Oct 05 2008
“Descriptive” Fight Scenes
I think it really helps to have visuals in your head, to feed your head, so to speak, with various angles and pacing that help really enliven fight scenes on paper (plus, it just makes it plain fun to write ‘em!).
This is one massive undertaking for me, this post–a lot of research and a lot of thought processes. Think of this as a follow-up to my post on writing fight scenes. I first gave a how-to. Now I’m giving a…. Hrm…. I guess I’ll call it a SHOW-TO. I’m going to give you templates here. These fight scenes, I particularly love, not because they’re ‘legendary’. I mean, you unfortunately won’t find any true blue Bruce Lee fight scenes here (although I love the man to death). These fight scenes, I love because of the detail. The purely rich detail. It’s the kind of detail ripe for really transferring the visuals in your head into just plain words. Writing. Call these exercises, I guess. Take what you know now of writing a fight scene and apply it to any of these scenes from popular films.
One other point here, too: these aren’t all martial arts scenes. As in all literature, there are many different kinds of fight scenes. So, basically, I REALLY worked my brain on some visuals I remember vividly. Scenes that were memorable to me on several levels–style, visuals, emotion, musical score. Stuff like that. All that really transfers well into writing. You just need to train yourself to make that transition. The writing will sing.
These ten ‘fight’ scenes are in no particular order, by the way, in terms of ‘best’ and ‘worst’. They’re random. And there’s a multitude of different kinds here, too. Some of my favorites, kinds that have spurred my mind to really sing with words. Imagery–it’s important in writing. So feast your eyes on the imagery here, and even more important–
HAVE FUN.
“First Knight” - Malagant vs. Sir Lancelot
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” - Ziyi Zhang vs. Michelle Yeoh
“Commando” - Matrix vs. Bennet
“Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” - Obi-Wan vs. Anakin (edited)
“The Last Dragon” - Leeroy vs. Sho’Nuff
“The Matrix Reloaded” - Neo vs. Agent Smith(s)
“Lethal Weapon” - Mel Gibson vs. Gary Busey
“Mortal Kombat” - Liu Kang vs. Reptile
“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” - Dumbledore vs. Voldemort
“Legend of Drunken Master” - Jackie Chan vs. Ken Lo
