Write a sword fighting scene

There is no need to be over-complex with your sword scene. That way, they become attached to what is going to happen.

Rather fewer actually manage to include anything which is remotely exciting. In the whole of literature, there are not many famous sword-fights.

Given that an awful lot of films and not merely a lot of awful films feature a sword fight as the climax, it may seem surprising that novels have not taken the same course.

That is, until you actually try to write a sword-fight. Although in a different tradition, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, the Banquet, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, have exemplary sword fights which put most Western tradition movies to shame.

Probably the most technically virtuoso fight scenes in film are in Kill Bill volume I and II, where Quentin Tarantino relishes the challenge of including virtually every kind of modern sword-fighting. If you want to write a sword-fight scene, you might do worse than wander down to a local fencing club or visit a competition, or watch fencing on TV on the rare occasions that it is shown.

You might do worse, I say, but probably not much worse. Fencing is just too fast for non-fencers to follow, and even — if we consider the number of arguments with referees at competitions — fairly hard for fencers to follow. When fencing appears in films, it is drastically slowed down.

I was once an extra in a BBC television play that revolved around a fencing competition. To get it onto camera, they made us slow down to the point that it was comic. Judging by the successes of the four authors I have mentioned, it seems to me the key to writing about sword-fights is not watching them, but reading about them.

The sword fight in Yvain Vv. In terms of the action, it is less decisive than earlier fights, and there is less of a sense that Yvain might die. The climactic bout, though, is when he faces his own father, also unknowingly, although we, the readers, have long guessed in the film version it is his brother.

The fight between Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride is, in its film version, a favourite among fencers, and, for once, the film follows the book exceptionally carefully.

Rather than elaborately recounting the parries and ripostes, Goldman treats it more as an exposition of the mind of a Renaissance fencer, referencing Capa Ferro and Thibault, and describing it somewhat like a chess game, with different strategies cancelling each other out.

In his entire fiction career, CS Lewis only wrote two sword fight scenes he has battles and fights involving swords, and he references two sword fights which have already taken place, in The Horse and His Boy, but these are the only duels between equally armed, skilled opponents happening directly in the narrativeand both of them are in Prince Caspian.

Near the beginning, Edmund takes on Trumpkin the dwarf, disarming him after some moves. The climax of the book is the duel to the death between Peter and King Miraz, which takes rather longer and is, to my mind, absolutely the most gripping fight in literature.

In the rest of the Narnia stories, we have swords against wolves, roll-over rough-and-tumbles, a giantess with the bar of a lamp-post beating back a crowd of angry Londoners, and a fight with a sea-monster, but no more one-on-one duels.

It would seem unlikely that Lewis simply got fed up of sword fights after having written too many in one story.

How to Write Fight Scenes (with Sample Fight Scenes) - wikiHow

The truth, I think, lies in one of the great difficulties of describing fencing of any kind: By separating the fighting into two, Lewis is able to give the explanation in the first fight, and keep the drama for the second.

He begins by emphasising the deadly nature of the combat: The second time round he is able to focus on fear, the imminent threat of death, the feeling of powerlessness among the spectators, the violence and injury of the fighting, and on the treachery of Miraz.

There is nothing in the way of technical explanation to slow down the action, and there are no fencing tricks to give Peter the advantage.

The result of the fight is that Miraz dies, but not killed by Peter — rather, he is treacherously stabbed by his own side after he has fallen to the ground. However, for the sake of clarity, here are, to me, the key issues: The excitement comes from the dread of facing what appears to be a situation in which we can only lose, and the relief is when it is resolved.

Sabbatini has a much greater understanding of fencing, and this is absolutely clear in his writing. But, despite the proximity to the fencing that Sabbatini creates, the action is relatively low speed and the way that Moreau is built up as the ultimate fencer makes the outcome of the duel certain.

Although he begins cerebrally, when the fight turns, it turns on the changing of hand from left to right, and it does it twice. In this way, Goldman manages to make the turning points happen in very few words, thus making the description of the action no slower than the action itself.Feb 11,  · I've run into a dilemma in my writing.

I don't know how to write down a sword-fighting scene where one of the fighters (one of my MCs) is using a fighting style against an attacker. The style i want to base it off of is Japanese sword-fighting style because I'm using the idea of basing the culture. How to Write Fight Scenes. In this Article: Article Summary Preparing to Write the Scene Writing a First Draft Sample Fight Scenes Community Q&A Fight scenes can be tricky territory for writers.

A good fight scene should be action packed and should not slow down the drama of the story as a whole. Keep your fight scenes engaging by making the action hard, fast, and packed with just enough detail. Die by the Sword is a creative dungeon crawl with great graphics and an original interface.

The player's left hand controls the character's movement while the right hand controls his sword arm. Writing Realistic Sword Fights.

Posted by Daeus | Sep 24, | Articles, Style | I hope this will help anyone who is writing a sword fight scene to be able to proceed with confidence. If you find that you are still uncomfortable writing a sword fight, there are many guides to traditional sword fighting you may consult, though be.

Sample Swordfight Scene. End of the line. One last stop. Though he’d heard it described as “underground,” Davis was loath to call the last round of the fight anything close to that since it took place on the roof of a building. Fights, chases, time bombs wanna know how to write them?

Me too! Image (c) sinbad9 via timberdesignmag.com I’m writing an action scene at the moment for my book, and I’ve mostly been just going with my gut and writing what I can see in my imagination, but today I thought ‘hey, there are probably some tricks to writing a great action or fight scene that I’ve never heard of.