Writing Research: How to Write Fight Scenes

As a writer, I'd consider my biggest weakness to be fight scenes, and I know I'm not the only one. It's one of the reasons I like to write scripts and screenplays, where you can describe the fight itself in a couple of lines, and leave the detailed scuffle up to the storyboard artists, directors and cinematographers as and when it's needed. However, as I write short stories and novels, too, it is a necessary part of what I do. So this post is a bit of a brief how to, for myself and other writers out there who struggle with this.

First of all, the basics of sentence structure. This is vital. Short, sharp sentences give the immediate feel of every impact, whereas longer, bloated sentences will drag out the action. At best, sentence structure will serve to enhance a fight scene, but at worst, it will confuse and disorient the reader.

Research is a must. To make your universe credible, it must follow it's own internal logic. If swords are used, research different types of swords and the styles of combat they are used in. If a character has trained with a specific type of weapon, improvising with a different weapon will put them at a disadvantage. If they have sustained injuries, that will also impact the fight. If magic is a force, what are the rules around it and how easy/difficult is it to wield in a combat situation?

A tavern brawl will be very different to a duel. The brawl will be chaotic, people are unlikely to be seasoned fighters, there will be little to no concept of 'fair' fighting. People might not know the initial cause, but stuck in the middle of the fray, they have no choice to fight back to escape or survive. In a duel, the fight will likely be more organised, with a form of judge ensuring some form of rules. The stakes will be more personal, and more complex than simply 'fighting to survive'.

Every fight should feel unique and different. You wouldn't repeat the same section of dialogue for no reason, so why should you write the same type of fight scene twice? What would be the point?

Different characters will respond differently to battle. The character who is willing to survive at any cost would have no qualms taking the easiest route out of a fight, even if that is to avoid it completely. The character who values personal honour over pragmatism may rush into ridiculous situations without really considering the outcome of their actions.

Do not disorient the reader. Fight scenes can easily become a blur and make it difficult to work out what exactly is going on. Many readers will skip them if they become too challenging to follow. Make sure that the fight is easy to read.

Alternatively, consider deliberately making it disorienting. Battle can be overwhelming, especially if the characters aren't trained for combat. Reflect that in the characters. Make them confused. What are the consequences? Injury? Losing a character or important item behind in the chaos?

Above all, practise. If you are aware that fight scenes are a weakness for you, go out of your way to write a few fight scenes. Writing, like any art, is a craft you hone over time and hours of practise. There's no shame in admitting that this element of your craft needs more work.

A few extra resources for additional reading:

Vary your sentence length to make your writing more interesting: A good primer on how and why to vary sentence length with some specific examples in both text and audio, talking about the musicality of the written word.
Here's how to write a damn good fight scene: More about the specifics of language used in a fight scene and specific techniques to try out.
Writing Fight Scenes: Specifically for fantasy writers, and covers a little bit of everything, including suspense and build-up before the fight has truly begun and how to develop characters through fight scenes.
5 Essential Tips for Writing Killer Fight Scenes: More about the motivations behind specific fight scenes - understanding why they are (or aren't!) necessary for your plot is the first step to tackling them.

How to Buy Chocolate (A Layperson's Guide to Luxury)

A small disclaimer about me - I don't work for any company, and I am by no means an expert in the field. This is just a small selection of tips I wish everyone knew about buying and tasting chocolate.

Good chocolate should be a luxury. This whole article isn't about cheap little bars you find in the corner shop or newsagents. And there's nothing inherently wrong in liking them, either (I have a soft spot for mint Aeros, despite knowing how cheaply they're made, and about some really questionable ethics that Nestlé as a company has). But while most people know about cheap, 'everyday' brands, when it comes to luxury brands of chocolate, people often don't know what it is they're actually looking for.

In my opinion, the perfect luxury chocolate comes down to a few elements: taste, ethics, technique and ingredients. These elements are pretty interlinked, too - good quality ingredients very often come from a strong ethical drive behind the company, and this leads to a better technique when combining the ingredients, resulting in a fantastic taste.

