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Writing Fighting: Applying Plausibility to Combat
Combat scenes are best when they flow and are believable.
At last year’s Farpoint con, I asked for and got to lead a panel on writing fighting. My intent for the panel was to explore making combat scenes realistic and plausible, and what goes into that.
Unfortunately, one of my panelists hijacked the panel and kept redirecting us to discussing how combat should be part of character development, or plot advancement, or advancing the story, and blah blah blah. My attempts to shift us into an exploration of how to write combat scenes plausibly kept getting diverted back to his premise, rather than the discussion I’d envisioned.
Why does this matter? Because more than once, I’ve been pulled out of a story because the author wrote a combat scene that made no sense. A character somehow teleported from one space to another in an utterly implausible move, or a weapon did something that stretched credulity, an impossible punch or kick was thrown, or something else along that line broke the flow.
When it comes to sci-fi and fantasy, some elements will impact combat in ways that won’t work in real life. We have no experience fighting in zero-g or shooting laser weapons in epic space battles, for example. Likewise, nobody can cast fireball or other spells. Even so, plausibility in writing fighting matters.
Hence, like the premise of my sadly commandeered panel, I’m exploring how writing fighting is done for plausibility.
Single combat
One-on-one combat can take all sorts of forms. All one-on-one combat involves similar optics and focus, no matter what form it takes.
Let’s start with unarmed combat. This type of fighting includes fist fights, bar brawls, wrestling, boxing, mixed martial arts, and all fighting without weapons. All unarmed combat is close-combat, because arms and legs are only so long. How you fight at arm’s length is considerably different from fighting at distance.
Armed combat involves the use of weapons. And this takes on multiple forms. This includes close-combat, just like unarmed combat. Close-combat with weapons is fighting with knives, brass knuckles, short batons, hand axes, and the like. You gain the power of something sharp or blunt beyond your own bone structure in the fight.
Technically, swords, clubs, polearms, and even spears are close-combat weapons. However, the way a fight works at arm’s length versus the 8-foot reach of a spear is wildly different. Also, some weapons require strength over finesse (clubs, broadswords) while others require finesse over strength (rapiers, daggers).
Ranged combat – with guns, crossbows, blasters – is part of armed combat. These weapons let you kill at a greater distance with theoretically less exposure.
No matter what you apply to single combat, writing fighting needs to be plausible. How you throw a punch vs raise a sword vs shoot a pulse pistol is part of what you need to know. The tactics for one-on-one combat are important.
Writing fighting in single combat requires understanding body mechanics, how weapons work, and mental discipline. A brawler, with no training, brings a different skillset to the table than a master swordsman or black-belt martial artist.
Learning how to apply believability to single combat is a matter of research and/or learning the basics of a form of combat for yourself.
Melee combat in writing fighting
Melee combat is two-on-two, five-on-five, a tavern of brawlers, or an army of combatants taking on another, and the like. Multiple combatants duking it out.
This also breaks down, like single combat, into unarmed, armed, and ranged combat. What’s more, melee can involve mixed weapons and layers of nuance because of how they work.
The first main difference between melee combat and single combat is situational awareness. Two-on-two, you need to be aware of what both opponents are doing. The more people fighting against each other, the more you must stay cognizant of all the combatants you face.
For example, if you’re facing a line of fighters, striving to kill each other, turning your back on them is probably going to get you killed. You have to be aware of them all, at least to a degree, to avoid making a costly mistake. It’s like driving a car – you need to know what’s on the road in front of you, plus a ways ahead of that, plus what’s around you and behind you.
Unless all your fighters are controlled by a hive mind, how each person fights will vary. This can be daunting, because you only write with so many character perspectives and shouldn’t mix them all up without a clear demarcation (unless you want your reader utterly lost).
Army combat, when you factor in ranged weapons, avoiding a storm of arrows, magic, or plasma cannons, factors into writing fighting. You need to strike a balance between sufficient plausible information and how detailed to be vs oversharing, to keep the reader engaged.
Tanks, boats, and aircraft
It’s important to know how different fighting on land is from fighting on the sea or in the air. Movement on land and sea is going to be directly impacted by terrain and waves. The environment can massively impact how this type of combat goes down.
Fighting in the sky or underwater adds another dimension to combat, as you gain movement and freedom lacking when you’re restricted to a specific surface. Yet you still need to factor pressure, gravity, friction, and resistance into the fight.
Space combat adds yet another dimension. The absence of gravity and air resistance means you can maneuver in pretty cool ways you can’t on a planet. That’s not even factoring in theoretical and fantastic weapons like lasers, mass drivers, phasers, and so on.
