Aside from dialogue and general description, I feel that action scenes are my weakest area as a writer. Two out of three chapters in my upcoming fic feature battles. A 'mirror universe' AU I'm mulling over would certainly have fights. What concerns me the most is my 40+ chapter magnum opus - all but a few chapters have at least one action sequence. Honing the skills involved is something of a priority.

So, my fellow writers: what recommendations would you have for planning, pacing, describing, and otherwise bringing good quality tussles to the page? What aspects of action work well? Just as important, what doesn't work?

I can answer the last question at least. One of my pet peeves: long-winded dialogue in the middle of throwing punches. Fantasy heroes have a tendency to belt out half a paragraph in the middle of leaping towards the Random Encounter. It's hard to talk at all when fighting, let alone with any eloquence. Second, dry and clinical scenes. "He threw a punch. She dodged to the left. He kicked." Augh. But, what's the best way to spice up a scene without the prose going purple?

So, uh. Yeah. Begin?

Gotta admit, knowing this kind of stuff could come in handy for my slowly-forming Magnum Opus too, so though I can't offer much help I will be hanging around!

842017
make it feel natural is my best answer. you need to determine how people dodge, how they swing, a person's personality can dictate how they fight. just try and make it feel natural. talking during combat is rather tedious and somewhat counterproductive unless you can fit in one or two remarks that fit in with the character.

842017
Keep it short, concise and to the point. Don't use any unnecessary wording. (Not promotion here, legit trying to help,) You can look at my humanized fics The Laughing Shadow and Fool's Gold if you're needing examples--they both contain several fight scenes.

It's a balance between pacing and interest. Pace things too slowly and the action is boringly overwrought. Pace it too quickly and it's bland. It's a light touch to get things described enough but not overly so.

I tend to describe the affects of an attack rather than the individual blows in great detail. Writing the line "Applejack swung around and with a powerful kick drove her hindlegs into the timberwolf's face." is fast and punchy. Easy to picture, doesn't need a lot of purple. Describing what happens to the wolf is interesting. Having it fly through the air, chips of bark spraying from its cracked face, bashing into a tree, that's the cool part. The kick itself isn't what's cool, it's what the kick does that's worth describing.

Best advice I can give is reread action scenes, both from fics and books, that you found exciting and engaging. Read through them and figure out why you found them exciting. The way things were described, the level of detail, the beats of action to dialogue, breaks in action for moments of quiet, that sort of stuff. Figure out why those scenes worked so well and try to emulate the same structure in your own writing.

Be descriptive. Let the reader know just how awesome the battle is! Walls can be damaged, tables broken, blood can be splattered, etc.

842017 Action scenes can have dialogue throughout, but works better when shown as internal thinking of a character. And the fight itself it works well when I describing the fight when allowing a n outside view of what both characters are feeling and doing with one paragraph somewhat focusing on what one is doing, and then the next paragraph focusing on the other. That is how I write the battle scenes for my stories 'we fight as one' and 'akatsuki in Equestria' . And also, spreading a figt over several chapters helps break it up

I like to visualize the scene in my mind. Then write a rough outline of what happens during it. Read through it a few times and write what sounds good too me. It really helps to have another person look at it too.

Action scenes should flow more than anything else. If you're unsure of how that works, look at what other people do when writing those kinds of scenes and take your idea's from that.

But most importantly, know the limits of your characters and what they are fighting with. For instance, a fighter plane engaging Rainbow Dash in an aerial duel. Is the plane WWI, inter-war period, early WWII, Late WWII, Post WWII, etc. Research what it could and could not do and how a pilot of that nations air force would have used it at that time. However, that doesn't mean you should go into purple prose detail, but it does mean you should at least know how a plane of that type would act in a given situation.

Same goes for anything else, gun fight, melee fight, sword fight, those kind of things. When you write for the ponies in those cases, looking at what other people have come up with really helps too.

Hope that helps a little.

842017
Most important thing to remember is that a story is like, imagine a movie where the camera was zoomed in as far as it could be at all times. Every punch fills the whole screen while the rest of the cast sits off screen and sips coffee.
Unlike with a movie, only one character can be acting at a time. I usually cheat by having every dispute go completely one sided. I'd recommend Salvatore's work for well written fight scenes, I guess.

I've always found it most effective to shorten sentences, increase interrupted thoughts, stick to 'first impression' descriptions, and be acutely aware of viewpoint.

Shortening sentences and adding more interrupted thought tends to kind of pull the reader along faster, seems like.

842036
I certainly have fighting styles in mind. Like characterization and voice, it's a matter of writing it consistently that's the problem!

842064
I tend towards the third person limited, so if I jumped perspective it would be a scene change. Internal thinking works, though.

842068
Driiiiiiizt! Good recommendation.

A good way to practice is to watch an action scene in a movie or TV show, then try to write it out in prose. That will give you some idea of how to write an action scene that you can see choreographed in your head. Learning a bit about how fighting works too also helps, i.e. what makes an effective kick, the difference in deflecting vs blocking blows, etc.

Writing action scenes for someone not used to doing them would be difficult. One thing that I think has helped me is that over the years I have been an avid roleplayer. As a roleplayer, your character can do a variety of actions, and one of those things can be attacking another person.

Even just for action scenes, roleplaying I have found has been an excellent way to hone yourself as a writer.

I consider myself to be a decent combat writer since that's what I prefer to write... If you wanna take a look at my story, Singularity: Demons In Paradise, it could help you... I believe that one of the best I've done so far is in the chapter "Check..."

