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Fight scenes

Does anybody have any tips for writing fight scenes/action scenes? Because currently, my action scenes are pretty much like "OUCH"crash* "THWACK"*he saw this blur coming and then *OUCH!* And a big mouthful of teeth and he kind of got out of the way and...you get it.:rolleyes: Any tips for how to write a bit more, uh, un-confusing?:eek:
 
SeaStar, you're not doing a movie or an animated cartoon, so don't worry all the time about what each person's hands or feet are doing. Think about what the fight is meant to accomplish and what there is to gain or lose.

For instance, if someone has to cross one last bridge to save the princess and it's guarded by the Dark Knight, devote some text to how the hero feels:

He's stronger, he's faster. I'm going to die out here. This is the end of it and my brother will get my horse and it's just going to kill my Mum. And the Princess...NO...I can't fail! Failure is not an option! She has to get back to the palace! (And then suddenly with a surge of renewed energy he swings at the Dark Knight and sends him falling backwards)
 
SeaStar said:
Does anybody have any tips for writing fight scenes/action scenes? Because currently, my action scenes are pretty much like "OUCH"crash* "THWACK"*he saw this blur coming and then *OUCH!* And a big mouthful of teeth and he kind of got out of the way and...you get it.:rolleyes: Any tips for how to write a bit more, uh, un-confusing?:eek:
Click to expand...

Don't tell everything that happens in the fight. That helps. Tell what the characters are doing in the fight but say each character's name and give them their own paragraph about what they are doing/thinking and tell things like "he slashed at his enemy but" then put what the enemy did like "the enemy(enter name) parried his blow swiftly", or something like that. That's what I always do and I've never gotten complaints about confusion in battles in my stories. Battles ARE confusing though.

That help any?
 
It's true that you would get hopelessly bogged down if you tried to describe _every_ action in a fight, even just a fight between two persons. But my preference, I think, is _closer_ to a blow-by-blow account than the preferences of the others offering advice here. I believe I have been successful in providing specifics of _some_ actions in fight scenes I've written, making the scene more lifelike yet _still_ not bogging it down.

Imagine trying to describe in words the Walden movie version of Peter Pevensie duelling with the White Witch. You would not in any case (unless you were the screenwriter, who HAS TO go into detail) describe each single movement; but it would be a very poor description indeed if you _didn't_ specifically report the moment when Peter leaned backwards to evade the scissor-like attack aimed at his throat.

I'm always disappointed with fight scenes which consist of "They fought, one guy won, the end."
 
One way to prevent a fight scene from being slowed down is to enable the reader to come to it with some _prior_ knowledge of the way things will go, so that somewhat less description will be needed _during_ the combat. In my "Tigers" novel, on or around Page 54, the Talking Tigers were preparing (with human allies) to fight a gigantic quasi-reptilian monster from the sea. Here is how they discussed what they would do....


"All the way back here," Slimtalon replied, "I was wracking my brain to remember everything the Sea Otters reported about my husband's last fight. I remembered that the monster has a great long tongue that can grab you; I remembered that in time for the knowledge to help my son. Since then, I've also remembered that the monster has a line of sharp quills or spines all along its back, like sheathed claws, which can spring up to stab any creature who climbs onto its back. Brightburn was gravely wounded by those quills when he leaped onto the monster's back. But the missing pawprint in this trail still evades me. There was something my husband did as he was dying, which hurt the monster so painfully that it gave up on chasing the otters even _after_ Brightburn was no longer a threat to it. This makes me feel as if I'm the very first Narnian beast to grow so old as to lose my brains; I just can't _remember_ what it was!"

"Don't reproach yourself, Grandmother," said Smoothtail. "You've carried so many responsibilities in all those years, and no one could have predicted that now you'd be trying to remember the details of an event that you weren't present for!"

"Let's just list everything that _could_ be a weak point on a creature like that," said Shatterneck.

