I am currently working on a story with lots of combat in it, and these scenes change a lot as characters use different combat methods. From magic to exosuits, to good old-fashioned guns.
Currently, I am struggling to write these combat scenes as I am a novice writer and I almost have no experience.
To the point. I am open to any tips and tricks you use in your story and I'll be really ask some questions as well.
Honestly, I haven't written combat scenes yet, by a good tip I would give is to make sure its clear who is shooting who and who is being decapitated. Also, don't make it too exaggerated or bland either.
rely on what writing does best - inner thoughts, feeling and emotions. Do not try to copy movies and games - they rely on visual media to tell a lot of the story.
Write what your character feels. Confusion of battle, ringing and deafness from loud noises, the taste of gunpowder, the smell of dirt and blood. Ever-increasing exhaustion of the fight.
Also, actual fights are quick - there might be minutes and hours of suspense but once the fight is on (especially if you are not trained) you will either win or loose very quickly or you will run out of stamina (which means losing)
Okay, so my tip is solely about the technical aspect, and it's the way I write, so, it isn't the 'right' one. Do it as artists paint, with layers. First, you do the basic structure. You envision the fight in your head. Then you put it on paper and try to make the fight understandable for readers first and foremost. Then you add different things for 'flavor' like opinions from the side, sound effects, fancy words, and so on. And that's it. You're basically done.
I am currently working on a story with lots of combat in it, and these scenes change a lot as characters use different combat methods. From magic to exosuits, to good old-fashioned guns.
Currently, I am struggling to write these combat scenes as I am a novice writer and I almost have no experience.
To the point. I am open to any tips and tricks you use in your story and I'll be really ask some questions as well.
Imagine yourself as one of the participants. Put yourself into the shoes of one of the characters. If your character wields a sword, hold a stick in the middle of a field and fantasize as if you're facing off against multiple opponents. If you're gunslinging, make the pew pew pew sound too. It's a real method used by real martial practitioners. Ai-chan would know, Ai-chan joined a kenjutsu dojo in the process of writing Felicia's Second Life.
Or you can take a shortcut. Programme a game, like Ai-chan does. Now ALL the battles are fated by the gods or basically just RNGesus. All Ai-chan does is take the battle log and write the battle scene.
Write what your character feels. Confusion of battle, ringing and deafness from loud noises, the taste of gunpowder, the smell of dirt and blood. Ever-increasing exhaustion of the fight.
This is a great place to use incomplete sentences. I often tell authors not to use incomplete sentences in the first few pages. Save them for when you really need them, and this is where you really need them!
Back when I was planning an action series, I looked up a whole bunch of videos on the subject on YouTube. The most common thing they all said was to concentrate on the characters, not the fight itself. Pretty much, readers don't care about every single punch, every gunshot, magical blast, whatever. They care about the characters themselves in the fight, what they are feeling, what they are going through as the fight goes on. You can write about how a punch goes 100 miles per hour, smashes against someone's chin, and swipes across cutting the skin before the victim straddles back, but readers prefer to know how that punch felt to the receiver, how it impacted them, how they are feeling afterwards.
Except for me. I'm the kind of person who wants to read every punch and tussle. Monologue and dialogue is good, and even necessary, but when it comes to fight scenes, I want to read the fight scenes. But looks like I'm alone on this.
I highly recommend this video. There are a lot of good vids, but to me, this is the best one, but I do suggest you look at other opinions and form your own on what you should do.
I believe it depends on whether you're using 3rd person or 1st person POV.
For 1st person, for adjectives, use the five senses(plus thoughts and emotional feels), and keep the flow going with a variety of time conjunctions. Since it's 1st POV, you can actually get quite creative with the adjectives, or even add a few idioms if they really fit. Thesaurus is good for this. Also, I believe proper pacing and use of onomatopoeia might help act as breaths/breaks for the readers.
For 3rd person, may listen to some war commentaries from WWII? I don't really know. I think it would just be mainly two to three senses plus what the characters know or plan to do or think. As long as the sentences/scenes flow well, which doesn't have to include every single action, I think it's fine. I know in my one of my stories (not posted) I'm guilty of including as much details as I could and that made the story feel a bit stiff.
I am about to hit you with an essay because this is something I'm grappling with myself.
Combat in the real world is brief, brutal, and bewildering. Fair fights are for suckers and showmanship. Modern warfare is largely conducted by bombing the ever-loving shit out of whatever you're at war with, then sending in troops to sweep up. Criminals rely on intimidation. Very rarely do fights go like in media.
Violence (of which combat is one form) is the final step of conflict resolution. There's tons of boomers and people who believe myths about how, "oh, flash a gun and it'll put anyone to rest," or ".22 LR is too weak to put anyone down." I've seen plenty of folks keep going when the guns come out, and I don't know anybody signing up to get a .22 cartridge lodged in their chest. You're not going to be regularly put into violent situations unless that's your job description or you go looking for a fight.
