I’m a fourth degree black belt in Taekwondo. Sometimes when I read a fight scene, I see it falling short of greatness. I thought to write down a few basic principles that I think every writer should know.
1. When weapons are drawn, the fights escalate to be about the weapons. I recently read a scene from a peer where some thug drew a knife and then proceeded to jab the protagonist in the chest with his finger. The writer was a good writer, and so nothing bad against them, but this just doesn’t make sense. The minute someone draws a knife, the knife must become the focal point.
2. Once weapons are in play, don’t ignore them. I read another scene, by another really good writer, where the character pulled a knife and it kind of disappears for a while and then comes back again. Simply put: everyone focuses on a weapon. If it falls, people actually try to pick it up (sounds dumb, but it’s true.)
3. People who swing wildly sometimes lose. It’s called “broadcasting”. A good fighter tries to keep moves tight and quick. The person who lets you know they are fighting is sometimes the person who ends up hurt.
4. Speaking of broadcasting, if the fight does involve weapons and supposedly the fighters are experienced, they will try to keep the weapons in front of them. Pulling the weapon back behind the person, then swinging it forward again is wasting time and broadcasting the strike. Sorry, Luke Skywalker, I’d take you out in a light-saber battle in a second.
5. Physical fights are usually a series of escalations. Note the word “usually”. Sometimes people fly off the handle. You know your characters. But usually things start with words, will move to some form of contact, and move in stages from there.
6. Avoid long dialogues. When angry, people don’t tend to turn into eloquent speakers. If the dialogue is long or flowery, something will feel off to the reader.
7. Use short sentences. It’s the same reason for the dialogue, except the narration should be quick. To the point. Powerful.
8. The obvious blows are the ones that fail. Too many times I’ve seen writing where the female protagonist escapes a rape situation with a good knee to the bad guy’s groin. For starters, any guy in the process of doing something so horrid as a rape is already thinking about their private parts. Perhaps a bit too much. And any guy who’s been hit there once in their life becomes a master at deflecting blows to that region. They could be dead on their ass drunk, and their hand will fly to protect that spot in a flash. Instead, hit other vulnerable spots. People talk about the eyes. That’s true, if you happen to have a fork or knife in your hand, a fast blow to the eyes will stop anyone. But don’t forget the throat. You don’t need a weapon for that. A hard blow to the throat will at the very least stop someone’s breath for a few seconds (and it could easily be much more damaging). Then knee them in the groin.
9. Noise is the best protector of a weaker character under attack in a public place. Someone trying to harm someone else will attempt to do it in a private place. Often attackers try to move their victims accordingly. Lots of noise is sometimes better than even a knee to the groin.
10. People can be immobilized. Many martial arts teach secrets of immobilization. Our joints usually only work in one way, and a weaker person can immobilize a bigger person, if they know what they’re doing.
11. The force of a blow isn’t only dependent on the amount of effort an attacker makes. If you’re writing a story with an abusive husband beating his wife, he may wrongly believe that if he holds back a little, it doesn’t hurt her as much. That’s because we’re conditioned to judge the strength of our blows based on our own bodies. And body mass means quite a lot, but many people simply don’t understand that. This can be important if two people collide, a blow can be devastating even if the person put little strength behind it.
12. In real life, fights don’t sound like they do in the movies. We are so conditioned to believe certain sounds, that people actually add them to movies. That “bam” you hear when Joe punches Bob is not realistic, especially if it’s Batman. 
13. Sometimes movies also have characters do stupid fight moves. They look pretty, but that’s about it. Don’t write those into your story. Take for instance if someone is running up behind you. You make a fist and stick your left arm out (I feel like this is the Hokey Pokey). Now you remain facing forward (stupidly because the bad guy’s approaching you from behind) and you swing at the elbow, back-fisting the bad guy just as he reaches you. Picture your left arm making a “L”. Got it? Seen it in any movies? I’ve seen it knock out people in dozens of movies. Yeah right- only on the big screen.
14. Sometimes movies will also exaggerate the importance of a blow. I see this a lot- one character doing unrealistically high damage to an opponent using a legitimate blow. Be careful that someone who has 100 pounds over an opponent doesn’t get flattened by any kick or punch that doesn’t look like the person put their full body strength into it. Speed is important to succeed in making a blow, but to knock a person off their feet, power and strength is more important. The exception is knock-out techniques- those don’t necessarily require strength, but speed (see below).
15. People don’t fight fair- unless it’s a martial art competition, but sometimes not even then.
16. Size matters. I wish it didn’t. But it does. There are some martial arts that train a person how to deal with someone bigger. But most martial arts are based on developing skills to deal with a person your height, weight and sex. The more skills you develop, the further outside your range you can go- but there’s a limit. I’ve seen many black belts. And I’d wager money on a 6’5” 300 pound thug against a nine-year-old black belt any day. Some writers ignore this and let their protagonist just be a master at fighting and go unchallenged. These tend to come across more as silly, however. The closer in proximity a person is, the more size makes a difference. Which leads to the next point…
17. Range is important in a fight. How close are the opponents? Just a few inches one way or the other can completely change the nature of a fight. For instance, a kick boxer will want to be just out of arm’s range. The minute the sumo wrestler hugs the kick boxer, the dynamics change entirely. If you write a scene with the POV of an experienced fighter, and that character isn’t paying attention to range, then something’s wrong.
18. Everyone has an element. Think how that might manifest in a fight scene. If I’m on a boat swaying violently due to a storm and I have to fight a sailor, I don’t think it matters that I’m a fourth degree black belt. I think I’d get my ass whipped.
19. Choose verbs with hard consonants if you can. I hope it goes without saying try active verbs and avoid passive voice.