Writing fighting requires an understanding of the difference between being a person with a weapon facing another, vs a person inside a weapon facing another. Stress might be the same, but how you exert yourself can take on different dimensions.
Which brings me to my central premise of this essay.
Writing fighting with plausibility
Unless you are writing from the perspective of an invincible, never-tiring, omniscient, fearless being, stress is part of combat. This can be mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and/or any combination thereof. The stress will vary depending on character, experience, type of combat, and more.
A general, observing from the back of a battle at the strategy table, is under very different stress from the grunt at the front facing the opposition. Both might be exerting themselves, but in different ways. That, too, needs to be factored into writing fighting.
You also need to establish for your world an understanding of basic physics and the like. Why? Because a fight in zero-g is very different from a fight in heavy gravity. Physical limitations need to be established so that your character’s movement in combat makes sense.
Sometimes this defies logic to a degree. Take the scene in Attack of the Clones where Yoda fights Dooku. The little green dude leaps and hops all over with amazing agility during the fight – but walks with a cane before and after. As someone who has been fencing for over 30 years, I can tell you from personal experience that when I’m in the zone, fighting, the adrenaline and focus of combat removes pain and movement limitations. After combat? Limping off the field with sore knees isn’t uncommon.
Where’s my cane?
What goes into plausible vs implausible combat?
There are too many books and movies for a definitive list here. But certain things I come across are common.
Movement. Body movement has predictable outcomes. How you throw a punch, kick, or elbow is relatively universal. Sure, someone in amazing physical strength (or aided by magic or the Force) can do a standing back-flip. But movement has limitations that, if ignored or disregarded, can and will pull the reader out of your story when writing fighting.
Distance. How you fight unarmed vs fighting with a 40” rapier vs gunfighting is important. You can shoot a gun at point-blank range, but not so much a bow and arrow. (Did you know an arrow needs a little distance clearance from the bow to fly true? Look it up, there are all sorts of slo-mo videos of this.) Also, how long it takes to cross a room is something you need to consider. I had to reread a fight scene in a book because how the character threw one punch – and then ended up on the other side of the room to throw another – was untenable. Hence, distance is a consideration.
Timing and writing fighting. I’ve been teaching fencing for more than 30 years. Speed is not the key; it’s all about timing. Reaction time built into muscle memory impacts the flow of combat. Lightning speed is great, except when it’s not. The notion from Dune of “the slow blade penetrates” is not bullshit. If your enemy leaves a hole in their guard every time they move a certain way, that is exploitable via timing, not speed.
Size. Size matters in writing fighting, depending on environmental factors. A tank moves differently from a motorcycle, a one-man fighter jet moves differently from a cargo jet, and so on. Space battles can overcome this to a degree, but it’s still important to consider. Ever seen Independence Day or Star Wars? Destroying something moon-sized via 1 tac nuke or proton torpedo is questionable (unless you explain it away via triggering a chain reaction or hitting something flammable to make a bigger boom). More than this, size can alter how things move in a given environment.
Perspective in writing fighting. If you’re writing from the first-person perspective, how you explain combat will be way different from the 2nd or 3rd person perspective. It’s a lot more intimate and dives deeper into the full-on mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical experience. If your character is using an unfamiliar weapon expertly, there needs to be a plausible explanation (they’re the chosen one, have past-life experience, and so on).
If the combat in how you’re writing fighting is utterly unbelievable, you can and will lose your reader. So how do you learn to write combat?
Ways to research writing fighting
The internet is a great place to learn about combat. Videos are everywhere, some more immersive than others, explaining elements of real-world bouting. The challenge here is placing yourself or your characters in the same experience and making the visual into wordplay.
You can study a martial art. Or boxing, kickboxing, fencing, archery, shooting, and so on. You don’t need to become an expert or proficient, unless you want to. But learning any 1 combat type can help you better understand others. I primarily fence, but I’ve learned from my study of it how to use a wide variety of weapons AND apply it to hand-to-hand, unarmed combat, AND melee combat.
You can read other people’s accounts of history or find examples of well-written combat from other writers. Yes, you might not get what you need or get led in the wrong direction, but you might also glean the info you desire.
Ask someone with knowledge. Talk to a martial artist, a combat veteran, a cop, or an athlete to learn the parts you might not know.
All in all, writing fighting to apply plausibility in combat will make your story stronger. That can lead to more character development and moving the plot without causing the reader to become incredulous. No part of a given story is greater or lesser than any other when all is said and done (and written).
Thanks for reading. As I share my creative journey with you every week, please consider this: How are you inspired and empowered to be your own authentic creator, whatever form that takes?
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