Slimtalon replayed in her mind the terribly recent chase in which the unwelcome role of quarry had been hers to experience. "One would expect its eyes to be a soft spot, but Bulgak found otherwise when he shot the thing in the eye. The nostrils proved subject to pain, but only on the inside."

"That snatching tongue you described is a weakness as well as a weapon for the monster," mused Quickspring. "If it were severed, the stump would bleed spectacularly. And then there's the axillae--"

"The what?" asked Leapwell.

"Sorry, that's an anatomical term I picked up from a Centauress. It just means the inner parts of joints--like a man's armpit. Places that have to be less rigid, or else the joint wouldn't be able to flex at all. Hookpaw got hold of such a spot on that crocodile he helped me fight. Our adversary must have axillae, since it has limbs. We might be able to get at those--or maybe one of the Djinni could, with a weapon."

"The Djinni felt sickened just from being near the stink of it," said Slimtalon.

"But not incapacitated, or they wouldn't be here," Quickspring persisted. "If any of the Djinni could get close for just an instant, he might be able to drive in a spear. We could help make his opening if we could force one of the monster's limbs up to expose its axilla."

"Failing that," interjected Tawnydart, "maybe we could create a weak spot elsewhere. Scales on reptiles and fish usually aren't attached all the way around; they have an outer end, like a human fingernail. Maybe we could get hold of the ends of some of the monster's big scales, and pry them up. It wouldn't need much opening for a spear to penetrate."

"Or a bullet?" said Smoothtail. "You said that the boy has one of those shooting weapons."

Slimtalon shook her head. "No, Bulgak has done enough; we can't ask more of him. He must take his mother and the other children and go with Hookpaw to the new colony. Let him be a defender to them on the way with his rifle."

"But prying up the scales may still work," said Leapwell.

Slimtalon visualized the effort of prying loose those iron-like reptilian scales. Whoever was doing the prying would need lots of protection, but it might work...

Then, as this image grew sharper in her mind, she pounced on a realization. "That's it! That's it! Oh, Brightburn, my love, you _shall_ be avenged!" All eyes were on her as she continued: "It has GILLS as well! THAT'S where my husband struck back at his slayer: he tore at its gills! The gill-flaps would be at least as easy to pry up as the scales, probably far easier to lay hold of; and almost any wound inflicted inside there would sever some blood vessels!"

"Hurrah for you, Grandmother!" exclaimed Shatterneck. "We'll get the filthy thing now!"

Slimtalon grew solemn again. "But consider this: any tiger attacking the monster's gills will be within reach of its foreclaws. That didn't matter to my beloved; he was dying already, with nothing to lose. It was enough then for him that he saved those Otters. But I don't want any of us to die needlessly. So don't attack _only_ the gills; the scale-prying and joint-biting are still worth trying also. Take whatever opening Aslan's providence grants us; but I believe that the gills will be decisive."

"Right," growled Quickspring with guarded optimism. "We'll form three teams, to attack the monster from three sides. Grandmother, your son and your daughter-in-law are the natural ones to fight beside you; and I'll trust them not to let YOU throw your life away needlessly. Shatterneck and Tawnydart are another natural team. Leapwell and Smoothtail, you'll be with me. If the Djinni can spare one of their number from their dealings with our human foes, he can operate independently, watching for his chance to exploit any opening we create...."
 
You came close to saying it but didn't CF, so I still get to say it.

Switching from the folks doing the fighting to the spectators is also great. Consider from Prince Caspian that the reactions of certain people in the crowd helped things along.

"He's losing, Esmerelda! Oh, my poor handsome Snedrig is being beat to a jelly!"

"Take heart, Asphyxia, he still has the secret weapon..."

It's this sort of thing that differentiates story telling from putting a webcam on the deck of The Dawn Treader and just giving someone raw footage of the whole journey. ;)
 
When you only have words to work with....

Glenburne remarked yesterday that Emmett (not Emeth) in my "Narnia's End" story has an overdone accent. This is a good springboard for discussing how we make the voices of our fictional characters distinctive when they can't actually be _heard_ speaking.

