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You are lying in bed with a book. You’re exhausted, and you’re settling down for a relaxing evening, when suddenly you have a sword in your hands, and you’re right in the middle of a bunch of people hacking each other to bits.
Fantasy stories are frequently the stories of combat, of duels and wars, and tavern brawls, and sword cuts and bloody noses. Even in Contemporary Urban Fantasy settings, hand to hand combat shows up almost as often as it does in Historical and Secondary World Fantasy.
Bizarrely, for a lot of people with an in depth knowledge of anatomy or fighting end up snickering their way through the scenes which are often choreographed with no accounting for realism. Then there are writers who research painstakingly and build as accurate a battle scene as can be constructed.
To give some examples (in television and movies, because film makes it all more obvious) Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s combat scenes are all kinds of fun to watch, but absolutely ridiculous. This isn’t uncommon at all. The beloved fencing scene in The Princess Bride is actually the same set of sword moves done twice and filmed at different angles. On the other end of the spectrum is Avatar: the Last Airbender with its very accurate fighting, that is also all kinds of fun to watch, and includes fire, water, flying, and chucking boulders at people.
Is either one the right way? Is there a right way? Is there a wrong way, other than boring? That’s the other thing. Fight scenes, as action packed as they are by nature are difficult to write and keep interesting because they lack dialogue. Do fight scenes more dialogue? Creating a certain mood in a fight scene is another way to make it less boring, but that’s hard to do too. Writing the combat becomes a matter less of reporting faithfully where each blow lands and more about conveying the internal dynamics of the characters involved. And mapping the whole thing out in one’s head is fiendishly difficult as well. What do we as readers and writers of fantasy get out of or want to see fight scenes, and what would you put into them?
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bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind.
Fantasy stories are frequently the stories of combat, of duels and wars, and tavern brawls, and sword cuts and bloody noses. Even in Contemporary Urban Fantasy settings, hand to hand combat shows up almost as often as it does in Historical and Secondary World Fantasy.
Bizarrely, for a lot of people with an in depth knowledge of anatomy or fighting end up snickering their way through the scenes which are often choreographed with no accounting for realism. Then there are writers who research painstakingly and build as accurate a battle scene as can be constructed.
To give some examples (in television and movies, because film makes it all more obvious) Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s combat scenes are all kinds of fun to watch, but absolutely ridiculous. This isn’t uncommon at all. The beloved fencing scene in The Princess Bride is actually the same set of sword moves done twice and filmed at different angles. On the other end of the spectrum is Avatar: the Last Airbender with its very accurate fighting, that is also all kinds of fun to watch, and includes fire, water, flying, and chucking boulders at people.
Is either one the right way? Is there a right way? Is there a wrong way, other than boring? That’s the other thing. Fight scenes, as action packed as they are by nature are difficult to write and keep interesting because they lack dialogue. Do fight scenes more dialogue? Creating a certain mood in a fight scene is another way to make it less boring, but that’s hard to do too. Writing the combat becomes a matter less of reporting faithfully where each blow lands and more about conveying the internal dynamics of the characters involved. And mapping the whole thing out in one’s head is fiendishly difficult as well. What do we as readers and writers of fantasy get out of or want to see fight scenes, and what would you put into them?
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bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind.
