A poll for all writers....

[estepheia]

Today I posted the big showdown fight of LadyCat and my (delayed) Christmas fic. And it made me realize (again) just how difficult it is to write fight scenes using a large ensemble. For one thing I inevitably slip into the passive voice when facing the problem of having to describe simultaneous events sequentially. I remember writing the two big fight scenes in Things Present - Things Past - and how long it took me. Am I the only one who finds this incredibly difficult? So, I decided to do a

[Poll #233729]

Feel free to elaborate in the comments. Also, if you have a few failsafe tips regarding fight choreography, well I'd definitely appreciate them.

Comments

[mommanerd.livejournal.com]

Fight scenes are amazingly difficult. I feel like a total dork writing them because I have no clue. I try to keep them simple and short -- concentrate on the Buffy quippage and hope for the best.

I've never attempted a sex scene. Don't know that I ever will. But I sure like reading them!

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Buffy quippage helps. Dialogue is a good way to break up fight descriptions. It moves the fighting into the background, which allows it to be more sketchy.
Thanks for replying. :-)

[entrenous88.livejournal.com]

I've got an "other" -- kisses. I find that writing them without sounding overwrought or sappy a challenge, and I'm only just now starting to feel confident about my ability to approach writing them.

Kisses are harder than sex scenes for me, because how many ways can you describe the physical act of kissing and manage to convey how (potentially) intimate it is? Not to mention the range of reactions/emotions in response, while still keeping in mind that it's a substantial connection, not (just) an opportunity for musing on the characters or relationships.

I find that many many writers seem to find composing kissing scenes a challenge -- or at least if they don't, they should, because there are not so many well-written ones out there.

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about kisses, which I just cannot write. I myself don't like kissing, it ranges somewhere with brushing my teeth. The only thing I *really* like in my mouth is food.

Therefore dueling tongues make me either laugh or go ewwww.
I have read kissing scenes that went on longer than the plot of a whole lenghty fic and I was never impressed and never felt like melting. But handholding, the way a fingetip paints a pattern in the other's palm, or the way the thumb brushes against the back of the hand, now *that* I enjoy reading. :-)

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

I cheat with the fight scenes -- I have a co-author who thinks that those are the easy bits.

What I find the hardest to do are the ensemble conference scenes, those scenes where a whole bunch of the characters have to get together and trade exposition and decide what to do next. There's a reason why a lot of first-time readers of LOTR bail at the Council of Elrond: it's the mother of all conference scenes, and not even the fact that it's a well-done conference scene can keep it from being tough slogging at times. In Buffy, we've got all those scenes around the library table where the Scoobies are discussing the Demonic Threat of the Week; the scriptwriters mostly kept those from flagging by slipping in humorous interaction and bits of character-arc, and by every so often having a conference scene get broken up by unexpected action. But I'll still bet that those scenes were nobody's favorite scenes to write.

For fight scenes and the like: I've known writers who would get up from their desks and physically act out various moves; I've also known people to use everything from Lego figures to the salt and pepper shakers to block out the action. Tight, subjective POV in a fight scene helps, too; that way you're only seeing what that one character sees, and anything that he or she doesn't look at, hit, get hit by, trip over, or back into doesn't have to get sorted out until it's all over.

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Exposition is tough per se. It falls under the category of information management. If you give too much it's boring, if not enough the reader doesn't feel in safe hands.
Still, I never found conference scenes *that* tricky (or maybe I'm not aware of doing it badly). I have to picture the characters, imagine their body language; it's like creating music with several voices, picking up a theme, dropping it. Humor helps, like you said.

Getting a suitable complementary co-author is of course the perfect way of going about *any* problem. LOL.

Thanks for replying.

[rahirah]

When I'm doing a big fight scene I draw a rough map of the area and move little counters around. It's saved me from losing combatants and from making really dumb mistakes. (Oops, if X stands there, Y has a clear shot at him...)

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Yes! I do that too, I draw maps with initials for the combatants and arrows pointing here and there. Otherwise I get lost.
Thanks for answering.

[onetwomany.livejournal.com]

I have a martial arts background, and I can draw upon that with fightscenes. But it’s hard to write believeable combat, and I’ve never tried one that’s focused on more than the pov character and a couple of opponents. Even then, I often feel that I’m describing some elaborate dance rather than a believable battle. Or I get the sense that I’m obviously just showing off, which I guess I kind of am, and that someone who really knows their stuff will pick up on that easily… anyway, yeah, fight scenes are hard! I tend to just do what I do with sex scenes, and focus on the emotion.

Still, reckon dialogue between groups of people is harder still. Voices I think i pull off okay, but giving everyone a fair go, and keeping the flow realistic? I find that next to impossible.

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

Even then, I often feel that I’m describing some elaborate dance rather than a believable battle.

But dancing is all Spike and Buffy have ever done, according to Spike.

I've done some karate (minimal, I must admit), which helps some, and I think the level of details depend on the POV. Post-S4 Xander would have sloppy descriptions for his moves, Riley would have clean, academic terminology and

In my writing, I've only had something approaching a sex scene twice. One is the tail end of a Faith/Watcher argument, and it is meant to be transgressive and brutal, but I don't think I nailed it. The second is an F/X scene that's twisted but hot. I haven't put them out to people yet, because they're part of unfinished narratives. Middles are hard.