Silent movie actors used to exaggerate their gestures and facial expressions, to compensate for their lines of dialogue being only printed captions. But my Emmett can't be seen, either. He has nothing but my words by which he can be distinguished from Narnian humans or indeed Narnian beasts. I freely confess to laying it on thick with Emmett's accent; I do this as part of my effort to bring him to life in the reader's mind. I want him to be very different from anyone native to Narnia, and not just because he carries firearms. I want the reader to "see" the gunslinger's cowboy hat, sheepskin jacket, roughly chivalrous mannerisms, alert gaze, and readiness for instant action. I want the reader to "hear" what I hope is his blend of the unsophisticated and the insightful, the compassionate and the fierce.

There are many options available to the novelist for differentiating characters by their dialogue. One character may use contractions in every sentence, while another hardly ever uses any contractions. One character may always talk in short sentences, while another utters long sentences wherever he can. A highly emotional character may have lots of exclamation points in his lines, while a calmer character's lines always end the declarative sentences with a period.

Would anyone else care to say if they've developed trademark speech mannerisms for particular characters?
 
In Byron on Wells, my characters use a lot of verbal markers. Beavers, for instance, refer to a good project manager or a core family member as the "mud that holds the sticks together".

The characters as a whole are divided into two kinds of speech in Byron, and in Narnia in general at least five dialects. The educated form of speech marks one as a Paraveller (the dialect of Cair Paravel) while the folk along the riverbank speak a quaint, inflectional Riverbanker (riparian) dialect rife with phrases like "Well spot me up and call me a leopard!" or "Garn and garbage!" The Archenese dialect is the slower drawl of Archenland. The folk up north toward the Lantern Waste speak a crisp, cutty sort of brogue along the lines of "Oy, be taking ye paws offen my private propertay!" EveningStar rattles it off to the great amusement of his fellow mages. Out west where the Hibernal Mountains form the border is Montaine. It's the hardest dialect to follow because it has the most unique vocabulary words. "Make dune th' meister's box un be snappy aboot it!"

This does not even begin to address local dialects in Calormene or the existance of non-angalandrian (non Narnian) languages outside the Angalandrian zone such as Quehcha (originally indians from the Amazon) and odd pidgin english spoken by the Overmountain tribe.

As for how I represent patterns of speech in my story, I must admit that I stick to standard American English spelling (Microsoft Word loves that) and very few myssyspelld words designed to phonetically represent the dialect. Perhaps the best way to learn to spot Riverbanker is to listen to me reading Bramble saying, "Not a bit of it! You've jumped off the path!" as "Noh uh bitt o ite! Yoove jumpd auf th pahth!"
 
I've attempted to give many characters in stories I've written a Southern or Western dialect. One challenge in doing so is that what sounds natural to the ear in a movie may be overwhelming for someone trying to read a story. For example, I speak with an almost negligible Southeastern accent. But I've often observed that if I were to write script that reflects every small detail of the way I speak, I would look like someone with an extremely thick accent, which is completely untrue. (For example, when I leave off the -g ending of some -ing words, I sometimes don't really pronounce the -i part either. So running goes from running to runnin' to runn'n--which you probably already see looks worse than it would actually sound. Or the way a lot of people, including me, jam the words "I'm going to" into "I'm 'onna." Again, it looks awful on paper, but it sounds natural in real life.)

For that reason, a major focus of mine in creating character accents is be certain that (1) they accurately reflect the speech patterns of the regions--real or imagined--that I write about, and (2) that they reflect that speech pattern for the eye as well as the ear. (I happen to have memories of trying to read a Br'er Rabbit story in my 6th grade reading book and struggling with a detailed transcription of speech patterns that I would have readily understood, had they been spoken. Distinctive is good, but the medium of writing involves both seeing and hearing, which we have to remember with accents especially.)

