That was a very good and helpful essay. I was just lurking through the board looking for some good links to new and good fanfics when I read it, but this was so interesting I just had to actually delurk and make some additional comments.
Something that wasn't explictily discussed here is the question of what actually is a 'fight scence'. I know it sounds like a stupid question at first because you know a fight scene when you see one, but it is actually a bit hard to define. Thinking about it for a moment makes you relize that a fight scene can involve a lot of things: guns going bang, hands striking, swords clashing, spells flying, fighters swooping down and bombs falling. basically all sort of things that involve violence, but it can also be more.
Any sort of conflict between two or more characters can be seen as a fight scene. Whenever the hero and the villain are directly pitching their skills against each other in some form of formal or undeclared contest it can be written as a 'fight scene'. The classic car chase is a good example of how you can have a sort of fight scene without actually having a 'real' fight. When James Bond is playing bacarat against Herr Ziffer that is also a 'fight scene' with all the tension of a 'real' fight even if most of the action is going on behind the heros' and the villains' eyes.
This sort of thing can of course backfire horribly. For an example see every bad movie or fic where somebody who does not know very much about computer security tries to describe a 'hacking run' in terms of a pitched battle. You can do that. It is not realistic but no knife fight on the big screen ever had much resemblance to a real one either. It helps if you know what you are writing about and are not trying to substitute the general 'fight scence' pattern for actual content.
Another important thing to keep in mind besides the fact that a fight can take many forms is that a character in a fight can take many forms. Charcters are not just the various people, but everything that your audience has a sufficient emotional investment in. Quite often the same fight is happening on more than one level.
Gangs, Armies or fleets of battleships can be charcters just as much as the single people they are composed of. When a spaceship like the enterpise gets into a conflict with another spaceship than those are characters as well as the people on the bridge.
Somebody I read once who wrote an analysis of the use of the 'hero's cycle' in Star Wars pointed out to my great suprise that the millenium falcon has its own small cycle just as many other characters in the movies. Things like being insulted by Leia and having you engines fail only to finally come back on-line at just the right moment give you personality. It is not just another vehicle because its many faults and idiosyncrasies make it into a person in its own right. Battles are written is such a way as to pitch not only its crew but the falcon itself with its own strengths and weaknesses aginst its many faceless enemies.
But not only heroic non-humans can be participants in a fight scence. You very often have the hero pitcing itself against a villain that is not actual a person but a thing. A temple full of traps can be an active praticipant in a fight; just ask Indy. Sometimes you can even have your hero fighting against the landscape or the very elements. The see and the storms can be your villain if you write them that way. You don't have to anthropomorphise anything to make that clear to the reader sometimes subtle use of language is enough to give them enough of a presence to make it clear that they are the enemy.
Another important point is to keep in mind the medium you are actually in when writing. You can easily fall into the trap of writing as if you were in the same medium as your source material. during fight scenes this is especially problematic as they are very different from medium to medium.
A written fight scene or a fight scene from a comic will be different then one in a tv-show, a movie or even an audio play. The reader and writer are not bound by the timing of some playback device. Wich makes quite a difference.
Just look at the same fight in a naruto manga and the anime to see for yourself. You also don't get a soundtrack will have to achive the same effect by differnt means.
Most impoartantly is the difference that you lack the visual part when writing a fight scenes. You might see a beatifully choreographed battle in your mind's eye, but your reader won't necessarily. Don't try to write as if you were watching a movie. You will never get all the detail from a fight scenes to fit. Concentrate on the impoartant bits and let your readers imagination fill in the rest. If you are writing fanfiction you already have the huge advantage that you both will fill in pretty much the same sort of details from your shared source. You can work with that.
Keep copouts like written sound effects and artificial soundtrack cues to a minmum unless you are doing it for humor's sake. A written *BANG!* or #CRASH# makes me think of the old batman tv-series and writing an asside to start the fight-song here is extremly jarring. If you write your fic right the reader will start hearing the sort of theme you had in mind at the appropiate parts without help.
Besides all that stuff there is also something about the battles themselves. This is mostly from the perspective of a reader and viewer. As a write you often do some of these things naturally sometimes without giving it to much thought. It can help to look closer at them.
The Fight in the fight scene espcially if it is of the type climatic battle often mirrors the rest of the story in many ways. It is not just a culmination but also a replay of the same theme. Small setback that your hero had during the story are mirroed in setbacks that he has during the fight. If your hero recieved help or advice from some source during the story he will often use in exactly the same order that he recieved it durning the fight.
If one of your points is that the hero and villain are two sides of the same coin than that will show in the way they are fighting. The balance and symerty might be subtle but it is there. If it is a classic patricide that your hero has to acomplish in order to win in the end than the relationship will show not only in what they say, but also in how the fight itself goes.
The main point of the story gets vowen into the fight on more than one occasion. Sometimes the theme of the story gets ironically inverted for the last fight but it will still be there if you look closely.
Fights also mirror and mimic each other. Not just when the same two contestants meet again or when the villain fights first a failed hero and then the real deal, but often more or less unrelated fights a different points will go along the same lines to drive a point home. Sometimes to show what exactly was missing from the first fight when they end differntly and sometimes to show the equivalence of something or other.
