Writing Fight Scenes in Your Story - By Sean Michael Paquet

Hello everyone! So I was out on my Tumblr blog and saw a writer asking about how to write fight scenes. Awesome! Right up my alley! I was prepared to give him a play by play on how I do fight scenes, but one comment he made struck me “I have never been in a real fight.” Wow! Ok...so how do you explain to someone how to do a fight scene when they don’t even know how to fight? Well...you either downplay the action scene (not recommended IMO) or you do some research on fighting. See here is the deal about fighting. You either know or you don’t. If you try to half-ass a fight scene your readers will call you out on it guaranteed! So those of you who don’t know anything about fighting you will need to do some research. I recommend watching Youtube. Lots of material there. I am always watching fights on Youtube. Boxing, Muay Thai, MMA, street stuff. I stay away from the pretty, flowery martial arts stuff because in my experience that either does not work in real life or you have to be so experienced that such techniques can be performed effortlessly. For most people, even experienced fighters, the hardcore fighting makes for a good basis to write fight scenes.
So if you don’t know, learn! Read a book on human anatomy. Read about pressure points. Learn where the vital organs are located. Learn the vulnerable points of the body. Understand blunt force vs sharp force trauma. Read about impact damage. Read! Do research! If you don’t know learn!

For me fight scenes are easy to write. For a large part of my life I lived, breathed, and slept fighting. Bare hands, knives, weapons, you name it. It was an obsession of mine for many years as many of my friends will remember. It shows in my writing. You can always tell a writer who knows what they are writing about. For example, I present Luis L’amour, the legendary author of many western genre novels. He did great fight scenes. Know why? Because for a period of his life he was a professional boxer who won 51 out of 59 fights. He did his fighting during a time when a lot techniques were permitted that now would be considered “dirty fighting.” He was also an army officer from 1942-1946 and saw heavy combat in both France and Germany.

So in closing, if you wanna write fight scenes, watch how people fight. Read about how people fight. When I say watch, I don’t mean movie cinematography. If you think that is real fighting you are mistaken. Real fights are short, brutal and highly damaging, often to both opponents. Those fight scenes Tom Cruise is doing in Mission Impossible? Nope sorry. Read up on impact damage and blunt force trauma. If somebody receives a proper kick to the head they are not going to stagger back and wipe their bloody nose. They will go down. They will stay down. At the very least they will have a concussion. More than likely they will have traumatic brain injuries. Depending on where in the head they were kicked, It is possible they will die. Real fighting is not bullshit. Neither is writing about them.