Put Up Your Dukes: Crafting Dynamic Fight Scenes

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A strong fight scene is more than just who throws the punches.

One of the first fight scenes I ever wrote was for a fantasy novel, so it involved swords and daggers and a lot of fancy footwork. I wanted to keep track of who did what and where they were, so I used little pewter figures from my D&D box. Step-by-step, I moved the figures around and had my "characters" act out the fight.

While this was a useful way to keep track of the movements, it made for a pretty boring scene, because I focused way too much on the mechanics and not enough on the story.

This is a common problem with fight scenes. Describing the fight isn't the same as showing the action.

BANG! POW! BOOM! (writing action like an end boss)

By James R. Tuck, @JamesTuckwriter

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: When I was a wee young writer way too long ago, I remember using pewter figures from my Dungeons & Dragons set to stage a fight scene. I planned it out, had my figs move and wrote that scene in meticulous detail as I ran through it in "real life." Do I need to say it was a terrible scene? Had I only had James Tuck's advice back then, my scene would have been so much better. Luckily for everyone today, he's here to keep us from making the same fight scene mistakes I made.

James was born and raised in Georgia and grew up drawing and reading a steady helping of Robert E. Howard stories, Golden Age comics, and books he was far too young to be reading. Combined with a very Southern involvement in church and watching horror movies, this became the bedrock of his creativity. He became a tattoo artist, and now writes dark fantasy. He's the author of the Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter series, a variety of short stories and novellas set in the same world (and some outside of it), and the editor of the Thunder on the Battlefield anthologies. His newest series (co-written with Debbie Viguie), is Robin Hood: Demon's Bane.

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Take it away James...

Writing Fight Scenes Without Melodrama

By Joyce Scarbrough, @JoyceScarbrough

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: I still remember the first fight scene I ever wrote, way back in the day. Complicated, overdone, I actually used ten or so pewter gaming figures to go through it step by step to get the action down just right. I don't think I let a single punch or sword thrust escape my notice, and you can imagine the horror of that scene. (Thankfully I got better at it). Today Joyce Scarbrough visits the lecture hall to share her tips on writing fight scenes to spare you from crafting any ghastly monstrosities.

The valedictorian of her high school graduating class, Joyce Scarbrough is a Southern woman weary of seeing herself and her peers portrayed in books and movies as either post-antebellum debutantes or barefoot hillbillies á la Daisy Duke, so all her heroines are smart, unpretentious women who refuse to be anyone but themselves. Joyce writes both adult and YA fiction and has four published novels as well as several short stories available as Kindle downloads. Joyce loves hanging out with other writers and stays active in the Mobile Writers Guild as well as her regional chapter of SCBWI. She’s lived all her life in beautiful LA (lower Alabama), she’s the mother of three gifted children and a blind Pomeranian named Tilly, and she’s been married for 31 years to the love of her life—a superhero who disguises himself during the day as a high school math teacher and coach.

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Take it away Joyce...