Another thing I tend to do with accents is lessen their written markers if I'm writing dialogue for a female character. A guy can say something and sound tough; but if a girl says the same thing, she may sound hokey. I don't eliminate written accents for female characters, but I use a few less "runnin's" and "gonnas."

I haven't written many long fantasy stories where there would be a language or dialect difference between countries, but so far I've generally kept fantasy characters speaking fairly standard written English, with a few local terms added in. (Of course, that may change somewhat in the future.)
 
The science fiction novels of the late Keith Laumer provide outstanding examples of how, having only English to work with, he was able to make extraterrestrial characters distinctive through their dialogue. I believe that the troublesome irregularity of English compensates us for the difficulties by lending itself to accommodating these differences well.
 
Here is the song I was talking about. :)

Words we have said
Grew in my head
Colored my thoughts
Sang me to bed

Lost memories
Grew into trees
Covered the doors
Swallowed the keys

Winters have come and gone
You know
Winters have come and gone
You know
But I'll meet you young and free
For a dance 'round the memory tree

Said I forgot
But I did not
Dreams we have had
Play in my head

Did we believe
The cry of the leaves?
Did we regret?
Would we forget?

Winters have come and gone
You know
Winters have come and gone
You know
But I'll meet you young and free
For a dance 'round the memory tree
 
For those who didn't follow the digressing discussion on the Sonnets thread not long ago, the Marketplace post just before this one arises from that discussion. This new member wanted to see an example of re-working words poetically, either from prose to verse or from pre-existing verse to DIFFERENT verse. So, being given the above song lyric to work from, I have just now made up a poem which is close to the original in content, but changed in rhythm. You will notice, furthermore, that I have changed the term for "the memory tree," and made this tree's image a little more conspicuous throughout.


The tree of remembrance has heard all our words,
And colorful thoughts which were singing like birds.
More trees like the first one grew out of my mind;
But now, doors are locked, and the keys I can't find.

You know how the winters arrive and depart;
Each one leaves a bit more old age in my heart.
But rise from your bed, and we'll dance all the same;
The tree of remembrance will tell me your name.

Now listen how someone remembers and grieves
For happy dreams lost like the last autumn leaves.
I chose to forget, or I said I preferred;
In truth, good or bad, I recall every word.

You know how the winters arrive and depart;
Each one leaves a bit more old age in my heart.
But rise from your bed, and we'll dance all the same;
The tree of remembrance will tell me your name.
 
Copperfox said:
For those who didn't follow the digressing discussion on the Sonnets thread not long ago, the Marketplace post just before this one arises from that discussion. This new member wanted to see an example of re-working words poetically, either from prose to verse or from pre-existing verse to DIFFERENT verse. So, being given the above song lyric to work from, I have just now made up a poem which is close to the original in content, but changed in rhythm. You will notice, furthermore, that I have changed the term for "the memory tree," and made this tree's image a little more conspicuous throughout.


The tree of remembrance has heard all our words,
And colorful thoughts which were singing like birds.
More trees like the first one grew out of my mind;
But now, doors are locked, and the keys I can't find.

You know how the winters arrive and depart;
Each one leaves a bit more old age in my heart.
But rise from your bed, and we'll dance all the same;
The tree of remembrance will tell me your name.

Now listen how someone remembers and grieves
For happy dreams lost like the last autumn leaves.
I chose to forget, or I said I preferred;
In truth, good or bad, I recall every word.

You know how the winters arrive and depart;
Each one leaves a bit more old age in my heart.
But rise from your bed, and we'll dance all the same;
The tree of remembrance will tell me your name.
Click to expand...

That was really neat! I like it.
 
I'm not writing a poem (couldn't do that if I tried:p), I was just curious because it said so in this magazine I read yesterday.
 
There are no EXACT rhymes including correct syllable-stress. That's where "assonances," or near-rhymes, come in.


FOR ORANGE: forage, porridge, storage

FOR PURPLE: circle, hurdle, turtle
 
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