A good bar of chocolate has a 'shiny' appearance - this comes from the chocolate being properly tempered - and will give an audible crisp 'snap' when broken up. (If you're interested in the tempering process and the science behind it, this website explains it far better than I could ever hope to.) These are excellent indicators that the maker knows the science behind making good chocolate, and that it has also been stored in the best conditions to ensure you get the chocolate tasting exactly as the maker intended. 'Blooming' is a technical term that refers to chocolate looking dusty/powdered with white. It occurs when chocolates have been stored incorrectly - usually at changing temperatures. It isn't necessarily an indicator that the chocolates haven't been tempered properly, but it definitely shows that storage conditions aren't quite what they should be at that particular store, for any variety of reasons (too hot, too cold, too humid...chocolate is a fickle beast!), and to perhaps think twice about buying from that store, and consider the brand a little more carefully in future.

If possible, I would try to taste the chocolate before I bought it. Obviously, in some places this could be impossible, but many places will offer samples of their products, and who better knows your taste buds than you? If you can't get a sample, consider buying a small bar to try before you commit to a larger purchase. How a maker treats it's cheapest product is indicative of how they make chocolate as a whole, so if you don't like a small sample of their product, you're unlikely to like their more complex products.

A chocolate ingredient's label can (and should) be a pretty easy read. The only essential ingredients to bar of chocolate are cocoa mass and cocoa butter. That's it. That's should be all you see on a 100% cocoa bar (as the name suggests - it's all cocoa). If you like your chocolate a little less rich, sugar is acceptable and if you prefer milkier chocolate, milk/milk solids is the way to go. And that's all that belongs in your standard bar of chocolate. If you see (and you probably will) soya lecithin/emulsifier...ask why. Similarly, vegetable oils (in particular, palm oil) shouldn't be a part of the process. Both of these cheapen the process and act as a filler. Not only that, but palm oils are terrible for you as a person, and even worse for the environment and the people that harvest it. Unfortunately, both are quite common, not only in chocolate but in many other types of food. There are makers that do keep it simple, but they may take a little hunting down. They're well worth it, though.

While we're looking at ingredients, check the expiration date. This depends on the type of chocolate you're buying, but you're looking for an expiration date that is as far into the future as possible, for the freshest possible product. Some makers do put a date of manufacture on their chocolate, which I love and wish more makers did, after all, if you have nothing to hide, you would, ideally, give your customers as much information as possible about how and when it was made. Plain chocolate can last for years in the right conditions, but after a month or so, with most brands there is a noticeable drop in flavour, and when fillings are involved, this can happen even sooner.

As a general rule of thumb, I like chocolate makers who are proud of where their ingredients are from. Why? Because they are being open and honest about their sourcing. It means that, with a little digging, practically anyone can look into the process, and find out how workers are treated and paid. Luxury products do not need to be made at the expense of other people, and I don't want my pleasure to come as a result of someone else's pain. It's such a simple thing, but a quick search of many companies can show that this isn't always as widely practised as we would like to hope.

If you've bought your chocolate, keep it in a cool, dry environment. A fridge can be too cold (and introduce moisture to the chocolate, which will make it bloom), so unless your home is particularly hot, a cupboard would suit it better. And while chocolate, even without preservatives, should have quite a long period of time where it is safe to eat, all chocolate tastes better the fresher it is.

If you'd like to read reviews of particular brands, of chocolate, I'd like to recommend Pleasure in Good Measure as a blog to follow. The writer behind the blog taught me a lot of the points about chocolate that I've bought up here. 

So, this has been a quick guide to luxury chocolate. There's obviously a lot more to this, and any single paragraph could be an essay in it's own right. Any single one of these points could be a starting point for more research (and I do recommend you research and not take my word for any point here). If I can distil this article down into one, more general point: be aware of the food you're eating and the products you're consuming. Ask questions. Research. Assume that most companies are not doing things for your best interest, they're doing it to make money. Be sceptical.