How to Write a Fight Scene

For many, writing a fight scene can seem like a daunting task. After all, violence is the very opposite of a walk in the park…

To help you win the battle, we’ve put together a guide of how to approach a good fight, so that – unlike the scene itself – the writing of it won’t be a struggle. In fact, it should be fun – we’re writers, not fighters, after all.

Five questions to consider before writing a fight scene

1. What is the fight scene really about?

You must know why your bloody fist fight, magical battle, or bitter siege is really happening. Because – News Flash – it shouldn’t be about the physical act itself. Violence for the sake of violence is gratuitous and your reader simply won’t read on without a crucial plot point or a sprinkling of intriguing characterisation.

Plot Development

The fight scene must be pivotal to the plot and an essential part of the story. This means that without it, your book just won’t make sense. Perhaps the fight scene is the epic climax, the final release of tension that your book has been building to. Perhaps the fights themselves are the very structure of the book, as in The Hunger Games.

Quick task: if you remove your fight, will your story still work? If, yes, and it’s a superfluous scene, cut it! If it’s a no, be sure to know exactly what purpose your fight scene is serving and how it advances the plot as a crucial, unmissable, beat.

Character Development and Characterisation

A surefire way to lose the reader’s interest during a fight scene is to forget about your characters. Even if you’re writing a sweeping battle, it’s important to zoom in on your protagonist, antagonist, or certain players, in order for the reader to connect and care.

Just as the fight scene is advancing the plot in some way, it’s also telling the reader about characterisation and how the characters change.

Fight scenes should be personal. Your characters’ responses will be fascinating and unique and, consequently, a brilliant characterisation tool for the writer. Before you start writing, ask yourself about your character’s actions, reactions, and emotions. For example:

• How will character X show up in this fight? Will they be honourable? Will they run and hide? Or perhaps, they’ll fight dirty like the character John Faller, in Paul Lynch’s novel Red Sky in Morning. In one dramatic fight scene, Faller protects himself from a group of men pointing their rifles at him by grabbing a small girl off her mother and using her as a shield, before throwing her at his opponents and, consequently, escaping.
• What will character X’s fighting style portray about their personality? For example, in Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy shows the reader just how evil Judge Holden is by making him smile at his victims as he murders them. Judge Holden is described as ‘pure evil’, he brutalises people and animals, ‘for fun’.
• What epiphany might character X have about herself? For example, in Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment, the protagonist, Olga, has been left by her husband, after fifteen years of marriage. Olga learns just how strong she is when she sees her husband out in public – with his new lover. She launches herself upon him and attacks him. She smashes his face, tears his shirt and when he falls down on the sidewalk she continues to hit and kick him. Then she steps back and laughs. Ferrante demonstrates a change in Olga from the start of the scene to the end.

2. Why is the fight scene happening?

Fights might be fun to write, but they’re often no fun for your characters. No one is going to start a fight and put themselves in danger without meaningful motivation. The fight must be the only available route out of a difficult situation. Perhaps your character’s motivation is survival – life or death! Perhaps it’s the protection of a loved one. Honour, love, revenge.

Be sure you are clear on the motivation that will act as a catalyst for your fight scene. The fight is the conduit to what your character not only truly wants, but most probably, deeply needs.

For example, in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it’s honour that motivates the duel between Mercutio and Tybalt. Romeo refuses to fight Tybalt and Mercutio steps in in his place and, ultimately, is killed.

3. How can you raise the peril, the conflict, the stakes?

We writers talk about conflict a lot. In every scene of your book, you should be clear on the character’s motivation and conflict. But never more so than when you’re writing an actual fight. All fights must have an element of conflict, and of course, peril. There must be danger and meaningful consequences.

So, what is at stake? Death and injury is often the obvious downside, so why not get more creative. Perhaps the protagonist will be humiliated, lose their family, their home… their mind!

And remember, the more stakes there are and the higher they become – the better. The more the characters have to lose, the more your reader will be invested in the outcome and won’t be able to stop turning those pages.

4. What is the arc of your fight?

You can look at a fight scene as a miniature story in itself. For large battle scenes, some writers like to map out a three part structure, with the action rising and climaxing, before coming to a resolution.

Include moments of emotional change, pause, desolation, even humour, in your fights. You don’t want your fight to feel gratuitous, or even worse, just plain boring.

5. What type of fight are the characters fighting?

Perhaps you’re writing a screaming row between a number of characters, or a duel to the death between musketeers, or an alien siege in space. Perhaps you’re writing an accurate account of a World War. Unless you are unlucky enough to have first hand experience of this type of fight, research is going to be key.