Full disclosure, I have not been in actual combat, but I do participate in practical shooting sports (two-gun, USPSA/IDPA, backup gun matches), have military family, lived in a few rough neighborhoods, and did a lot of personal research on my own to understand how combat usuall goes. This is information I plan to use when writing "realistic" fight scenes.
You don't know everything that's going on around you, you aren't aware of what your target would be doing, and you are never evenly matched. For gunfighting, you're not gonna be writing (from a limited perspective) about how each participant went reloading or clearing jams or maneuvering. It's going to be short lulls in gunfire, scenery exploding, quick peeks and point-shooting. Or, it's going to be hanging out from multiple hundreds of yards away blowing them up with machineguns and rockets. Asymmetric warfare, ho!
Special Forces getting into gunfights? There's maybe less than a minute of actual shooting in a combat engagement, from long distances away, and these are special forces.
Cops going in on an uncooperative suspect? There's gonna be a lot of adrenaline flowing, but if you catch a bullet in an armor plate: you're not shrugging that one off. It's gonna knock you down. (NSFW warning, the POV police officer catches a bullet. Dude survives, obvs, since he's wearing armor, but it's still footage of an office
Fistfights tend to be either short-lived or anticlimactic. . You can dig up all sorts of videos: most folks have an idea in their head of how they're gonna fight, then they get punched in the face and the plan goes out the window. Melee combat with weapons usually goes the same way: you get a good hit in, or you tire out the other guy, you're usually gonna come out on top.
Unarmed man vs man with knife? Well, there's videos of that. If there's a man coming at you with a knife, going in for a stab, he's going to stab you.
Two untrained men going at each other with knives? Well that too. (NSFW warning, two british dudes going at each other with knives... it gets messy)
Bar brawls? Usually becomes grapples, standoffs, suckerpunches and haymakers. When folks get on the ground, they aren't UFC fighters.
If you're noticing a pattern here, the fights are usually short, loud, involves a lot of yelling before people put their hands on each other. Most folks that start fights don't know how to end them, and the folks that end fights usually aren't willing to start them.
Hell, I have a fight scene right now, starring a protagonist vs a giant salamander. I'll cut it out from my story and post it here for reference.
And, then he thought, maybe he should've taken Eugene's advice sooner.
The dock exploded below his feet as that creature flung itself into the air and knocked him right off! A great big salamander threw itself onto the man! It must have been a hundred pounds or more, covered in wet, mucus-y skin, and its whole body shook with a bestial fury! Buck hit the wood with a scream while the creature writhed on him!
"Jesus- Ah!" He screamed, not out of pain but out of the sheer surprise! "Gene, get this thing!"
"Buck!" He couldn't see what the man was doing, but he trusted he had good intuition. The salamander violently thrashed, opening its maw and splattering Buck with hot saliva. When it came upon his skin it burnt him up- he heard steam billowing out, the creature scrabbling awkwardly outside the water!
"Shit!" Buck caught his breath and wrapped his arms around the great creature's soft middle. It convulsed atop him, but he didn't know what to do: all he thought about was that he needed to keep this thing from getting Eugene- or get it back, anywhere away from his young friend! He spat and cussed and got his foot into the old wooden boards of the dock.
Well, here goes nothin'!
The next few seconds passed in a blur. One second he had the salamander on top of him. The next he'd rolled off, landed in the small skiff. Something went screaming as he smashed his arms up between him, the heavy beast and the wooden seats- then it all faded into bubbles as they both sunk into the water.
Buck let go, twisting in the muddy stream, tumbling in the water. He scraped the soft dirt with his fingers, wrapped around one of the support beams, then went sideways, upside down and ass-backwards down the stream. How long didn't matter, as water filled his mouth, but he got his footings when he wrapped around a boulder and got his head above the water.
He climbed up on top of the boulder, he couldn't see the beast, he saw the dock a fair ways away, but he spat out water and caught his breath. Eugene rushed along the riverbank, his spears in hand, screaming Buck's name as he did. He didn't have words, he just had pain all over his body and a light, airy feeling in his head-
But he managed it.
He steeled himself, dragged his sorry ass out and onto the bank with a growl. The man had almost gotten out of the water, when something clamped down on his leg and tripped him up. The salamander!
The thing's gummy jaws had an iron grip. Halfway out of the water, he saw vents pour steam out of its rear- and behind its neck? Fire belched out in regular bursts: out of the corners of its mouth steam billowed. Soft but muscular jaws held tight, while the salamander pulled backwards, trying to drag Buck into the water again. Beady black eyes stared out while the river churned up behind it. "Hell, hell! Stick it- Eugene, stick it! Stick it!"
"Ah- Damn you!" Eugene roared, coming tumbling down the bank. Buck swung his other free leg out, jamming his heel in the salamander's eyes. It crushed under the blow, receding inside its skull but not stopping the thing's attack. He swung, kicked, screamed again- while Eugene struck down like a lightning bolt, burying his guardsman's spear in the beast's side. "Damn you!"
