3 Effective Ways to Improve Your Fight Scene

By Grace A. Johnson

Admit it, fight scenes are difficult. Even the veteran writers who have watched their favorite movie fight scenes hundreds of times, scribbled notebooks full of details, and choreographed fights with their brothers have a hard time putting the action on paper. You can have a vivid picture of the fight in your head, but no matter how hard or often you try, you can’t seem to write it out.

You’ve done everything:

But what’s the use when the words won’t flow or make sense?

Trust me, I’ve been there. From sword fights to fisticuffs, I’ve wracked my brain a million times over to figure out the best way to describe my fight scenes. You need to do some things differently in your fight scene—and here’s how you can!

Spare the Details

This is likely the only time you’ll ever hear it from me, but when it comes to writing fight scenes, the last thing you want to do is bog readers down in play-by-play descriptions. Allison Grace did a fantastic job in explaining why too much (or too little) description can bore your readers in her article several months back, but today I want to focus on what the happy middle looks like and how you can achieve that!

Whether it’s a play/practice fight, barroom brawl, fight from another character’s perspective, or even an all-out war, fight scenes are always exhilarating and full of action—which is all too easy to capture on-screen. Without the assistance of cameras, we writers have to carefully select our words, structure our sentences, and shorten our paragraphs to bring the action to life.

A great example of a poorly executed fight scene would be this one, an excerpt from one of my own works:

Here’s what I did wrong:

I’ve since learned the error of my ways, I assure you, so here’s what this scene would look like if I spared the details and focused on what mattered.

Can you see the difference? In less than half the amount of words, I was able to describe the same fight without any useless or boring details. This way, the pace of my writing has the same rhythm as the fight would if you watched it on TV. I may not make my word count for the day, but you can not only see the action, you can also feel the character’s struggle both inside and out.

This is both the writer’s great advantage and disadvantage: we can convey two different things at once—action and emotion, the physical and the mental—which a camera cannot. However, it takes a lot of time and effort to accurately portray both.

Ask yourself these questions when reviewing your scene:

Show the Inner Struggle

Oftentimes we get so swept up in the battle, in the punches or parries or cannon blasts, that we forget to include the character’s internal struggle as well. Especially in fight scenes between mortal enemies, old friends, or to the death, emotion plays a powerful force in the fight.

However, using an overabundance of adverbs or, like I mentioned above, taking up whole paragraphs for internal monologue, isn’t going to help. It’s all about balance. All of the elements—action, dialogue, monologue, etc.—should weave in and out of each other in perfect synchronization.

Here’s an example of a fight scene without any emotion:

Here’s what I did wrong this time:

The good part about this short excerpt is that you can tell exactly what’s going on and see the action clearly—just like you’re supposed to. The bad part is that there is no emotion whatsoever. Why are they fighting? Are they angry with each other? Is there disappointment or animosity at play? What are the opponents thinking? Whose perspective is this in?

I actually wrote this scene from a third-party’s perspective—a character who wasn’t in the fight—and Rina and Billy are actually just practicing. In a case like that, a lack of emotion would be understandable—but what if Rina and Billy were at odds? Could you imagine the two as enemies in the above excerpt?

Let’s try this again, but this time we’ll put the fight in Billy’s perspective and imagine the two are enemies:

Now what do you read? From the first-person perspective of Billy, you can experience the fight and taste his need for dominance. His thought “darn you, woman” makes his anger toward her perfectly clear, and when he talks about beating her down, we can see his inner struggle to defeat her.

Like I said above, I kept the narrative’s focus on the action and Billy’s focus on the here-and-now. Had I gone on and on about something that didn’t matter, his feelings and thoughts wouldn’t have been so clear, would they?

When you go to write your scene, make sure you portray both the mental and the physical aspects of the fight and keep your focus solely on them. I mean, if Billy were off in la-la-land, Rina would’ve cut him down in a minute, trust me.

Ask yourself these questions, then translate the answers into your fight:

Say Something

Dialogue is actually one of the most important aspects of fight scenes. Think back to some of the most iconic fights in film—or my personal favorites: Anakin and Obi-Wan’s duel on Mustafar, Luke vs Vader, Jack Sparrow and Will Turner in the blacksmith’s shop. They all include some witty or emotional dialogue.

Try to imagine Anakin and Obi-Wan’s fight without their heartrending exchange. The viewers wouldn’t have felt the same connection to the characters and the scene without knowing just how they felt—angry, betrayed, lost, alone, hopeless.

Emotions like these can be translated into narrative or monologue—or, better yet, dialogue. With dialogue, the fight can have more than just a physical impact; it can leave an emotional mark on the characters for the rest of the book, depending on what was said.

One of my recent fight scenes has very little dialogue, so when I take it out of context, the reader has no idea why Keaton and Quinn are fighting—and, come to think of it, I don’t suppose Quinn really knows why he’s being beat up either.

The emotion and action are both there, but let’s see what it would look like with a few well-placed quotation marks.

See the difference? Now you have an idea of why they’re fighting and Quinn will have a verbal reminder of the consequences for crossing Keaton. Both excerpts are fine, but adding a little bit of dialogue helps their motives and emotion come through much more clearly.

Don’t know when to use dialogue? Here are some things to ask yourself:

In Conclusion

Yes, fight scenes are tough. Sometimes the words won’t flow. Sometimes the action doesn’t seem clear. Sometimes the motive behind the fight and the opponents’ emotions and thoughts are difficult to see or understand.

But if you can remember to (1) spare the details, (2) show the inner struggle, and (3) say something, you’ll be able to translate clarity, motive, and emotion into your scene without cluttering the narrative with useless description!

What are some of y’all’s favorite fight scenes—from books, TV, or movies? How well did they balance the description, emotion, and action? Which of these elements is the most difficult for you to include? Let me know in the comments!