My Life As A Writer: On Good Fight Scenes

I write about knights with laser swords. Time for a video essay about fight scenes, with my commentary on how this applies to what I write.

And one more focused on the written word.

While I hadn't seen either video when I wrote Reavers, I did understand certain things such as pacing and displaying character. Good fight scenes are as much an opportunity to show by deed as dialog scenes show by word, and deftly mixing the two--sometimes in the same sequence--can really bring the thrill to the reader. Howard was a master of this, so if there's just one guy to read to get a sense of this in practice it's him. Start with the Conan books--his books, not the pastiches and hackjobs--and spread out to Kane, Kull, Bran, etc. from there.

When I go to write a fight or battle, I have an idea of the space already mapped in my head. I have never needed more than that. Likewise, I know how the action looks; the trick is putting the proper words down to convey this to the reader, and then to pace the action so I don't bore him. The entire sequence where Jack seizes Gabriela is the climax of an entire raid set up as a heist, and Jack's part in it is brief.

Jack's first fight is with some guards, the duke hosting Gabriela, Sibley (our hero's right-hand man), and Gabriela's dandy companion. Jack takes them all on and wins, with Sibley being the last one to go down. Then he toys with Sibley's son Creton, who tries to protect his father and stop Jack but fails in a dramatic and humiliating fashion. Finally he faces our hero Roland and holds him long enough to get away.

What did I intend to do? Establish Jack as a competent antagonist with competent minions of his own; his part of the plan required him to outthink his opposition, most important being the assumption on egress, and ensuring that his backup was on time to thwart that expectation. This was accomplished, though I think if I were to do it over I'd spend a little more time ensuring that the reader had the proper sense of space.

The fight between Red Eyes and Roland later on, looking back on it, could have been done better. I didn't think I got across how dangerous it is to have an opponent whose reach was enough to impose a dead zone--a space where you can't attack your target--due to having longer arms and proportionally-sized weapons. (Red Eyes is half-again Roland's height.) What I did get across, again, was that Roland and Red Eyes had different objectives and so formed fight strategies accordingly- and this time, Roland's was better executed.

And in both sequences, I think I did all right in showing the character traits I wanted the reader to see. Jack's a schemer who rolls with a plan, and so long as that plan is on track he's going to do well. Roland's a fighter, so his strength is in getting into his opponent's OODA Loop; when Jack and Roland rematch, both of them will fight differently due to using past experience to shape the present encounter.

And why do I bring this up? Tuesday, folks.