Need advice

[Benjamin Parker]

I'm writing a fantasy story and it has knights in it and it is very gory so I need advice on the fight scenes (I'm not asking for the technique) I just need enough info so that RMA and MMA praticioners will enjoy this book ("At last a fight scene that is realistic!") and they won't think I'm a complete moron

[Stewart Sackett]

I've never read a fight scene that I found wholly satisfying. Honestly, superficial knowledge of any subject will rarely be enough to appease those who specialize in that area of study.

If you really want to write good fights then first make sure you can write well, then actually train in a fighting art for at least a year. After that consult the art's more experienced practitioners.

I'd suggest joining arma if you aren't already a member, reading the fightbooks & (because few arma groups have as much grappling as they do weapons practice) also studying some form of submission wrestling.

You could also try posting rough drafts of your fiction on the forum for criticism.

Best of luck.

[Benjamin Parker]

Unfortunatly there aren't any people near me who practice RMA or MMA

I did study Kenpo for two years and we would do jujitsu sometimes and there was plenty of grappling and takedowns but there was almost no weapons training involved

[Alan Forbes]

In addition to what Stewart said you can get into battlefield archeology and find out how they died; what wounds they received and extrapolate that back to construct a realistic fight scene.

I doubt you will get much sympathy on this forum however since it is dedicated strictly to learning and applying the martial arts of the Renaissance. There’s not much patience for fantasy from my experience. Good luck anyway.

[Benjamin Parker]

It's not fantasy in the way your talking about (Elves and dragons)

[Jaron Bernstein]

I've never read a fight scene that I found wholly satisfying. Honestly, superficial knowledge of any subject will rarely be enough to appease those who specialize in that area of study.

If you really want to write good fights then first make sure you can write well, then actually train in a fighting art for at least a year. After that consult the art's more experienced practitioners.

I'd suggest joining arma if you aren't already a member, reading the fightbooks & (because few arma groups have as much grappling as they do weapons practice) also studying some form of submission wrestling.

You could also try posting rough drafts of your fiction on the forum for criticism.

Best of luck.

I don't know how applicable this is to your novel setting, but the very best modern unarmed/knife fights I have seen in prose form is the John Rain series of novels by Barry Eisler. In addition to describing the fights in ways that are impressively realistic, he also goes into the psychological aspects.

If you can travel, go to an ARMA study group and get a first hand taste. Another option is to watch the historical fencing videos on the ARMA site (which are what it should look like) or on secondly on youtube. The ones on youtube range from excellant to horrible, so I am sure some folks here can suggest the better ones for inspiration.

[Sal Bertucci]

You could also go and read reports on duels and trials by combat. Those tend to give a spectater's view of things, and are just interesting in themselves. I found the ones in Jay Vail's book pretty entertaining.

[Benjamin Smith]

The best fights I've read in fiction left as much as possible to my imagination. This is because unless you know fighting anything you write will be based on incorrect assumptions.

I'd suggest reading some accounts of real fights. If you want a duel of the century style fight I'd recommend The Last Duel by Erich Jager. The fight was over a rape case where a one man's wife accused a rival of her husband of raping her. There was a long judicial proceeding before the duel was fought at Christmas time. It began on horses with lances, then went to mounted axe fighting (no info on what kind of axes unfortunately, though I suspect a form of double hand axe with a thrusting point on the end) when the lances broke, then both horses were killed (one by having an axe rammed into its chest past the axe-head) and then they fought with swords on foot, probably longswords or bastard swords (anti-armor longswords) using half-swording, and the fight ended on the ground with one guy mortschlaging the other fellow's visor open and ramming a dagger through the loser's jaw up into his brain. All while the wife of one of the combatant's stood there strapped to a stake on the sidelines to burn for perjury if her husband lost (he won by the way). You can't get much better than that.

Somebody really needs to make a movie of it with Jager on board and some solid martial artists for the fight scenes (they were both on campaign together in England at the start of the story so there would be more than just the duel). What's even better is that because until the end they were both in helmets with visors you could get real fighters to do the fighting until the last scene where the Jacques Le Gris' visor gets busted open. It has everything, action, romance, a sophisticated setting and major historical figures, including the King of France, and some great lines, all without any embelishment necessary.

[CalebSlagle]

Thank you for attempting to write a fantasy piece that I can stand to read.

Who is the narrator describing the fights?
How much fighting experience does the narrator have?
How much real fighting experience do the people fighting have (how many fights to the death have they been in?)

I ask these questions because depending on the perspective of the narrator the aspects of the fight that get the most attention will be different.

I would also say there are two parts you need to get right. First, describe the fighting realistically from the perspective of the narrator. Second, describe the experience of wounds realistically from the perspective of the narrator. This means accounting for adrenaline, shock, infection, and the long lasting effects of the kinds of wounds that blades usually leave.

Don’t describe this fury of silly complex dancing moves that goes on for minutes before someone gets tired and gets cleanly killed while the other left unharmed.

Don’t over dramatize the feelings of the characters during the fight; even if they have been at it many times before, the state of mind that comes with being in a vicious fight is much less flowery and poetic than everything I have read. Realistic feelings are feelings of fright, panic, desperation, anger, determination, pain, and surrealness. Most of the other feeling don’t come till after the fight and they are mostly feelings of pain and emotional numbness (different measures of both.)

Do however note that even amazing sword fighters can loose a fight to anyone at any time in the blink of an eye. I know because I almost only fight people better than me (not by choice mind you) and I get the better of the fight every now and then.

