Bittercon: Let's all Fight, Portraying Hand to Hand Combat in Fantasy and Science Fiction Settings

[attackfish]

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?

Written for bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind.

Comments

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

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.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

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.

*chokes* that's pretty hilarious.

[clarentine]

I’m going to caveat this response by noting that I write mostly close-in third person or first person point of view. In those POV frames, I have internal dialogue to work with, taking the place of the external dialogue that drives so many other scenes, and I lean on that to give purpose to the fight – and it’s that purpose that I really want to see in a fight scene, and which I work very hard to incorporate in my characters’ fights.

A well-choreographed fight scene is not a blow by blow catalog. The POV character is not going to remember each blow, anyway, or see every move his or her opponent makes. What matters, and what I try to depict, are the blows and moves that affect the plot of the scene. Is the POV character, a thief, expected to manipulate lock picks in the next chapter once she gets past this guard? Then if she takes a blow to the hands that breaks bones or otherwise makes picking locks a (more) difficult task, you’d want to get that on the screen. Does your character need to be out the door before the pursuit baying in the near distance catches up? Illustrate every little trip and slowing action that keeps him from gaining the door…and maybe toss in some internal dialogue as your character remembers what happened to the last guy those hounds caught up with before he could escape. If each action depicted increases tension, there should be no worries about the scene being boring!

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'm just coming off of writing 9000 words of pure fight scene, and it took me one hell of a long time to block the whole thing out, and more practically, I had a list of things that had to happen at certain points (one character had to be almost mortally wounded, one character had to succumb to mind control, another had to fight it off, the character with throwing knives had to run dangerously low on weapons, and one character had to be run down almost to zero and go into emotional shock). So I framed the fight to include those things. I write most scenes that way, with a bullet pointed list of what has to happen, but fir fight scenes, it's even more important. I also split the fight into quadrants so I could focus on them in turn. Throughout the fight scene, I made sure that I showed two of the characters, who are close friends who become lovers, fight in close proximity and watch each other's back. I wrote the play by play, but mostly to show some of the characters doing some very unexpected things, and lingered on the emotional impact of the fight.

I never want to do that again.

[clarentine]

I never want to do that again.

And you have, of course, just cursed yourself. *g*

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* of course.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

There's also the difficulty that if you have a real badass character, established as a powerful fighter, but you dwell on the things making them nervous, the setbacks, and the injuries without the things that they're doing well, do you make the reader wonder if they're really as good a fighter as you say?

[marycatelli]

In some series they have the new menace always take on the biggest guy on the good guys' side and make him look weak.

It makes him look weak. . . .

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the the Worf Effect (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect).

[zanzjan.livejournal.com]

I would really like to have more of a sense of the practical differences of brawling in zero or low gravity, if anyone wants to share some physics with me (-:

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Well, each punch will make you fly back a lot further... And you would have to find some way to brace yourself before you land a blow so that you don't fly backwards. And there will be more attacks from above!

[clarentine]

Not to mention the odds of being hit by a weapon no one's actively wielding are much greater. *g*

[zanzjan.livejournal.com]

True, and all the more fun for the writer! (-: But would a landed punch in low grav have the same physical impact on the punch-ee as at 1G? Or would it take a super-pummeling to take down your opponent?

(btwthx! (-:)

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Depends on if one is braced or not.

Hitting something is a transfer of energy and momentum. When the attacker is braced (say, in a proper fighting stance in a gravity environment), they're able to direct more energy into the punch.

(Note: very simplified physics follows. Usual caveats about friction, sponginess of materials, etc.)

Momentum is conserved in any collision (including a punch). Momentum = mass x velocity, and you have to add up all the moving parts in the scenario.

The puncher, if properly braced, will avoid absorbing much of the momentum (by keeping their personal velocity near zero). Their opponent would absorb the bulk of it, and therefore be shoved. (If both are braced, then you get into absorption of energy in the materials, e.g., flesh and bone.)

It's not so much that weightless, or a lower gravity, would make the punch less. It's that lack of gravity makes it harder to brace oneself and apply the maximum of force.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Also, if your opponent isn't braced, more of the force can be transferred into making them fly across the room than into injuring them. Of course if they then hit a wall...

[marycatelli]

The collorary is the unbraced opponent would be pushed away not so much hurt.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Only if they didn't smash into a conveniently placed wall...

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I'm not so sure. Are we forgetting the energy transfer when a blow lands? And these aren't rigid systems. The sort of blow to the jaw which knocks out your enemy is a sudden acceleration of the skull, with a lot of rotation because it's anchored by the neck, which rattles the brains about as the momentum in transferred. Concussion, in other words, and that's going to happen even in zero-g.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

yes, but blows to softer areas wouldn't hurt nearly so bad. We would probably develop a very different style of fighting if we were to fight in 0-G that would focus more on head and face blows, which are a pain for the puncher.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Punch somebody in the gut, and it's something like compressing a spring attached to a fair bit of inertial mass. That spring is still going to get compressed in zero-G.

