For me, fight scenes in written fiction need a purpose. They need to show what's going on in someone's head, as related to the fight. A few years ago I wrote up a big discussion of this (http://barbarienne.livejournal.com/83297.html) using a scene from Nine Princes in Amber as an example.
As a reader I'm always annoyed by fight scenes where the narrative is a play-by-play but the blocking and stage directions don't make any sense (presumably because the writer isn't particularly good at visualizing fights). My gold standard for "bad" was a scene in a book where the heroine jumped on an opponent's back, and then kicked him in the throat with her foot, causing him to fly backwards, away from her. The author had completely omitted how the heroine moved from the guy's back to standing in front of him.
Unless a writer is really good at spacial visualization, it probably best to leave out the play-by-play and concentrate on the feel of the scene.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-09-03 04:04 pm (UTC)As a reader I'm always annoyed by fight scenes where the narrative is a play-by-play but the blocking and stage directions don't make any sense (presumably because the writer isn't particularly good at visualizing fights). My gold standard for "bad" was a scene in a book where the heroine jumped on an opponent's back, and then kicked him in the throat with her foot, causing him to fly backwards, away from her. The author had completely omitted how the heroine moved from the guy's back to standing in front of him.
Unless a writer is really good at spacial visualization, it probably best to leave out the play-by-play and concentrate on the feel of the scene.