Scenes - Tumblr Posts
Let's talk about fight scenes.
Writing fight scenes requires a delicate balance of action, emotion, and detail to keep readers engaged and immersed in the moment.
Here are some tips to craft compelling fight scenes:
Know your characters: Understand their fighting styles, strengths, and weaknesses—are they offensive, or defensive? Spontaneous, or strategic? Trigger-happy, or reluctant? Their personalities and motivations will influence their actions and decisions during the fight.
Create tension: Build tension leading up to the fight to increase the stakes and make the action more gripping. Foreshadowing, verbal sparring, or physical intimidation can all contribute to a sense of anticipation.
Use sensory details: Engage the reader's senses by describing the sights, sounds, smells, and physical sensations of the fight. This helps to create a vivid and immersive experience—but make sure not to overdo it. Too much detail can distract from the adrenaline of the fight.
Maintain clarity: Ensure that the action is easy to follow by using clear and concise language. Avoid overly complicated sentences or excessive description that could confuse readers.
Focus on emotions: Show the emotional impact of the fight on your characters. Describe their fear, anger, determination, or adrenaline rush to make the scene more compelling and relatable.
Include strategic elements: Incorporate tactics, strategy, and improvisation into the fight to make it more dynamic and realistic. Think about how your characters use their surroundings, weapons, or special abilities to gain an advantage.
Balance dialogue and action: Intersperse dialogue with action to break up the fight scene and provide insight into the characters' thoughts and intentions. Dialogue can also reveal or support the characters' personalities and motivations.
Keep it concise: While it's important to provide enough detail to immerse readers in the action, avoid unnecessary padding or overly long fight scenes. Keep the pacing brisk to maintain momentum and keep readers hooked.
Show the consequences: Illustrate the aftermath of the fight, including injuries, emotional trauma, or changes in relationships between characters. This adds depth to the scene and helps to drive the story forward.
Hope this helped ❤
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If it's not too much trouble, could you share how you write your first drafts/outlines for your stories/fics?
You seem to have so many fascinating ideas, and you manage to word them in ways that almost seem cinematic and summarize your plots so efficiently. So, as someone struggling to summarize all my ideas into an outline to begin writing my stories, I wanted to ask you if you had any tips on that particular issue?
I will admit that I do have a peculiar work ethic when it comes to typing up outlines for my stories, but I find it's something that helps me more than just typing up a list of bullet points on what happens in a scene. I will also add an example from the current Batfam fic I am working on to better show you what I mean, but first some theory:
When I write a first draft/outline, I write it in the format of a movie script.
Writing outlines in the form of a movie script is incredibly effective because it forces you to focus on showing, not telling, by emphasizing visuals and action.
It tightens dialogue, ensuring every line has impact, while also honing scene structure and pacing. Script format reveals character through behavior and subtext, making emotional undercurrents clear without relying on exposition.
It drives conflict through concise, tension-filled dialogue and helps you create scenes with immediate emotional impact.
By stripping away unnecessary details, scriptwriting makes storytelling efficient, clear, and easy to visualize, naturally sharpening your narrative and maintaining momentum.
As an example, I offer you an outline written like this from a fic that I am currently writing:
EXT. JASON TODD'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
The sky opens up, rain pouring in sheets. TIM DRAKE stands outside a rundown apartment building, shivering as the cold bites at him. His clothes are soaked, clinging uncomfortably to his skin. He takes a deep breath, his body shaking, his eyes locked on the chipped, weathered door in front of him.
The door swings open.
JASON TODD stands there, casually leaning against the frame. A cigarette hangs loosely between his lips, smoke curling up around his face. His emerald green eyes take in Tim’s drenched, disheveled appearance. A beat passes, then Jason blows a cloud of smoke directly into Tim’s face. Tim coughs, looking irritated but unsurprised.
JASON (deadpan) “You look like shit.”
Tim laughs bitterly, tugging at his soaked clothes, trying to pull them away from his skin. The wet fabric clings to him, suffocating. His frustration is evident.
TIM (mutters) “Thanks. Are you gonna let me in?”
Jason smirks, flicking the ash from his cigarette onto the ground, eyes sharp as they study Tim. He leans against the doorframe, casual but predatory.
JASON (mocking) “Let me guess—His Highness finally replaced you?”
Tim barely flinches, but Jason notices. He always notices. Those green eyes catch every small twitch of vulnerability, every crack in Tim’s resolve. Jason grins, and it’s infuriating—like he’s been waiting for this moment.
Jason takes another slow drag of his cigarette, turning his head to exhale away from Tim. His voice drips with sarcastic sympathy.
JASON “Finally threw you away, huh? Gotta make room for the new, shiny model in his collection?”
Tim's shoulders hunch, his face contorting into a mix of hurt and frustration. Jason’s words hit too close to home, and that self-satisfied grin plastered on Jason’s face only makes it worse. The unspoken ‘I told you this would happen’ lingers in the air between them like a challenge.
TIM (hissing through clenched teeth) “Just let me in, asshole.”
Jason flicks his cigarette to the ground, crushing it under his boot. He steps aside, the grin still lingering, but there's a flicker of something else in his eyes—something unspoken.
Tim hesitates for only a moment before stepping inside.
And Cut!
Now, you have a wonderful and imaginative draft to work off of. It does take a bit of getting used to, but thinking of your writing as establishing shots in a movie generally helps with getting into the flow of what you are writing.
Anyone else get really excited to write awesome scenes, but force themselves to write the buildup first and then find that by the time the buildup is finished, they're too tired to work on the awesome scene? Because that's been happening to me a lot lately.
who will dare try to a remake this masterpiece
The world is beautiful; people are stupid enough to not see its real beauty.
Scenes: The Basics🏕️
The Four Chords of a Scene
The scene is a fictional unit that comprises of the following:
Two major chords: Action + Reaction
Two minor chords: Setup + Deepening (be kept to minimum)
A "beat" is a smaller unit within a scene. You can think of this as a paragraph.
1. Action
Action happens when a character does something in order to attain his main objective. In a given scene, he has a scene purpose.
This can include: yelling, shutting the door, fighting, crying, pulling someone back, hugging....basically when your character does something or the other to alleviate the pain or take part in conflict.
2. Reaction
A reaction scene is how a Lead character feels emotionally when something happens to him.
A literary novel may feel like a lot of reaction scens because they are generally more about the interior life of a character.
Reaction is often done in "beats" where the character moves from (1) questioning himself, then (2) providing self-justification to (3) being angry beyond reason, etc.
You can put a "reaction beat" (not a whole scene!) in the middle of action so we know how the character is feeling.
3. Setup
These are things that must occur in order for subsequent scenes to make sense.
All novels need a certain amount of setup to show who the Lead is, what he does and why.
Build in some problem, however slight, to the setup scene. It can be just an alarm ringing or door suddenly opening - something that brings immediacy.
4. Deepening
Deepening is to novel as spice is to food.
This is what you mix to deepen the reader's understanding of character or setting. Make it fresh, drop it in strategically.
Deepening chords are interesting/shocking/fun and kind of in line with the overall theme, but they don't serve a particular purpose.
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No but I've actually been unironically wanting this for a long time now, just a baseball scene of any kind, I feel like it fits the vibe better than basketball which is the sport they focus on
Lol but it's not actually that big of a deal idk bye
we need a baseball scene in stranger things
Hello everybody ! Hope you’re doing well !
Just a little word to give you some news about the mini artbook project I told you about few months ago. As a reminder, it will be a self-published book gathering a large part of the sketches I made in the last two years, mostly in Paris and french countryside. I’ll be able to give a release date in few weeks.
