Klok's Writing Tips: How I Like to Write a Fight Scene

Warning! If not caught up to Part 383 in Cryopod, there may be spoilers in this post! You've been warned!

I've been writing Cryopod for a while, and my evolution of writing over a mere eight months has changed dramatically. In this short period of time, I've received criticism from fans, and watched many videos/read many articles regarding fight scenes and how to make them work.

From the very beginning, even when my fight scenes read like the action moments in a typical Dragon Ball Z episode, there was always one overriding principle in my mind; It's not about the act of fighting, the number of blows thrown, the blood spilled, or anything like that. It's about the emotions on display, the feelings of betrayal, the anger, the revelations the characters share when their fists connect.

Basically, it's nothing like a fight in real life. In real life, if you're fighting someone, you just punch the shit out of them until they're down. Boring!

To understand how I write fight scenes, as always, I recommend watching Mr. Plinkett's Star Wars reviews. Specifically the video about SW:EP1, where he goes into detail about the reasons the fight scene between Obi-Wan and Anakin in Episode 3 were far less impactful than the one in Episode 4. Seriously, it's great.

https://youtu.be/ORWPCCzSgu0?t=5m55s

I recommend watching the entire series up to this point, but if you can't because you're a busy lady/man, I understand. In essence, Plinkett subtly establishes a small list of guidelines a writer should follow for a fight scene, and I've essentially integrated them into my writing process as a normal line of events.

1. Ask what the point is of the scene. What am I trying to accomplish with this fight?

2. What is the tone of the story that led up to this fight, and how can I maintain it through the fight and extend it to the after-fight? The tone also extends to how intense the fight itself must be.

3. What are the stakes for this fight? If the good guy is not fighting for a reason, or the villain has nothing to gain, then the fight is rather empty. This is especially expanded upon in later Cryopod fights.

To explain what I mean, let's look at some key fights that took place in Cryopod, and see how they all relate to those three key points.

The first major fight in Cryopod takes place between Jason and Bahamut. It might not seem like a fight, because I deliberately cut away from the 'action' to a scene where Jason and Amelia are chewing on a cooked Bahamut. Why? Look at the three steps.

1. The point of the fight was that Jason obtained all three rings. He's already practically won at this point, so the fight would be just a minor resolution of conflicts.

2. The tone of the story, at that point, while somewhat somber and yet also epic, was also very comical. The idea that an ancient deity-like figure would use a riddle taken from Ancient Egypt, one that every human of average intelligence in Jason's past would know, is kind of hilarious. Amelia is terrified, Kar is baffled, but Jason is just dumbfounded that the riddle is such a simple one. Better yet, the reader is probably going to know the answer to this riddle, because most people reading a story like Cryopod are the same kinds of people that would know about it!

3. The stakes for the fight (which never technically happened) are that Jason has to conquer a mighty foe, one who has enslaved millions of humans using trickery and deceit. If he doesn't, he will be enslaved himself. Bahamut, likewise, is always looking for another pawn to add to her collections. Further, Jason has already taken her rings, so she needs to reclaim them.

Honestly, the stakes for the Bahamut fight were rather weak, which is one of the reasons I wrote the fight to have a comical ending. A serious fight would have undermined the tone I was going for.

Okay, let's look at the next major fight to take place; the one between Jason and Beelzebub. Anyone remember that guy? Feelz for Beelz :(

At this point in the story, a lot of things have changed since the fight with Bahamut. Jason was crippled, totally paralyzed. In order to heal himself, he had to become blind, trading one weakness for another. The irony was that this gave him his most powerful ability set we'd seen up to this point, "Spherical Vision".

Amelia, meanwhile, had finally begun to reveal herself as a conniving, evil little girl. She is off devouring worlds while Jason is off becoming far more powerful. In the process of doing this, the inhabitants of one world escape into the labyrinth, trying to find a savior. They are foced to split apart, with one man rushing away to certain doom. Only when he stumbles into the figure of a demon with glowing eyes do the readers get to see what Jason has been up to.

