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WriteOn: Choosing Which Combat Scenes To Write [1]

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Date: 2022-07-28

Welcome to WriteOn!, where each week we discuss various aspects of writing (fiction, non-fiction, long, short).

I’ve previously discussed writing combat scenes (part one, part two), and I had something else planned, but I came across an interesting post on the blog of my favorite author(s). Specifically, the bottom bit of the post about choosing which fight scenes to include.

(Sort-of spoilers for Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles books Sweep of the Blade and the in-progress Sweep of the Heart.)

Fights and Battles How do we select which battles to show? Fights and battles, when written down, are not that exciting unless there is a strong emotional component. They are similar to sex scenes – unless you are invested in the characters’ feelings, the sex scenes can become boring. Fight scenes are the same. She lunged, he parried, she shied from his blade, blah blah blah. The key to making it interesting is high stakes. When Maud fought Lady Illemina, the stakes were sky high. Her future literally hung in the balance, suspended on the edge of her sword, because if her future mother-in-law viewed her with contempt, her life with House Krahr would be much harder. There was pride there, and survival, and so many things. By contrast, Bestata and Karat sparring, the stakes are very small. Even if Karat lost that practice bout, nobody would really care. Had Bestata been some mortal enemy against whom Karat struggled for the whole story, we would’ve shown the fight in technicolor detail. Same with the space pirate. The fight wasn’t really important; the fact that he was dead by the end of it was, because the audience wasn’t that invested in the pirate himself. They mostly wanted the Special Snowflake to get her comeuppance for being a back stabber.

That’s the full text of that point, and it brings two specific (contrasting) examples forward to make a point: incidental fights are boring.

My distillation of writing fight scenes (from part one) was:

[F]or a fight scene to be meaningful, the reader must know the stakes, have an emotional connection, and understand what hinges on the outcome. Or, in other words, it needs to meaningfully support the story.

Very similar points, with a different set of examples. (And if you haven’t read Innkeeper and you enjoy urban fantasy, you’re missing out. It’s a lot of fun!)

My own example below the fold.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/28/2113197/-WriteOn-Choosing-Which-Combat-Scenes-To-Write

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