20. Pain is a key factor in determining within seconds how most fights end. Fights don’t tend to last long, but a lot can happen in just seconds. And if you write a fight, and your character has someone trying to hurt them, unless they are very lucky (and it might seem unrealistic if you’re not careful), you’d better be ready to write pain. And by the way, an experienced fighter expects pain. An inexperienced fighter is shocked by it.
21. It is possible to knock a person out with one blow. Maybe, if the blow causes a fast and violent twist to the head- there’s supposedly a spot in the lower jaw that could do the trick with a nice side punch. But it’s not easy, and the key is moving the head fast so if a person is braced, it’s more difficult.
22. Some fighters will sacrifice their weaker arm to win. You might see this in a knife fight. The last thing someone wielding a knife (or a broken bottle) on an unarmed opponent expects is for the opponent to rush them. And they will also expect that once the knife hits a target it will disable the person. But if the knife hits an arm, the fighter still has a chance. An experienced fighter will protect vital areas of the body (like the head), but will sometimes also force an attack on non-vital areas in order to get the jump on their attacker.
23. If you’re writing the POV of an experienced fighter, the character will focus on staying mobile. I already mentioned range, but keeping from getting pinned into a corner is important. If one person is fighting multiple people, they will try to line them up so that they only have to deal with one blow at a time. The fighter will try to stay on their toes and get the better position.
24. If you want the reader to feel like they are inside a fight scene, be very careful of too much analysis. Too much analysis gives the impression that things aren’t happening quickly. A deep and close POV is necessary in most fight scenes.
25. Combinations matter. By combinations, I mean using multiple blows, often times to different targets. The opponent blocks the first few, but the last one comes as a surprise and hits. On a related point…
26. Every fighter has favorite combinations that they’ve practiced repeatedly. If they don’t, then it’s clear they aren’t an experienced fighter. Keep this in mind if you have the POV of a fighter.
27. Sliding matters. Not only have I studied Taekwondo, but I also spent over five years studying Aikido. Unlike Taekwondo, Aikido is “pure self-defense”. That is, there are no punches, kicks or strikes taught from an offensive perspective. It’s all about using your opponent’s energy against them, to blend with an attack and redirect it. That involves careful timing. It’s surprising how much difference a few inches can make, and often an experienced fighter will slide on their feet in rhythm with an incoming attack in order to get the right timing to respond.
28. Rhythm matters. I know some fighters that lull their opponents with a rhythm. They’ll strike 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, with the same tempo and beat. Then, they’ll strike 1-2-3-4, varying the speed (hopefully for the faster) at the end. This has the effect of tricking the opponent, and it sometimes works.
29. Sometimes the best defense is to avoid an incoming strike. Make no mistake, there are fighters that can strike hard enough to break any bone in the human body. To deflect this strong of a blow with a single arm is nothing short of suicide. An experienced fighter will block blows to the head, but will also try to move out of the way whenever possible.
30. This is an important point: most experienced fighters will avoid fighting if they can. Violence is horrible and is not a good solution.
Hopefully, some of these pointers help!
I’ve been thinking hard about the topic of developing reader empathy for a character. It isn’t that I’m an expert in this area. This is an area that as a writer, I need the most work and improvement on. But one thing I can do is read and think about how other writers seem to master this area. I’d like to share my conclusions and find out from others what they think.
It boils down to doing four things. The first is to develop strong visceral emotions for the POV character, especially during significant turning points. The second is to provide a clear understanding of what the characters wants at any given moment. The third is also provide a clear understanding of what holds the character back. The fourth has to do with spurring the imagination: the reader needs to be able to visualize the character, imagine how they walk and talk and behave. I’m certainly not the first writer to emphasize the significance of each of these assertions individually. This is my list, however.
The strong visceral emotions are important. As the writing instructor Margie Lawson (check out her website ) says, these must represent uncontrolled physical reactions for a POV character. Strong emotions affect us physically as well, and these turn into excellent “show”s.
Having a clear understanding of what the POV character wants in the moment is crucial as well. We need to root for the character. But there’s a subtle point here, and I’ve seen many blogs that seem to skip over this small detail- the notion must be precise, a deep notion isn’t enough. For instance, in a current WIP, my protagonist wants to find her missing mother. Unfortunately, we need more, because the reader isn’t exposed to what finding the mother might be like. The reader needs to have enough clarity to be able to imagine the scene where the POV gets their desires. It doesn’t matter if the reader is right or wrong, or how closely it matches the author’s view. All that matters is that there’s enough data to capture the reader’s imagination.
Similarly, the reader needs to have clarity in terms of what holds the POV character back. Conflict is essential for fiction. In my opinion, it’s the most important thing. If a character wants to ask out the cute new girl in class, it won’t work for the reader if the reader ends up thinking, “Good grief, just ask her.” For many novels, one expects there to be growth in a character, where they learn how to deal with things that previously held them back. This means that the character must be involved in the solution to whatever problems they faced. If a reader is unable to summarize that character arc after reading the novel, to some extent the author has failed.
The last element has to do with capturing the reader’s imagination. Ever notice how much fan fiction some stories generate? How is that possible? The reader needs to be able to imagine the character. I once wrote a series of seven novels which I read to my children and I’ll never forget something my oldest said during a scene in the seventh novel: “I knew the character would say that- it’s exactly how I imagined them to respond to that situation.” And I did a Snoopy dance in my head, because I knew I had made the character real enough, three dimensional enough, to enable a reader to get them. Readers need to see the characters in their head: how the character talks, walks, and behaves. That doesn’t mean they need every detail, they just need enough to take over where the writing lets off.
Anyways, this is my understanding based on novels I’ve read that I’ve enjoyed. I am curious what others think, because as I’ve said, I’m learning here myself. Do others think this list is complete? Let me know. We’re all here to learn.
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