Something that wasn't explictily discussed here is the question of what actually is a 'fight scence'. I know it sounds like a stupid question at first because you know a fight scene when you see one, but it is actually a bit hard to define. Thinking about it for a moment makes you relize that a fight scene can involve a lot of things: guns going bang, hands striking, swords clashing, spells flying, fighters swooping down and bombs falling. basically all sort of things that involve violence, but it can also be more.
Any sort of conflict between two or more characters can be seen as a fight scene. Whenever the hero and the villain are directly pitching their skills against each other in some form of formal or undeclared contest it can be written as a 'fight scene'. The classic car chase is a good example of how you can have a sort of fight scene without actually having a 'real' fight. When James Bond is playing bacarat against Herr Ziffer that is also a 'fight scene' with all the tension of a 'real' fight even if most of the action is going on behind the heros' and the villains' eyes.
This sort of thing can of course backfire horribly. For an example see every bad movie or fic where somebody who does not know very much about computer security tries to describe a 'hacking run' in terms of a pitched battle. You can do that. It is not realistic but no knife fight on the big screen ever had much resemblance to a real one either. It helps if you know what you are writing about and are not trying to substitute the general 'fight scence' pattern for actual content.
Another important thing to keep in mind besides the fact that a fight can take many forms is that a character in a fight can take many forms. Charcters are not just the various people, but everything that your audience has a sufficient emotional investment in. Quite often the same fight is happening on more than one level.
Gangs, Armies or fleets of battleships can be charcters just as much as the single people they are composed of. When a spaceship like the enterpise gets into a conflict with another spaceship than those are characters as well as the people on the bridge.
Somebody I read once who wrote an analysis of the use of the 'hero's cycle' in Star Wars pointed out to my great suprise that the millenium falcon has its own small cycle just as many other characters in the movies. Things like being insulted by Leia and having you engines fail only to finally come back on-line at just the right moment give you personality. It is not just another vehicle because its many faults and idiosyncrasies make it into a person in its own right. Battles are written is such a way as to pitch not only its crew but the falcon itself with its own strengths and weaknesses aginst its many faceless enemies.
But not only heroic non-humans can be participants in a fight scence. You very often have the hero pitcing itself against a villain that is not actual a person but a thing. A temple full of traps can be an active praticipant in a fight; just ask Indy. Sometimes you can even have your hero fighting against the landscape or the very elements. The see and the storms can be your villain if you write them that way. You don't have to anthropomorphise anything to make that clear to the reader sometimes subtle use of language is enough to give them enough of a presence to make it clear that they are the enemy.
Another important point is to keep in mind the medium you are actually in when writing. You can easily fall into the trap of writing as if you were in the same medium as your source material. during fight scenes this is especially problematic as they are very different from medium to medium.
A written fight scene or a fight scene from a comic will be different then one in a tv-show, a movie or even an audio play. The reader and writer are not bound by the timing of some playback device. Wich makes quite a difference.
Just look at the same fight in a naruto manga and the anime to see for yourself. You also don't get a soundtrack will have to achive the same effect by differnt means.
Most impoartantly is the difference that you lack the visual part when writing a fight scenes. You might see a beatifully choreographed battle in your mind's eye, but your reader won't necessarily. Don't try to write as if you were watching a movie. You will never get all the detail from a fight scenes to fit. Concentrate on the impoartant bits and let your readers imagination fill in the rest. If you are writing fanfiction you already have the huge advantage that you both will fill in pretty much the same sort of details from your shared source. You can work with that.
Keep copouts like written sound effects and artificial soundtrack cues to a minmum unless you are doing it for humor's sake. A written *BANG!* or #CRASH# makes me think of the old batman tv-series and writing an asside to start the fight-song here is extremly jarring. If you write your fic right the reader will start hearing the sort of theme you had in mind at the appropiate parts without help.
Besides all that stuff there is also something about the battles themselves. This is mostly from the perspective of a reader and viewer. As a write you often do some of these things naturally sometimes without giving it to much thought. It can help to look closer at them.
The Fight in the fight scene espcially if it is of the type climatic battle often mirrors the rest of the story in many ways. It is not just a culmination but also a replay of the same theme. Small setback that your hero had during the story are mirroed in setbacks that he has during the fight. If your hero recieved help or advice from some source during the story he will often use in exactly the same order that he recieved it durning the fight.
If one of your points is that the hero and villain are two sides of the same coin than that will show in the way they are fighting. The balance and symerty might be subtle but it is there. If it is a classic patricide that your hero has to acomplish in order to win in the end than the relationship will show not only in what they say, but also in how the fight itself goes.
The main point of the story gets vowen into the fight on more than one occasion. Sometimes the theme of the story gets ironically inverted for the last fight but it will still be there if you look closely.
Fights also mirror and mimic each other. Not just when the same two contestants meet again or when the villain fights first a failed hero and then the real deal, but often more or less unrelated fights a different points will go along the same lines to drive a point home. Sometimes to show what exactly was missing from the first fight when they end differntly and sometimes to show the equivalence of something or other.