"Shit!" Buck cussed- the salamander loosened up, twisting off him but not letting go completely. He figured the thing must've used fire for some purpose, as a jet of flame shot out of the wound Eugene made. But- the muscular thing twisted, and tore the spear out of the smaller man's hand. The shock threw his other spear down-
The spear!
Eugene backed away, working up an incantation, while the salamander tossed Buck to the side. He landed right by the short spear, grabbing the wooden shaft in his hands. He threw himself onto his feet, stumbling into the salamander's side- and throwing it off balance just enough. Buck screamed something primal as he drove the spear into the salamander's belly.
The short shaft and broad tip in the thing's soft belly got him a result not quite unlike Eugene's: fire licking out at his fingers, kissing him and arcing pain up his limbs. He paid no mind to it, dragging the spear out before the spasming salamander threw him off. He drove the spear in, again and again, screaming and cussing up a storm of violence. Blood and flame poured out over him, stinging just as much as the thing's saliva. Most of his body went numb- but his face and the leg it mouthed on were especially tight.
Eventually, though, the salamander slowed. Buck got under it, flipped it on its back- and with two hands slick with red he drove the blade in right under its skull. Through soft flesh it pierced, slipping through bone and vertebrae, severing its spine with finality. Its body twitched in the dirt, but Buck felt pretty confident it was dead. The adrenaline and heartbeat rushing through his ears said that if the damn thing so much as moved he'd beat it into tar.
But it fell still after a minute, leaving the man to pull himself off and limp over to Eugene. The boy watched him in awe: Buck noticed his hand looked raw and pink.
You may have noticed that I did not follow every single suggestion I just gave you, and that the scene I posted is of a man fighting a giant animal. A lot of the points still stand. In summary, fights are short, brutal, and usually end with one fighter dominating the other one. Once you have an advantage, you press it, doesn't matter if it's a shootout, a fistfight, or an animal attack. You aren't going to be thinking about your next dinner date or your appointments. You're going to be focused on putting down whatever or whoever is deciding to engage you with violence, or getting the hell away from whatever scary thing is making loud noises and bright flashes of light. Human beings have a lizard brain and the lizard brain kicks in when there's a fight.
With that in mind? Writing combat/fight scenes for media? It's theatrical. You can describe in flowing detail every single punch and kick. But it's usually only going to be a few deciding factors that determine how a fight goes. I personally don't like to linger on fight scenes. I find they drag a little bit if you're committed to describing Shingetsu's Super Ultra Demon Fisting Of Pleasurable Annihilation technique.
IMO, interesting fights are about limitations, positioning, and context rather than what characters can do. Naruto features plenty of extremely calamitous fights with super special techniques. Beyond a certain point, it becomes wizard battles. But, I'm willing to bet the three most memorable fights are Rock Lee dropping the leg weights and dunking on Gaara, Might Guy using the Eight Gates on Madara, and Naruto and Sasuke having their final fight by the waterfall. Why? Because context matters in a fight scene.
I've read plenty of fanfiction that thinks "oh, throw in a fight scene, that'll do it," and that can work. But it can lead to bloating your word count and just having violence for violence's sake. All of the above fight scenes have context and implications. Rock Lee can't use his ninja magic, so he trains to be the physical peak and still clowns on a dude who just stands there and lets his magic powers do the trick. Might Guy's last-ditch technique (would have) ended his life but also given the younger generations one final shot at downing the last major villain. Naruto and Sasuke's final fight represents the cumulative endpoint of their respective journeys, their interpersonal conflict, and how they've grown as people throughout the series. It ends on the note of two men coming to understand each other, then parting ways to lead their own lives. The final parting camera shot is of both of them having their dominant arms blown off, creating a mirror image of each other, since that was the (intended) arc for both characters.
Without any of the context of Rock Lee having a ninja disability, Might Guy wanting to give a chance to the youngin's, and Naruto and Sasuke, well, being Naruto and Sasuke- none of these fights would have any actual meaning. You can have flashy descriptions and special techniques, but if your characters are fighting for the sake of it, then it won't hold a lot of meaning.
I edit/rewrite my battle scenes several time as a novice writer.
1. Make sure that actions in the scene follow the rule of cause and effect. If the character goes brrrrt, super speed, group all effect and show it at the end. Even if the attack missed, you have to show the effect sometimes.
2. Try to make character talk as less as possible. (Team play, arrogant, or a character that far stronger than an opponent are exceptions.)
3. Mostly you're going to use short sentence, but long sentence isn't bad. I generally use long sentence for big move, rapid succession of attacks, some emotional scene, and suspense.
4. Alternative between different sentence paces give reader short breathing room if your battle scene is 2k+ words.
Edit: Let me add one more thing and it's quite important.
5. Given enough exaggerations, leave half of scene to reader's imagination. Too much description breaks the flow, and most of the time reader imagines better scene than what we wrote.
