How to Write Great Fight Scenes

A surprise question.

After a reading of my novel, "Among Thieves" we had a Q & A session. One of the audience members was Dave King, an acclaimed writer of literary fiction best known for his novel The Ha-Ha. Dave surprised me with his question: “How do you write such great fight scenes?”

Actually, I’ve been told by quite a few readers of my novels that I write the best fight scenes they’ve ever read. I agree if I do say so myself. But maybe that’s faint praise, because I do believe many successful thriller writers don’t write very good fight scenes.

Here’s my advice on how to write a great fight scene.

Read about fighting and you'll find out how you feel about fighting. Here are some of the books on my shelf about fighting:

• The Art of War, by Sun Tzu

• Put ‘Em Down, Take ‘Em Out!  Knife Fighting Techniques from Folsom Prison, by Don Pentecost

• Black Medicine Volume III Low Blows, by N. Mashiro, Ph.D.

• Gouzao Gongji, Seven Neurological Attacks for Inflicting Serious Damage, by Master Hei Long

• A Bouncer’s Guide to Barroom Brawling, Dealing with the Sucker Puncher, Streetfighter, and Ambusher, by Peyton Quinn.

• Atlas. From the Streets to the Ring: A Son’s Struggle to Become a Man, by Teddy Atlas and Peter Alson.

There’s nothing unusual about advising someone to read up on a subject. But there’s another benefit to absorbing technical information about fighting - you’ll find out how you feel about fighting. Maybe you’ll discover that the mechanics of fighting bore you. Or fascinate you. Or make you wince. These realizations will inform how you want to write your fight scenes.

Watch fights. In Person, if possible.

It’s not hard to find an amateur or pro fight event near you. Even if you do this just once or twice, it’ll make a big difference in how you write fight scenes. Matches generally progress from the less skilled fighters to the best fighters. It’s very informative to see how the action unfolds as you progress toward the featured fight. It’s helpful to see all levels of skill. Try to sit as close as you can. Hearing is a big part of seeing a fight.

If you ever get a chance to witness a street fight, without getting involved, steel yourself and watch. Being in the presence of violence isn’t fun, but it’s extremely revelatory. You'll most likely be repulsed by what you see. That feeling will prevent you from being glib or superficial about the fight scenes you write.

If you can’t or don’t want to bring yourself to see a live fight, do the next best thing and watch broadcasts of fights. There are literally hundreds of boxing and martial arts matches streaming online and on subscription channels like Netflix and Amazon. More hundreds streaming for free on YouTube. Watch carefully. Switch your focus between fighters. Listen to the commentary. You’ll be surprised how often what you see is not what you’re hearing from announcers at ring side.

However, make sure you understand why professional fighters can go at it round after round. First, there are rules about where you can hit. They also wear protection. And padded gloves. And rest between rounds. Most important, they train for years to attain the skills and physical conditioning required to fight professionally.

Get Into a fight.

I know that sounds completely impractical but hear me out. There’s a safe way to do this. Chances are there’s a martial arts dojo or boxing gym near you where you can train until you are able to safely spar with another individual. It won’t take long for you to learn what makes a fight scene realistic:

• Everything happens much faster than you ever imagined.  Even pros can’t see every punch coming or always hit a moving target. Most real fights last only seconds.  Experiencing the speed and pace of a fight will definitely help you write better fight scenes.

• Fighting is exhausting.   Even if you think you’re in great shape, you’ll see how quickly you run out of steam in a fight. Try throwing punches for fifteen seconds without stopping and you’ll get a sense of the effort.

• The emotions are intense. Experiencing the fear, anger, and tension associated with fighting will infuse your fight scenes with passion and excitement.

• Getting hit isn’t what you thought. For many people, when the adrenaline is flowing, they don’t feel nearly as much pain as they expected. Unless a punch or kick hits exactly the right spot, someone can get hit quite a bit and still keep fighting.  Knowing this will help you write much more convincing fight scenes.

• The aftermath is usually worse than the fight. Much worse. As mentioned above, during a fight, you’ll only feel a fraction of what the fight does to you.  If you experience what it feels like in the minutes, hours, and days after a fight, you’ll write with a more realistic perspective.

Avoid the most common mistake made when writing fight scenes:

Too many writers ignore the damage inflicted during a fight. It's disheartening to read fight scenes where a huge amount of damage is inflicted and the victim pretty much shrugs it off.

Consider the reality of the common punch to the jaw.

Many years ago, I worked on the trauma ward at Bellevue Hospital. Every Monday, I would come onto the ward and there would always be one or two guys with a “fractured left mandible”. A very grim sight. Particularly when I saw what doctors did to fix it.

Why on Mondays? And why the left mandible? Because more drunken fights took place on the weekends, and most people are right-handed. A right fist lands on the left side of the jaw. It didn’t take very many Mondays for me to realize how easily a jaw breaks...with one punch!

Go online and research the realities of fight injuries. For instance, I just Googled “fractured mandible” and in seconds found a diagram showing the frequency of mandibular fractures by location. Thirty percent of fractures occur in the worst place. A few more minutes of searching uncovered detailed accounts of treatments, x-rays, 3-D renderings, complications involving aligning teeth, etc.

Finding out information like this will help you feel the emotional and physical reality of fighting. Once you feel it, so will your readers when you write about it.

The Most Important Advice About Writing a Great Fight Scene

Every fight should be true to the characters in the fight.

Everything in the fight scene has to happen in a way consistent with your characters’ personalities, attitudes, and capabilities. The more interesting the character, the more interesting the fight. If you find your character in a clichéd fight, you probably have a clichéd character.

For example, the first fight in my new book begins with my protagonist, James Beck, running away from an opponent who is bigger, stronger, and tougher. Not because Beck is a coward, but because he is a master at strategy. Making the fight true to Beck’s character made it a more interesting fight, and in turn helped reveal more of his personality.

Here’s another example… a character in the series “Justified” is named Choo Choo. Why Choo Choo?  Because when he comes at you, it’s like being hit by a train.

Now that might sound like the beginning of a cliché.  But when we finally see Choo Choo in action, it’s in a scene where he and his partner are about to torture someone to get important information. Choo Choo’s partner tells him to hit the guy with a “starter punch”.

Choo Choo hits the man so hard that he kills him. One punch.  (Yes, that is possible.)

His partner is furious because now he can’t learn anything. He yells at Choo Choo about hitting the guy so hard. Choo Choo says, “If you didn’t want him Amtraked, you should have hit him yourself”.

True to character.  That's a fight scene that resonates.