Author L.E. Perez gave a good talk on fight scenes at the Florida Writers Association 2017 Conference . Here are the tips I garnered. Any errors are due to my misinterpretation.
- Focus on character emotions.
- Defending yourself is not the same as being prepared to injure someone.
- PTSD happens to anyone who experiences a violent event or is a crime victim. This also applies to domestic abuse since the characters are at war.
- Consider words that reflect a fight: sudden clarity, adrenaline rush, freeze up, smashed, buffeted, rage, pain.
- If your character punches someone, he may need to shake his hand out afterward. It hurts to throw a punch.
- Allow for recovery time. Either use the recovery in the story, or skip ahead and have the character recount what happened during this interval.
- In a knife fight, someone invariably gets cut. Or your hero might survive a knife fight and then cut himself chopping vegetables for a bit of humor.
- Act out your action scenes to get a sense of motion. How is your character moving during the scene? How is he holding a weapon?
- Kamas is a weapon with a scythe-like blade on one end and a pointed blade on the other end.
- Not all knives are throwing knives. They have to be properly balanced.
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