Maybe we should submit a proposal to NASA...

It'd give a whole new meaning to the term "vomit comet".

Hmm, maybe Kirk isn't trained in zero-G personal combat, so he goes for the knock-out punch, while Spock...

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Yes, but a lot of the force would still be turned into backwards momentum, wouldn't it? It would be harder to compress that spring.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling there will be a lot more grab-punch combinations.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Judo and other martial arts that focus on throws would be very useful. Why bruise your knuckles when you can toss your opponents into the walls and let the walls do the hard part for you?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Whereas sweeps would go out of fashion reallly quick.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

If you're well braced and the person being punched is well braced (which you might both be if your in small quarters, yes. There would also be a lot of injuries in larger spaces from impacts with walls.

[little-mage.livejournal.com]

There's a good zero gravity fight scene in Ender's Game.

[zanzjan.livejournal.com]

Responding more to the main topic (I'm at work and apologize for my piecemeal participation at the 'mo.) As a reader I tend to find fight-scenes that are merely slug-it-out contests (either with fists or guns) kind of boring, unless either the way the characters fight, or what they say/do during the course of the fight, somehow provides either additional insight on the character or the unfolding plot. You brought up Avatar the Last Airbender, and that's a fantastic example of this: by associating very different martial arts forms for each of the types of bending, the very movements of the characters added an additional layer of emphasis to who and what they were.

As a reader, I tend to want my fight scenes to either be short or to provide me with additional information/insight/entertainment/satisfaction I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. As a writer, I don't tend to write a lot of fight scenes, and when I do it's often more about the dialogue during the altercation than the specific foot-moves and punches. I do try to make it make sense from a purely physical standpoint, though -- for big melees, lego people are a handy diagramming tool. (-:

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The problem with dialogue during a fight is that it's frequently not so realistic, because a lot of us when fighting can't summon up words. It's a trade off. There are points when a fighter can talk, and would, and times when you have to communicate what they're doing without dialogue.

I love lego people! I end up using beads, and earrings, and pen caps, and...

[zanzjan.livejournal.com]

I blocked out a fight with smarties and m&ms once, but then I ate most of the participants by accident when I was thinking about something else.

I'm thinking about the fights I've written and they don't tend to be all-out fight-for-your-life sorts of things, so some amount of dialogue -- albeit short, sporadic, and to the point -- is not unreasonable. But I'm definitely going to have to think about that more.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

No! Calamity! Disaster! Candy soldier mass-murder!

I mapped out a battle with blueberries (don't know why, but I hate blueberries) at the dinner table when I was 16. Convinced my mom to eat the blueberries instead. It was a major strategic victory, even if I lost my whole army.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I ate most of the participants by accident when I was thinking about something else

LOL! :)

I have been known to sort of act out moves, but I do have a fairly good spatial imagination, so keeping track of where characters are is one of the things I can actually do pretty well. However I will often sketch out a quick plan of the area of combat, just so that inanimate objects don't move while I'm not looking.

[marycatelli]

And it gets hilariously unrealistic when people spew long speeches -- while leaping through the air to attack, say.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

*snort*

[marycatelli]

Ah, the knowledge problem. . . .

I was watching the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie with my sister who fenced and the scene in the smithy. They were moving too quickly for me to pick out flaws, but my sister says -- it's nicely choreographed.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I know a lot about unarmed fighting and and I'm slowly learning about armed fighting. Watching a lot of fight scenes ends up being unintentionally hilarious.

It is, but I was too distracted by Johnny.

[marycatelli]

Of course, my other sister can't watch the movie because of Elizabeth's unrealistic corset.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

My mother ran a tape recorder last time I watched it just to prove I can't help myself snarking at it. Not only is her corset unrealistic, they act like corsets are new!

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I had a look at one of my fight scenes.

I suppose it's OK to describe the character as moving like a combination of Fred Astaire and Miyamoto Musashi. I hardly described the actual detail of the fighting.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Plus the unrealistic pretty stuff is so much fun!

Now I'm fantasizing about a flynning scene between Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Ginger pwns.

How about higher gravity?

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

One person in the fight is very good in 1G, and okay in 0G. But the fight is in 1.05G (picking a number I think is high enough for some differences, but not the stereotypical 1.5G.) And the other person is only moderately good, but used to that gravity.

Re: How about higher gravity?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Well you'd lose some effective strength, but so would your opponent, and you'd both be harder to move, so blows would have a greater effect, right?

Re: How about higher gravity?

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

But it might effect stance and balance. Not so significant for Hollywood fist-fights, but what would Bruce lee do?

Re: How about higher gravity?

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of fighters would start to take up grappling...