There are plenty of people on the internet who know a lot about historical battles and their accounts can make a great start to get the creative juices flowing. YouTube is also an excellent place to track down experts on particular weapons. Their videos can tell you how they were used, carried, wielded. Research will help you visualise the scene and ensure you’re using the correct language and believable descriptions.

Visiting museums and historical sights, or places that put on re-enactments can also be invaluable in getting closer to the experience, and provide fantastic inspiration.

You can also use maps to look at the terrain (or similar terrain) to where your fight may have taken place. It’s always crucial to understand how characters move through a setting and how the landscape and surroundings may help or hinder their goals.

Now it’s time to start writing!

The three crucial components of writing a fight scene

1. Setting, Terrain, Props and Weapons.

Where your fight takes place provides an excellent opportunity for you to bring in more peril. Perhaps, your characters are wrestling on the edge of a cliff, or engaged in combat in a blizzard.

Be sure to include emotive and vivid details. For example – what is the weather like? Who else is around? What props are to hand in this particular setting? A master of the fight scene, Jackie Chan, is brilliant at using all types of props from his setting to add variety. For example, in The Spy Next Door Chan grabs dishes and pans and a pot of spaghetti – using them as weapons – which adds a colourful humour to the scene.

Perhaps the fight is taking place on a farm, and your protagonist is able to grab a pitchfork, or a chainsaw. Don’t limit yourself – again, this is a great chance to be creative and keep the reader engaged. Perhaps, for example, your hero can be like John Wick and use a pencil as a deadly weapon!

2. Pacing and Rhythm

Generally, you won’t see a fight scene lasting the length of an entire chapter, unless it’s a pivotal battle. One on one fights don’t tend to last longer than a few minutes in real life and so you don’t want the reader to feel like it’s dragging on.

It’s important to change up the rhythm and play with timing during a fight scene. Have moments of pause, of recovery, before going back in stronger, harder. As the fight comes to the climax, the pace might quicken. When a character is injured, or reflecting on their pain, time might slow down.

Sentence structure is a useful tool when building the rhythm of your fight. Punchy, short, sharp sentences can help ramp up pace. For example, Lee Child often uses a more staccato style for his fight scenes in the Jack Reacher novels.

Perhaps you want the reader to feel they, too, are gasping for breath. You can use pace to raise a feeling of panic. Or, you might want to bring in dialogue to slow things down. After all, your fight scene should be a physical dialogue – two characters communicating with their bodies.

3. Description and language

As writers, we’ve all heard about ‘show don’t tell’. In a fight scene, the writer must show the reader the pain the protagonist feels by describing the contortions of his movements, or, perhaps, the deep and jagged way she pulls in breath. You might like to think of yourself as a director of a movie when you’re writing a fight scene – you have a camera in your hand and it’s your job to paint a colourful picture for the reader.

Fights are all about action. Therefore, verb choice is key. Rather than employing the obvious choice of verb, think about alternates to keep the prose fresh: shatter, wallop, crush.

To truly portray the feeling of the fight, sensory details are incredibly powerful – the smells, the sounds, the taste in their mouth, the heat against their skin. It’s detailed descriptions that, often, elevate good writing to great writing, and keep the reader deep in the scene and on the edge of their seat.

The editing process is key to a fight scene: check each line for clarity, or when the time is right, call on the help of a trusted reader for feedback. You might want to put specific questions to them. For example, were there moments they felt confused? Were there areas where their attention waned?

The Resolution

Phew! Now the fight draws to the end, think about where you leave your characters, and your reader – and what is the new status quo?

Be sure you’ve been true to the specific fight. For example, what are the consequences to the injuries, wounds and destruction that has taken place? Will they need medical attention? Will they have a limp for the rest of the book?!

In summary, it’s always a good idea to come back to what we discussed at the start: what is your fight scene really about?

Has the meaning for the plot and the character development been successfully shown?

Remember, a good fight is not just about the fight itself, but an exciting way to portray motivation, conflict, emotion and feeling. Good Luck!

Task: Find a fight scene that you think is successful and see if you can identify where the writer has used the rules we have covered above. Re-read this scene and write the answers to the following questions:

• How does this fight develop characterisation?
• What is the character’s main motivation to fight?
• What are the stakes of this fight? What will the character lose if they are defeated?
• How has the writer portrayed peril? Have they added to the sense of peril with the setting? The sounds? The language they are using?
• How does this fight scene make you, as the reader, feel? Why do you think it works so well?