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Angry transgressive sex? That's a fine line to do well. Sounds interesting.
And yeah, dance terminology is good for fight scene. I'm still waiting for cheerleader terms to crop up in early Buffy fighting scenes but no such luck. :-) Maybe I'll do it some time. And yeah, the terminology depends very much on the POV.
Thanks for replying.
Darn, I wish I had more time for this thread, but I'm on a roll today, translating really well with relatively little effort, so now I'm just scared to drop the ball....

*rushes off.*

Fight scenes from a martial artist and brawler POV

[astarte99.livejournal.com]

I don't write sex scenes or love scenes so I have no idea how hard I would find those to write.

I think that fight scenes are easier to write when you have been in more fights and have personal experience to go on. The best fight scene that I wrote was a rework of a huge fight that I was marginally part of. I think that fight scenes in TV are too cleaned up anyway- ppl don't attack one at a time, and there are tons of mistakes made - I accidentally got my nose broken one time by one of my pals as he was swinging at someone else. Fights, especially big fights, are messy and uncoordinated, though you can definitely tell when ppl have been fighting together for a long time. They work much better together.

The hardest thing is maintaining their very different fighting styles - Gunn is especially frusterating since his fighting style changes so much. Most of them are actually bad fighters, which makes them harder to write.


As far as advice- it's hard to give, other than watch more fights. *grins* Some of the hong kong action movies (like the John Woo ones - not his terrible american action style but the HK version), can be good for inspiration, but still, it's far from reality.

[sadbhyl.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with Astarte. I have no problem writing sex scenes because, well, I've actually *had* sex a couple of times. Well, at least three .. . But I've never even taken a martial arts class, let alone been in an actual fight. I would rather do *anything* than write a fight scene. Which is probably why I've only written, like, two of them.

[spiralleds.livejournal.com]

Needing to write fight scenes causes low grade anxiety for me. Outside of the tips others have mentioned, I go with the KISS theory when I write them. (Keep It Simple (and short) Stupid).

I've never written an original character and eventually I should tackle that, shouldn't I? I guess I've written what would count as a love scene and it wasn't as difficult as I thought. However I don't know that I'll be ready to write a sex scene any time soon.

My endings are acceptable dismounts, but don't stick like they should. There is a finished story that I'm toying with the idea of tweaking the ending because I know it isn't great. Plus if I do so, it might fall within canon perimeters and I'm a canon whore.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

With any sort of action, including fights, I try to concentrate on the rhythm and pacing of my words. I write it almost like poetry. I have no idea if this works for the reader but as the writer it gives me something to concentrate on!

Otherwise it's just like writing a sex scene - concentrate on what you are trying to say via the scene, not on the nuts and bolts of insert tab A into slot B. Let any emotion or excitement turn up by itself.

So for me the toughest bits are any sort of introspection or interior exposition - I worry that they give away too much, get too schmaltzy and are just downright boring. Any suggestions would be welcome.

[hesadevil.livejournal.com]

My first piece of action was a 'practice' piece (that appears in the fic but later) for a fight scene. I wrote it just as I would poetry. It was the only way I could translate motion into words. (Angel practicing martial arts.) That seemed fine but, for the fight scene, I couldn't get it to work.

[hesadevil.livejournal.com]

I'm a newbie fiction writer and found all form of action difficult to write. As for fight scenes; I started by re-watching a lot; that didn't really help because I'm not very good at translating 3 dimensions (or 5 in this case as movement and sound are added) into two (like design work for embroidery- I work from photos and pictures). So I moved on to reading lots of action.

Endings - don't have any trouble with them - haven't written it yet. LOL. But I'm a big fan of Maeve Binchy who writes totally believable endings. No 'happy ever after' or 'that has taken care of that' endings for her. Hers are totally believable in that her characters, like real people take all their insecurities and flaws with them into the sunset.

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

Most effective fight scene I've ever read is toward the end of this post-apocalyptic novel I read in middle school. I can't remember the author or title for the life of me. The protagonist has set up a utopia in Wyoming (OK, a "hah" there, sure) and the resurrected post-apocalypse US government wants to take it down, and there's a ground invasion, and the scene I remember is of an invading soldier, who I don't believe is given a name, as he goes through a skirmish. There's no point where he's really acting -- his body's reacting on instinct when everything happens to him. Lots of sentence fragments. Lots of details. Everything quick and loud and awful. And then it ends, and the details float and the names come out again and things flow and he reflects.

But they are so hard to do right. From that, it seems like fragmented details and strict POV are your friends, and knowing the terminology doesn't hurt.

[minim_calibre]

Love scenes, as opposed to sex scenes or romantic scenes, are a pain. Of course, by love scene, I mean a scene where it has to be apparent to the reader that Character X is in love with Character Y and vice versa and they both are spilling their guts/confirming that information. In character. It's that second part that sucks. Maybe I should start writing emotionally open characters who don't give me that sort of problem. Bastards.

Fight scenes (which I don't care if I do well, I guess, as I write so few of them), I try to draw from any physical fights I've been in, though it's been a good long time, and I mostly remember fragments of movement and sensation. I also stick to really limited 3rd limited for them.

Sex scenes are both easy and hard, depending on my mood, and the reason behind the inclusion of sex in the story.

[estepheia.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should start writing emotionally open characters who don't give me that sort of problem. Bastards.

I think the best stories come from the inability to be just that: emotionally open. :-)

Thanks for answering. And you're right, a good love scene that doesn't come across as unbearably purple are pretty hard to do.