Jason is powered up. He's not the same weakling that was crippled by a shot from a single arrow. He can teleport around now, see in complete darkness, etc.

But when he hears about how an old nemesis of his, Beelzebub, is killing this lone human's friends, Jason sets off to put an end to Beelzebub, once and for all.

How do my three fight scene criteria work their way into this?

1. The point of the scene is that we get to see Jason use two specific words during the fight, which are kill and puppet. Readers who have likely been getting inventive in their heads at this point will squeal when they realize Jason has the power to simply kill anyone with a single word.

2. The tone of the story is much darker by this point. Amelia is happily devouring humans, tearing their flesh apart and grinding them into mincemeat. This lone human's friends are eviscerated by the forces of darkness, and we get a touching scene of a man about to die before Jason comically heals him. For the most part though, the scene is serious. We don't know how strong actual demon lords are, but Beelzebub is supposed to be very powerful. It will not be an easy fight.

3. The stakes of the fight are that if Jason doesn't win, the man's friends, and himself, will be killed. For Beelzebub, Jason has been killing many of his precious pawns over the last year. He's quite angry about this and is especially angry he has to get his hands dirty.

The fight starts up with Jason taking Beelzebub by surprise, but Beelzebub reveals he's no slouch. The fight itself is quite short, and Jason quickly reveals he's just toying with Beelzebub. Jason not only completely decimates his opponent, he kills Beelz with a single word, and then enslaves the demon, forcing him to be Jason's puppet forever.

There is a secondary point of this fight, which is to show that Jason has become super powerful. He's not that same wimp from the earlier parts. He's learned a lot about his powers, and now he can take on demon lords with ease. This helps tie into the third major fight...

The fight with Amelia.

1. This fight is extremely crucial. As I've mentioned in a previous post, Amelia is the big bad, the anti-Yoda of Chapter 1. She's a creepy little shit but she might seem relatively unintimidating to the less observant readers. Still, we see hints of her power all throughout Chapter 1, with the most obvious parts being where she easily heals Jason, teleports around, and blows a hole in his chest with an ordinary bow and arrow. The point of this fight is to show that Jason's powers are not omniscient, he has limitations, and she's his first real wall. Jason is cocky, he needs to be put back in line.

2. The tone of this fight lacks all humor. It's a grave battle to the death. There is sorrow, before and after. Jason emerges onto a world where the life has been drained by this little demoness. It isn't until he sees her actually devour a human live that he finally realizes it's all true... his friend is a vile monster. 

3. The stakes are truly high this time. Jason has to kill someone he called a good friend. This girl saved his life, healing him from the brink of death twice. On top of that, as the fight plays out, Jason foolishly gets trounced twice, and in the end he's not able to defeat her. His other true friend and mentor, Hoarhiim, is the one who must make the ultimate sacrifice. Jason loses a lot here.

I won't claim that Chapter 1 was perfect. The first two major fights are really just 'okay'. I think I did decently establishing a tone and stakes, and then following through with those stakes, but the third fight was very well received and many tears were shed.

For me, fight scenes are complex in their simplicity. It's about establishing a tone, maintaining that tone, laying down stakes for all sides in the conflict, and concluding with a grand reveal, or a dramatic moment that takes the reader's breath away. If there ever was a TL:DR to my fight scenes, it's this paragraph.

In the future I plan to make posts about other fights and arcs in the series, to really see how Jason has progressed over the course of the series. Now that Route A is wrapping up, it's become pretty clear not a lot of genuine character advancement has been made for Jason (perhaps), but I never intended for Route A to be about Jason. In fact, the entire route was about all the other supporting characters. Jason's stakes are fairly minimal, but the other characters have grand losses to be felt if he achieves or fails at his goals.

Until then, I would advise that if you are reading this post, and you plan to re-read Cryopod in the future, try using my three points to evaluate each fight scene. Which scenes are weak? Which scenes are strong?

Until next time, thanks for reading.