Make an effort to learn about how swords and weapons react to real armor. I can recommend this for that. Do watch those ARMA videos. I think they will get you the right idea. It should be shockingly unpleasant, ugly, and brutal from the perspective of anyone watching.

If I wanted to describe a realistic fight I would talk some ARMA guys into video recording a couple of matches for me and then start some dialog between them about the results. They can explain some of the technical information about the moves that can be analyzed afterwards.

[Cooper Braun]

The best fights I've read in fantasy are from Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar books. I was hooked when I read a passage, and went "Hey, I've done that move, and its worked the way he describes it" (step to the left with a disengage and a stab to the back of the right hand). Most of Leiber's fighting is done with rapiers though, so it might not help you.
My general feeling about fights in books is that the energy and the feeling has to be right. Watch some of the Iron Door Studio videos (or better yet the prize playing from the last IG). Fights are fast (unless there is a great deal of armor involved), and to me the best authors capture that speed.

I too recommend The Last Duel, but there are certain parts of the fight that I think the author doesn't quite get it. Most specifically, the author assumes that the grappling is all unplanned and just a spur-of-the-moment choice. as opposed to a trained martial technique. Still excellent book.

[Jason Taylor]

Hi Benjamin,

I applaud your attempting to get some feedback on this writing skill before you get started, or at least, before you try to publish it. I'm a creative writer (my master's thesis was a short story collection) and I've worked hard on doing good fight scenes--it's a tough skill to master, actually. If you have martial arts background, it's hard because you have to toe the line between what you get and what the average reader gets. Anyway, I recommend the following:

1. Get books by Roger Zelazny and read his fight scenes. The fencing terminology in some of the Amber books (at least the first five) gets a little cumbersome, but the fight scenes in his other works are quite good, just enough detail to catch the reader up in the action.

2. In my opinion, not enough damage takes place to main characters. Tim Powers is the king of avoiding this problem--all of his main characters get mangled by the end of the book. Which makes sense when characters are fighting for their lives for 180+ pages. Either way, if there are weapons involved, try to get across the sloppiness of real fighting and how it gets ugly fast. Also try to be pretty detailed in the kinds of injuries they get, but also the kinds of injuries they feel. That is, sometimes, an injury should be obvious--someone's finger gets sliced off, or almost off, a thrust cripples his bicep, etc. But sometimes these wounds will just show up in the mess of combat, and nobody will even really know how they got there--swords clashing, they grapple, someone gets hit, the step back, and the main character realizes he's bleeding from an arm cut. Something like that.

3. Read the fight scenes in the Lord of the Rings between Frodo and Gollum. (Return of the King)

4. Watch your pronouns. They're really hard to keep straight when you have 2+ same gender opponents (usually "he/him/his").

If I think of anything else, I'll get back to you with another post. Also, read any advice you can about general writing tips by the really great writers. I've gotten some awesome tips from an essay I found by Kurt Vonnegut. I've used some of them in writing my own fight scenes (I had one in my thesis) and they helped out a lot.

Jason

[Benjamin Parker]

Thank you for attempting to write a fantasy piece that I can stand to read.

Who is the narrator describing the fights?

It's from one of the fighters points of view

How much fighting experience does the narrator have?

It varies from two-five fights/duels with one-three opponents

How much real fighting experience do the people fighting have (how many fights to the death have they been in?)

All of them have been in one-three fights to the death


I thank all of you very much

[Jaron Bernstein]

There is also a series of modern era novels by Andy McNab. Look at how he structures his violence. Short, sharp and messy. Same for the Barry Eisler novels. Take those concepts and get enough of a historical fencing vocabulary (that is where the videos come in) to cast it in those terms. You might also dig into some of the period fencing manuals for technique inspiration.

[s_taillebois]

Might also look up the chansons de gestes, de toils of the periods when edged weapons and crossbows/bows were the main weapons. Stories such as Havelock the Dane, The Book of Balin, and sections of Tristan and Isolt and the various Arthur, Charlemagne cycles.

These won't give all that much on specific techniques because at the time these were written/recited those attributes would have been common knowledge to many of the audiences.

But to have your character have some historical veracity it would help to understand some of the attitudes of the period, which are idealized in these old stories.

Also there are some surviving accounts of such things as the massacre of prisoners by the Brits at Agincourt, the massacres at Jerusalem and etc which would give insight into their attitudes of these men when they were not at their best.

And as M. Taylor notes, look up the effect and treatment of the wounds during the pre-modern period. It wasn't uncommon for leaders to bear names as a result of the wounds and other physical troubles-although names like Ivar the Boneless can be a bit confusing as to what was going on...

Might also look into the psychological preparation prior to and after a battle or fight. Many contemporary novels do have the protagonist out slaughtering various people with no real after effect or real anxiety/fear before the event. Historically they did have means of handling these issues. For example Crusade era armies often held their morale together via bits of wood, bone, cloth and etc. Joan of Arc herself was in some regards a similar phenomenon. In the periods after a battle such practices as St. Patrick's purgatory were not uncommon.
And some code of conduct was enforced by such as Elanor and Henry's codes, or the habit the church had of hauling out the relics and making the armoured goons swear upon various skulls, fingers, and cloth that they'd restrain some of their massacre to the appropriate people.

Obviously there are quite a few good translations of fechtbuchs including some very valuable ones available via ARMA.