First Rule of Fight Cup

 -The Beauty of Violence-

I love fight scenes. I eat those scenes up like a drama kid with "Wicked". I wear comic book movies on my sleeve, but we're talking Jackie Chan's "Drunken Master". We're talking "Rocky", "The Matrix", "Kingsman", oh my God that church scene. There's just a magic to fight scenes. Choreographed suspense. It's an art, it's a talent, it's a combination of everything carefully crafted and everything macho. Strength meeting beauty. Passion meeting purpose. Chicks dig that crap.

I've published ten books, seven of them being fictional stories, and many of those stories having at least a squabble, at most a series of high stakes fight scenes. And it's not easy, honestly. You can just write "Omar punches Cruz in the face" over and over. You gotta be artsy fartsy with it. "Reaching his breaking point, Omar flung himself with unyielding hate as he laid his fist into Cruz's soon-to-be uneven jawline". Yeah, like that. Hey, let's pull up an example!


-The Example-

The Example 


-Breaking Down The Beatdown-

(Page 1-2) Right away we see our main character Jack isn't too worried about this fight. He makes jokes and uses a plain old ceramic cup to fight. Granted, he can enchant the cup to be unbreakable. This ability and the skill of Jack are a surprise to Wheaton, an established knight with his own accalades.

(Page 3-4). Wheaton draws blood from Jack and feels the joy from it, only for Jack to make more jokes and take the wind out of Wheaton. As the fight carries on, we see Jack is using every part of this simple cup to counter Wheaton's attacks.


(Pages 5-6) Narratively, the fight has to progress, right? Jack can't keep countering and Wheaton can't keep swinging. So, Jack goes on the offensive-using his hot coffee to burn Wheaton and the unbreakable surface to injure his burn further. Wheaton is an elf, and it's one of those worlds were elves are proper and elegant, so burning his face is a huge insult to the guy's pride.

(Pages 6-8) Now that Jack stepped up the fight and fully exploited magical ability, Wheaton follows this up by using his own magic power to create copies of himself. This only shows more of Jack's evasive talents and starts to show smart he is. Jack finally lets his cup break just after removing Wheaton's weapon.


(Page 9) And to dot the i, Jack reveals how he could tell the real Wheaton from the copies without saying a word. He used the environment to his advantage. This detail works whether or not you were paying close attention to the setting of the fight, and Jack only alludes to this reveal after Wheaton is disarmed and seated. As if noting the copies' lack of footprints isn't enough, Jack is smart enough to save explanations for after the actual fight.

If the fight between Jack and Wheaton was with swords, without magic powers, and without dialogue, it would have no character and no substance. With a little bit of banter and some shakeups to the fight you get a good idea of the character's personalities, and you get to see how smart or dumb, brave or worried, and strong or weak they are. You learn by what's happening and not only by what's being said, which is still better than reading a fight scene and not taking anything away from it.


Fight scenes are a visual medium that breaks up the song and dance of song and dance. Always remember to interweave character and perception into your fight scenes. It will do wonders for the characters you're mashing against each other.

Thank you for reading.

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