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Does anyone have any tips for writing fight scenes? I love the idea of them, but when I get started I inevitably get confused as to what's happening and I feel like I'm not doing a good job writing out all the moves.

Read fight scenes from books. Study how they convey their sense of action and motion, what you can and can't see reading it, what works and what doesn't.

Watch scenes from action movies and try to write them out as if you're making a novelization. Think about what aspects are important and which are superfluous. What parts grab you or make you flinch, and what parts confuse you and leave you wanting to rewind.

Read books that will have fight scenes in them. Reading how others write is the best way to learn since you can see how others handle it.

Then practice a bit. Maybe try writing out a scene from a movie or a TV show and then have someone you know read it over and see if they can read from it action that mostly matches up with the scene.

And if you are having trouble understanding what's happening when you do a scene, don't hesitate to ask the people you're threading with. Some people actually just aren't good at reading words and forming a picture of the scene in their head. Other times it could be that something written was just unclear or left vague, which isn't uncommon due to people's fear of godmodding.

- keep the location of each character in the fight in mind; if you have trouble with this to begin with you can scribble out a little diagram

- make the actions you write clear and precise: know which hand is punching, which foot is kicking, what side they're attacking from, and let your partner know too. this will help both of you have the same locations in mind and avoid confusion

- if all else fails don't be ashamed to ask your partner what they're imagining. being on the same page is 90% of the battle.

- watch youtube martial arts demo videos or mma videos to help you get a sense of how trained fighters react to common attacks. your character's fight scenes in canon are a great resource for their particular style quirks but i can't think of a lot of canons where there's enough fighting to let you extrapolate your character's responses to other situations.

Map 'em out with action figures. It's dorky as all fuck, but it really helps keeping who's doing what straight in your head.

For writing the moves, watch more media that features the sort of fighting you want to write, and pay attention to the flow of the scenes. You don't have to be overly technical. As long as you convey to your partner where your character's swinging and with what, or where they're shooting at, you can focus more on feeling and thought process than making sure you have the technical details nailed down.

If it's your character going solo and fighting NPCs that you control, then yes, I agree with the advice about reading other action scenes. Use active verbs, don't do long drawn out descriptions about how cool this flip is, etc.

But if it's a fight scene with another player's character, these are the golden rules:

1. DECIDE THE OUTCOME IN ADVANCE. "I just want to play it by ear" is actually code for "I want my character to win but it sounds rude if I just come out and say it." Decide who wins or loses, or if it ends with a draw or interruption, otherwise it will turn into a dick-measuring contest of which character is more powerful/awesome.

2. Don't write the outcome of your actions. For example, "He throws a punch at Joe's face" is preferred to "He slams his fist into Joe's jaw, shattering it instantly and knocking him to the ground. Then he picks Joe up and swings him around by the ankle like a mighty helicopter." That's godmodding, and if you do it, you're an asshole.

*2a. If you're afraid this will make your tag too short, ask the other player OOCly if it's okay for you to do X. That way you won't embarrass yourself if what your character would have tried would never have been able to happen (i.e. Joe's jaw was actually made of solid titanium because of an accident when he was a child that replaced all of his bones with an indestructible metal frame).

3. Take some hits. Dodging now and again is fine and dandy, but if your character is constantly dodging attacks and not suffering any repercussions, that's a different form of godmodding, and you're still an asshole. Even if your character is the one slated to win the fight, at least give the other player the satisfaction of feeling like their character wasn't completely and hopelessly wrecked for the sake of your ego.

Hope that helps! Fight scenes are tough to write, but they're a lot of fun too.

this anon is totally right, particularly about 2 and 3 and godmoding. I've had people popping up lately who just don't seem to grasp that writing out how far across the room they knocked my character is godmoding to the extreme.

I've been complimented on my fight scenes, and I don't know that I have any great secrets behind them other than 1. not godmoding, 2. knowing where both parties are and how their bodies are moving, and 3. doing more than one thing per tag.

it takes practice to be able to write your character's reaction first, then decide based on where their body is compared to their opponent, how they would recover momentum and follow through with their own move, but it can be done. for example, if mine is right-handed and fighting with a sword, he would move to his left to carry through with a strike. does he end up beside or behind his opponent? oh shit his opponent blocked, now mine has to either block or take the hit, how do I want to do this? Do I go entertaining or IC or can I find a way to combine them?

and really, if your character is from any kind of ridiculous OTT canon where fighting involves punching people into the moon, don't fret too much about "realistic" fighting moves. Know your charater's moveset, and even if he/she has to adapt it to fighting someone from a different canon with a totally different style of fighting, they will still more or less use their own moveset, not a real mma-style fight.

ironically enough, i think people working out how things are going to go in advance is contributing to the uptick in godmoding.

i've been in fight threads where one party has tagged with how far they've knocked the other character across the room...because we worked it all out behind the scenes, and it fit better with the flow of the scene if it was in the attacker's tag rather than the defender's. meanwhile, people who are newer to the hobby see that, and decide it's clearly okay to decide on the outcome themselves, because they're not making the connection that there's ooc communication they're not seeing.

Do newbies actually read other people's threads?

"I just want to play it by ear" is actually code for "I want my character to win but it sounds rude if I just come out and say it."

what

no

Not all the time, but at least half the time. 'We'll see how it goes' is fine if you're having a fight thread for which the fun is mucking about doing crazy fight stuff, but if the outcome matters? AYRT is right.

Whenever I'm doing fight scenes, I try to restrict myself to one or two "action" moves per tag, depending on what the other person has done. For example, the other person tries to hit my character, and I have two moves in response: I either block, dodge, or take the hit, and then respond with an attack. That's one tag. Keeping things simple like that can make the scene easier to follow, AND it means that the other player can choose whether to take the hit or not, which makes things more interesting.

As was said above, loosely work out what the outcome is, and any outcome goals you might have. (ie. "I want it to end in a draw, but let's beat the shit out of each other" or "My character wins, but they lose a hand in the process," things like that.) Communicate with your partner. Don't get too fussy about language, just try to communicate clearly what each move your character does is attempting to accomplish.

Don't control the other character (the above example of "swinging for their jaw" vs "punching them and shattering their jaw instantly"), and don't be that guy that is just so overpowered that they never ever ever get hit, it's boring to play against. But be clear about your character's actual abilities, too. If you've got a fistfight between Goku and, say, Phoenix Wright, there's a serious difference in power levels, there.

And don't be afraid to ask for help or clarification wherever you need it!

see now I just want to see an actual fight between Goku and Phoenix Wright.

can you even call it a fight when phoenix would barely last a punch tho

i guess it could be billed as THE ONE PUNCH OF THE CENTURY!

This is all amazing advice!! Thanks so much anons, I'll definitely work on getting better with those fight scenes, you're all awesome. :D

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You sound fat

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