to climb, the more exhilarating the descent will be …
• Have fun! One of the joys of fantasy and sci-fi is creating interesting fights where strange magics, tools, etc. are used in interesting and compelling ways. 
  

If you don’t mind me selfishly plugging my stuff, I went into detail about writing excellent fight scenes in this podcast.

If you’ve got a writing-related question, I’m always happy to try and answer them. Email me at: jed.herne1 [at] gmail.com