Exchange of Realities

If you’re reading this blog, odds are you are at some point going to have to deal with a fight scene. Many games assume combat; some practically depend on it. I am hard put to it to think of a single fantasy novel in which someone doesn’t fight something.

But despite the fact that armed conflict is a natural source of tension, providing action and danger and all those things that also seem to come upon the heels of explosions, it’s also very easy to turn into something that causes half its audience to start skimming through the pages until they get to the good parts where it actually matters.

So what makes them boring?

Description to the exclusion of all else—and Fighter A hit X body part with Y weapon, and there was blood. And Fighter B hit Z body part with Q weapon, and there was more blood. And such things continue, with the occasional insertion of descriptions of the weapon or sweat shining on glistening muscles, and the blood turns into a red flood. Some roleplaying groups avoid this by turning it into roll, hit, roll, hit—which makes sense, but destroys the immersion factor. Writers have a bit more trouble, but they have the advantage of being able to time-skip through it: “They fought for a while [with vague description that gives a sense of the comparative skill levels of the combatants], until—” and then describe the deciding blow. I like this plan. It works for me.

Foregone conclusions that are hashed out anyway with no apparent purpose. See above, with the added irritation that we already know who’s going to win. Filler, anyone?

So how do we fix this?

One cure, of course, is as I described in 0 and 1, by having possible endings beyond “We win” and “we lose”. Having something that might actually change the structure could make even a fight between Bartram, Master of Fire and a small cat worth going into detail on. (Though I’d watch the above fight sequence if it would just give me a chance at seeing why the Master of Fire is fighting a housecat, which brings me to…)

Explication. Note that this is not necessarily exposition. The idea behind explication is to know why the people who are fighting are fighting, seeded at the beginning, or in short bursts so it doesn’t slow down the action. This gives it more emotional resonance than a Bandit Attack For No Apparent Reason, and tends to make the eventual win/loss/noble surrender/Pyrrhic victory that much more satisfying. What’s the character thinking? How are their thoughts changing during the battle?

Emotion. You’ve got all this tension; use it! Project the fear, the rage, the overconfidence. Get into the minds of the characters as well as their motions. Writers may find the side benefit that diverting it to someone’s thoughts when they’re on battle-autopilot can give you a chance to get through a few traded blows without actually describing the weapons hitting things, which decreases the repetition. Goodness knows I’ve found that short (okay, not always short) dialogue can allow me to cover for the fact that there are only so many ways to perform the same sort of attack.

Flow. Giving the battle motion, or skipping over the parts where it doesn’t have motion, also helps (particularly by avoiding the “and x, and y, and z” narration format.) Standing still and trading blows is boring. Chasing back and forth across a room is less so. Which brings me to…

Context. This can include things like the surroundings; Limyaael  mentions a number of practical considerations that can make a fight more interesting, like visibility, ways to gain the environmental advantage, and potential complications. It can also include character motivation or reaction, playing off of explication, above—if there’s one thing I’ve learned from three years playing Exalted, it’s that after a while, you have to vary up your stunts if you want to keep getting proper credit for them.

This is, on the other hand, the part where the gamers and the writers part ways to a certain extent. For writers, being concise during a fight scene is a virtue; when blows are being exchanged, the longer it takes to read them relative to how long it would take to swing the weapon, the more jarring it is for suspension of disbelief—so unless it’s an important blow, it’s safest to leave the adjectives aside and focus. On the other hand, most fight scenes in-game involve a lot of time waiting for other people’s actions to resolve, so going for extra awesome factor, within reason, is accepted and even encouraged. I’ve even seen people start kibitzing others’ fighting moves while waiting their turns, and not just for strategic value.

The end result should be a smoother, more interesting battle. Fight on!