The Literary Assassin

Fiction, fashion, and hand-to-hand combat by Holly Messinger

I compiled these a couple of years ago, for a guy who wrote really excruciating action scenes that went on for pages and pages of incomprehensible running around. At one point during a chase sequence, the mild-mannered computer programmer protagonist collided with a hot dog vendor, and paused to wipe the mustard off his pants because he wanted to make a good impression on the female action heroine of the future who had come seeking his help.

Ahem.

At least I could help with the fight scenes. I'm told I do them well. All my knowledge of military operations is admittedly, esoteric, but I have nine years of martial arts training, so I'm not totally clueless.

I've changed the title from "Rules" to "Guidelines," as well, because there are always different schools of thought, and if you can do something really really great by breaking the rules, then more power to you.

TEN GUIDELINES FOR WRITING ACTION SCENES

by Holly Messinger

2009
free for private use, but please credit me

The best advice I can give about writing fight scenes is this: DO YOUR RESEARCH. Learn the difference between a rifle and a shotgun, a revolver and a semi-automatic pistol (hint: one of them has a clip, the other doesn't, and you'll look like a fool if you screw it up). Make friends with a combat instructor, or God forbid, the sensai at your local stripmall dojo. Find out what the human body is capable of. Take weight discrepancies into account (N.B.: most women, no matter how highly-trained, cannot take on a full-grown male in the real world. Period.) Research what happens when people get angry, scared, or injured. Do all of this before you even write the scene.

And when you're ready to write the scene, take these into consideration:

  1. Fights are short. Fight scenes should be short. A real hand-to-hand confrontation between experienced fighters who are trying to kill each other probably won't last longer than a few minutes. A clash between an experienced fighter and a novice will be even shorter. Unlike in movies, in a book the fight is usually less interesting than the tension leading up to it and the resolution following it. Your reader may actually get bored if you don't wrap it up quickly. There are exceptions for wars and riots, but see Rule No. 2.
  2. Don't try to describe every single muscle movement. And forget about blow-by-blow description if you've got more than two or three combatants. You'll have fifteen pages of grunts and thuds and your reader will have skipped to the scene in the police station where there's actually some story going on (see Rule No. 1). Review the fight the way a news team shows highlights after the game. The turning points, the crushing disappointments, the glorious rebound that saved the day are all we need.
  3. Use subject-verb-object construction as often as possible: "He struck Bob in the face." This is the simplest form of construction in English and so communicates as efficiently as possible. Also it has a punchy quality that is appropriate to an action scene. Unless you have to do it for clarity's sake, be wary of beginning a sentence with an adverbial or prepositional phrase, or any dependent clause at all, because the comma mentally slows down the action. Rule No. 4 is related:
  4. Show actions in the correct sequence. If you write, "Before opening the door, he drew his knife," it's like saying, "Cut the green wire. But first..." You could write, "As he was opening the door, he drew his knife," which is fine grammatically, but the clause at the beginning violates Rule No. 2 by slowing the action. If you are trying to build suspense, this would be an effective sentence. If, on the other hand, you're already in the middle of a fight, use "He drew his knife and yanked open the door." It has more movement.
  5. Avoiding excessive adjectives and adverbs is good practice throughout your work, but fight scenes are where description really becomes a drag. Overuse of adjectives when referring to weapons or techniques can give your prose a weird epic-verse quality: "He raised the gleaming, power-blackened assault rifle, now emptied of its deadly projectiles, and brought the butt of it singing through the air in a beautiful backhanded stroke, compressing the skull of the Captain into blood-matted pulp." This is what's referred to as purple prose, and it doesn't belong in an action sequence.
  6. Use simple words. You should always use simple words, but especially in action. Short words also have that aforementioned "punchy" quality. You can get a nice primal atmosphere by using short words, short sentences, and subject-object-verb construction. Experiment with broken sentences and caveman-talk narration.
  7. Tell us what is happening, not why or how. Don't analyze the action. It's probably not important why the hero used that particular move in this situation, and if it is you should have explained it in the story long before we got to this point. Don't try to impress us with your research into firearms or karate terms in the Japanese--your reader won't know them, and bending her brain around a new term is counterproductive to the mood you're trying to create. "He kicked," "She spun," "They opened fire and smeared the guy" is about all we need.
  8. Regarding dialogue: Few people have the brains, or the breath, or the time, to be witty and fight at the same time. Besides, a hero spouting witty put-downs is nearly as much a cliché as the villain telling the tied-up hero his plans "before I kill you." So leave out the trash-talk unless you really know what you're doing.
  9. Don't waste time telling us how fast things are happening. "In the blink of an eye, Nick whipped out his butterfly knife and unzipped Larry's guts." "The whole fight lasted only seconds." Most of these phrases have been done to death anyway.
  10. Above all else: Action sequences, like sex scenes, are best when they further the character development in some way. People take the actions they take based upon who they are, even when fighting. For instance, an honorable man will let his opponent retrieve his sword if he slips. A dirty fighter will take every advantage he can get.

In a nutshell, action scenes are like any other scene in the book: they must be relevant and supportive to the story in some way. Sometimes you have fight scenes because they resolve conflict. Sometimes they create more, or different conflict. Make sure there's a point to the fight. Don't just slip it in because it's cool (although it should be that, too!).

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