Woohoo!
I haven't been murdered to death.
Not yet anyway.
Anyways, I was talking to an writer friend of mine (the only writer friend of mine) about a whole host of things really. And we got onto the topic of fighting. There's a lot of fighting in my WIP, there's a bunch of soldiers and a bunch of bad soldiers and a whole lot of even worse soldiers.
Fighting seems to be one of those topics in writing, that more often than not, seems to be written quite... well, quite shite. Maybe its ebcause i read alot more fantasy than anything else, but it seems to be espically prevalent in works of fantasy. And i've figured out why!
Do you guys remember the TV show Hercules?
This guy?
Do you remember watching this guy throwing folks through tabels, or bashing them with clubs, or doing a whole lot of other violent acts? And do you remember these guys that he's thrown through a table, or bashed with a club, or done a whole lot of other violent acts to being maimed? Killed? Even getting a scuffed knee?
No! You damn well don'!
These guys just got back up, brushed it off, and carried on swinging!
Now, even for a demi-god son of Zeus and slayer of monstors, this isn't very realistic at all.
In my current WIP, my main characters consist of an immortal hybrid queen vampire/werewolf mix, a fallen angel and a supercharged coven witch. A powerful bunch, yet when Lucy (the hybrid) gets punched in the head, she bloody well feels it. There's no being thrown through walls and jumping right back up. No. Shes down, shes hurt, and she's in no mood to get back up.
Right. So how do we, as writers, write a realistic fight scene?
Firstly, we need to understand that no matter who your characters are, in a fight, they are probably going to get hit, and that's OK. We also need to understand that for a fight scene to be compelling there needs to be an element of danger. i.e. your character could lose. And they cant do that if they're an invulnerable tank.
Secondly, we need to understand that most characters wont be able to just brush off any attack that hurt them. If they get clubbed in the side of the head, they're going to be dazed, and they're going to be dazed for a while. Long enough for their attacker to get another couple of shots in at least. they're not going to get up and recover in time to block that second shot.
Pro tip; take a self defense or martial art class or something, and learn what its like not only to be hit by something, but what its like to do the hitting.
So how do they get out of it? Well that's up to you isn't it? Maybe they get a lucky swing in, or they use some kind of magic, or maybe a hundred other things. That's up to you to make it believable.
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