Writing Tips and Reviews

Fight Scenes: Long or Short

Depending on the type of story, fight scenes can be either. A small training session isn't as long as a battle to the death. Hyped up battles of course need to be longer, like the final boss in a game. Full episodes in TV series and around five to ten minutes in movies.

This also plays into the strength of the characters. A weak character against a strong one is going to take less than a minute. Let's be honest, a character who has little to no experience in fighting is going to get their ass kicked by a professional. Child prodigy or not. Skills, weapons, magic or another force, special abilities like psychokinesis or essokinesis, all make a play into how long that fight is going to last.

The Fate series is exactly like this, servants have their own weapon and abilities and are stronger than normal humans by a long shot. A little human has nothing against a servant, trained for five years isn't going to help you kid so you better start running. Especially with the ones that drain life by standing near their victims. The servants who fight with one another have long fights that can last up to the whole episode and more if needed, they're just that good at what they do. And Ufotable are gods at animation.

Tales of Zestiria the X (Cross), the final fight was intense then was brought with the feels for people who played the game. I'm bringing up the anime since the game is different, in the fact that the battle length is dependent on the player. Sorey brought out everything he had and he was struggling throughout the entire fight. But he didn't quit. Honorable man that guy. While more elemental based, spells and such with the seraphim, it was still a great fight and deserved the time it got. It wasn't quick, it wasn't solved by deus ex machina and it wasn't boring. Boring scenes are just shit, boring fight scenes are even worse. Namco has always known how to make a good fight scene.

The audience should be involved in the fight scene, if they don't care and skip to the end, you've failed. Fight scenes take into consideration so many factors, that "instant kill" is pretty lame. Comedy can do some really funny things with that subject. If you want a fight scene, then trying to say "he killed her" in the first sentence isn't what a fight scene is. That's sneaking up behind someone and killing them, no fighting even happened. Professional killer my ass if they can't even touch the person right in front of them.

The lamer the fight the more boring it is. I don't care how long the scene was, if it wasted my time then I'm not going to care. Fight scenes need to be exciting, they need to show what's at stake for enemy fights and what's to learn from training and maybe the other way around. If nothing is being learned and nothing is accomplished, then what was the point of spending time out of the audience's day to read a waste of time? This is how feel whenever I read about a rich girl going to school and complaining that they don't have enough.

The longer the fight, the more there needs to be to keep the audience entertained. That's just logic. Flashy colors, effects, show of skills and techniques. And I'm not just talking about movies and shows, you can replicate this in writing. I've done it. "The sound of gears slowly turning", "the hands of a clock ticking down". Mood building. "The strike blew hard and the blade clanging with the other created a sharp and loud shattering sound" didn't need sound effects. "She jumped and used her weight with gravity to send a hard blow on his blade, causing it to shatter" technique. I can go on all day but you get the point.

I like to take fight scene inspiration from the Fate series. The environment, the skills and techniques of the characters, everything needs to be in there to make a good fight scene. Anywhere can be turned into a battle field, anything can become a weapon. Do it right and you'll make a great scene. Do it wrong, and you've wasted everyone's time by showing how little you know about battling. Gravity, I like to use gravity. I like physics.