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

[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*