How to write a good fight/action scene?
It dawned on me the other day, after struggling through a fight scene, that I am lost when it comes to writing action. I usually write slower, dialogue-heavy scenes, and I have become used to taking my time with the prose. How can I convey the urgency, speed, and emotional stakes that come with a fight scene? How do I paint a vivid picture of it without getting bogged down in the details?
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Setup. Setup. Setup. You can't force the pace in prose. Prose is always asynchronous with action because it takes more words to describe some things and actions than others, and because you can't control the pace as which the reader reads. The way you create an effect is fiction is by building up the tension of a scene to a fever pitch so that when the fight itself breaks out, the reader already feels the tension, feels the emotional stakes. And because this is a moment of emotional release, it comes quickly. Not much actually needs to be said of the fight itself most of the time, unless something else is happening other that the exchange of blows. (Some fight scenes are more dialog than action -- Bernard Cornwell's work provides many good examples of this.)
And this is how fights work in real life as well. People don't just start thumping each other out of the blue. There is a buildup of tension between them. Insults, threats, a staredown, maybe some shoving. Point is, both have to get to the point of blood boiling before a punch is thrown. It is the tension that makes the fight, both in life and in fiction.
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