All About Writing Fight Scenes

All About Writing Fight Scenes

@galaxies-are-my-ink asked,

“Do you have any advice on writing fight scenes? The type of scene I’m writing is mostly hand to hand combat between two experts. I’m definitely not an expert so when I try to write it, the scene ends up sounding repetitive and dull.”

Fore note: This post is coauthored by myself and one of my amazing critique partners, Barik S. Smith, who both writes fantastic fight scenes and teaches mixed martial arts, various artistic martial arts, and weapons classes.

I (Bryn) will tell you a secret: I trained MMA for seven years, and when I write authentic hand to hand fight scenes, they sound dull too. 

The problem with fight scenes in books is that trying to describe each punch and kick and movement (especially if it’s the only thing you’re describing) creates a fight that feels like it’s in slow motion. 

I write…

Lowering her center of gravity, she held her right hand tight to her face and threw a jab towards his chin. He shifted his weight, ducking under her punch. His hair brushed against her fist, and he stepped forward, launching a shovel hook into her exposed side.

But your brain can only read so fast. In real life that series of events would take an instant, but I needed a full eight seconds to read and comprehend it, which gave it an inherent lethargic feel. 

So, we have two primary problems:

How do we describe this fight in a way the reader can understand and keep track of? 

How do we maintain a fast paced, interesting fight once we’ve broken down the fight far enough for readers to understand it? 

(We will get back to these, I promise.) But for now, let’s look at…

Different types of “fight scenes:”

Keep reading

Aaaaah this is so beautiful!!!! I believe that Light would probably be in the library all the time. Beater? Chaser? Nope. Light is a seeker (we all know that he likes being in the spotlight), incredible skill, holds school records for his speed. If Light isn’t in the library then he’s in the Room of Requirement (yep, he found it), studying, conquering the world or just having alone time. He’s interested in becoming an auror, but.he doesn’t mind being the minister of magic (😉)

Let’s add more!

i have a lot of feels about hogwarts au

Light being interested in charms, defense against the dark arts and transfiguration. As extracurriculars Light would be interested in ghoul studies. Conjures a fox for his patronus. Muggle born.

Light’s wand is made of Apple wood and Dragon heartstring. It’s probably 11-13 inches long. Unyielding.

Some edits (lockscreen size) of the Brave Enough cover art* *The cover art obviously belongs to Lindsey Stirling and I take no credit for it (only edits)

“A Thread of Tips” by Shelby

• #16 is missing but to find out more tips, follow her on twitter; be sure to thank her! 😁

disclaimer: check sites and tips before using at your own discretion.

Would you ever do a simple tutorial of how you draw horses? I want to make centaur OCs but lord horses are difficult creatures to doodle 😭

Mmmm there are so many guides that cover what I do, and I reallydon’t do anything more than those. Still use the whole blocks and sticks andform building and whatnot. And a buttload of references. Anything I could say different would kinda step beyond the stage of simplicity?

To offer something though I would like, suggest tweaking the use of circles whenit comes to drawing horses. Or anything, really. Circles are great and highly accessible for fast, generaldrawing, but few natural things are perfectly round. Look at a horse from thefront or back - it’s square and flat and meaty and saggy too, depending on yourangle.

So like, I dunno, if you wanna step it up a notch, trychanging your use of building-circles into something like this

And especially practice being able to see these shapes indimension

And then piece them together. The triangle will really help guide the line up. Highly recommend.

Honestly I just follow the same gist of Hubedihubbe’s quicktut (please check it out, very good points made, much cleaner, actually labelled) so I kind of feel like I’m parroting here but.. I break down the rest inlines and diamonds.

As a personal preference, I like marking in the shoulderblade to elbow and the hip to knee, as they create pretty important shapes towardshorse recognition. If something keeps looking off, check your leg length. A super rough way to get a close idea of what you need can be found in using most of the shoulder block for a landmark? It’s not perfect maths, it’s a rough tell. The hind legs are then worked out via the red line, setting the hocks above the intersection across the knees 

And uh, it goes on from there. You gotta look at pictures, dothe study, and learn the meats. No real other way around that part.

There’s a horse bod.

But the reason of learning how to see those shapes indimension is so that you can push your poses further! Try piecing it together with your front-view knowledge. Andlook at references, always! 

Shoulders are pretty narrow compared to the belly and hindquarters, unless you start looking into the draft breeds - then both ends more or less square up together. But moving on, more leggies are slapped on that thing

And fleshed out with all that meat knowledge :P (I know I haven’t gone into heads but this was about centaurs anyway. This guy just felt like he needed one)

And when it comes to practiceand learning, don’t be afraid to simply drawthese shapes directly over an image. It will help familiarise you with howthese base forms interact with one another, how far they can squash and stretchand look at a whole variety of angles. It’s just practice!

Doing that helps to gain asolid concept of the subject, so that when you do set out on your own you canfind that convincing territory.

So hey, this has been a very long and terrible not-tutorial. More like insight or something, and would only be helpful if you’re somewhat familiar with horses and already got the fundamentals of drawing down pat, since I skipped over a lot. 

Haven’t drawn a horse before though? I recommend you the Shrimp method

Anyway, hope all this was kinda interesting

Some snippets from a Hat Drawing Tutorial I just posted to Patreon.  I may share it openly, eventually, but for now it’s available to all patrons, $1 and up!