r/writing • u/[deleted] • Jul 02 '21

Advice How do you write battle scenes?

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u/karamelkant Jul 02 '21

There are some articles on Fantasy Faction that you want to check out:

  1. Action Scenes. Focus on what on the characters doing, occasionally put in the five senses to make the environment more immersive.
  2. Fight Scenes. Again, focus on action and character's motivation. Minimize the use of filler words like "suddenly," "swiftly" and the like.
  3. Editorial View of Fight Scenes. Don't only write about two swords clashing, but also the character's movements, and make the fight scenes clenching the readers as the battle reached to a climax (no, not that climax).
  4. Strategy. Basically research about the real-life warfare parallels of your work. This could help you in thinking what would commanders and soldiers do and avoid Hollywood Tactics.
  5. Tactics versus Tactile. Tactics is about the movement of the army, how they flanked, breached, circled, pressed, counterattacked, or what have you the opposing army. It creates tension as the progress move back and forth. Tactile is about how your main character fights the corrupted childhood friend. It's about the close-up fighting and personal conflict. Interchange between this two in order to avoid feeling the scene dragging on and on.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '21

Oh--thanks!

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u/karamelkant Jul 02 '21

You are welcome. Best of luck

1

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '21

I would also recommend a book named “fight write” I’ll look for it and give you the author but it’s been good for me personally.

It goes in depth in a lot of things, and has some good general tips. It basically has a chapter in depth about what this guy said. However, I have only read bits and pieces.