842017
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TalkingIsAFreeAction

Three rules I try to follow in action scenes;
1. Keep it concise. Sentences can be long, but ideas need to be short, snappy bursts of movement.
2. Be aware of sentence structure. ie. Run-on sentences can be used to emphasise the flowing nature of the fight, or very short, repetitive sentences can be used to emphasise the speed at which everything is happening.
3. Be descriptive. Nothing is more powerful than the right verb or noun, at the right time. The best example of this (for me) is Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Check this out;

"Like fighters locked mortally at each other's throats, emerald and argent galed and blasted, gyring upwards at velocities which no undefended granite could withstand. In long pain, the roots of the promontory trembled. Walls bent; great chunks of ceiling fell; weaker stones melted and ran like water." -The Power That Preserves

Even if you hate the books, I think we can all agree that that is powerful.

842148 Role playing does help out quite a bit.

842017 Best thing I can tell you is to keep a constant flow to the current action that is happening in one particular paragraph. Try to use words that have a kind of subliminal aggression to them without stating the obvious.

While every story should be roller coaster with it's ups, downs and stalls. An action scene should be constant break neck speed straight away that makes the reader let out an audible "Oh!" during the course of it. My story The Zealot has several action scenes that have been described as "Epic" by the people nice enough to comment on them. Read those if you wish, and take from them what you will.

842206
It's not a link, I'm safe. My browser will not be made of tabs. Good trope and advice, though!

To everyone: thanks for all the advice so far! Keep it coming, of course. There's always room for improvement.

842278 My browser is nothing but tabs. Over a hundred of them, in fact.

842017
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!

Hey, a topic about something I'm actually experienced in! Alright, I'll go ahead and link you to two things.

The first link is here. Scroll down to MRUs, even though the entire article is good for a story as a whole. This link helps you to add vivid details as well as describing action scenes through the reactions of a single person at a time, as well as outlining the entire process in an easy 3 step system.

For instance, let's take your basic fighting scenario.

CharacterA throws a punch at CharacterB. CharacterB blocks the punch and returns with a side-swipe to the head. CharacterA is hit by said sideswipe.

Pretty boring huh? This is what amateur writers often do when writing their action scenes. They do it from a subjective point of view, when in real life, action isn't like that. It's the reactions, both internal in thoughts, and external through body language (such as flinching) as well as verbal language when reasonable. These reactions to the objective actions create the suspense, the tension, and in result, the excitement you're looking for. And that's exactly what MRUs are. Adding those in to the previous...

CharacterA throws a punch at CharacterB. CharacterB's heart raced as the punch slowly sailed toward his head, a bolt of raw adrenaline shooting through his veins. CharacterB blocks the punch upward and returns with a side-swipe to the head. CharacterA eyes focus on his opponent's head, ready to follow up with a direct punch, unaware of the retaliation sailing toward his own head. CharacterA is hit by said sideswipe.

Of course, the objective lines could use more detail, but I wanted to prove an example. So to recap, show the action through the eyes of the character. It doesn't mean to necessarily go into 1st person, but show the action through their reactions. If they get hit, describe their ribs cracking and how they fold in half and collapse.

The second link is here. This describes the pacing for the action scenes, and even though it's for games, the same concept applies to stories. Same applies as before (you can only use it for the action scenes), but if you're having trouble pacing your entire story, feel free to use it for that too.

Oh, and even though there's no link, I have one more tip. Learn from the experts. Check out some thriller or action novels from the library, or even read some action fan fictions that you enjoy. Study up on them, and follow their example.

Feel free to send me a PM if you want me to help on your action scenes. I'm quite experienced, and I like to think I know what I'm doing.

Good luck, and happy writings!

842293
I looked at your page, and saw the blog post about crossovers. The magnum opus I mentioned in the OP? It's a 'universe shaping' crossover. I'll have to take a look at the links tomorrow, but I will send you a PM. Awesome.

Action is really fun for me to write. I don't make use of Talking Is A Free Action (Starforge barely talks at all in his fights), so it's definitely not necessary to spice the combat up.

You need to have a solid grip on how your character fights. It's good to hear that you have fighting styles in mind, but remember that every fight is different! Starforge can knock poorly armed bipeds over as he runs past them with his wings, but he's not going to try that on an armored cyclops that weighs ten times what he does. Likewise, he can headbutt soft tissue all he wants, but if he needs to break through armor, then he really needs to buck and hit them with his hind hooves. The fun part is getting them to sit still long enough for that, though.

I often find myself standing up, acting out some of the motions and trying to visualize them more clearly. If you can be clear what position someone staggers into, for instance, you know which direction they're more likely to turn. Etcetera, etcetera.

You can check out my story, The Cyclops of the Forge if you're curious. Heck, at the very least it will let you know whether or not I know what I'm talking about.

I love writing a good fight scene, choreographing a fight is one of my favorite things to do. One thing you should keep in mind about creating a good fight scene in literature us its not all about the action. I feel that a truly great fight scene in a story is all about character development and telling the reader of the characters inner most emotional turmoil through action rather than words (Well written words not spoken lol). Anyways to do a fight scene right you have to take into account the full range of emotions that are being felt by each of the characters on the battlefield. Is your character calm and collective but became that way through insecurity of showing emotion? This person will fight differently than that of someone that is enraged but is doing so out of tactical necessity. Are you trying to show built up anger in your character that has formed through months or years of being kicked around? Each emotion constitutes a unique way this person will engage their foe. This goes just as much for the person (or pony) that has been well trained and practiced for years as it does the person throne into combat and fights out of desperation. The only difference between the two is that the person who has training will have more precise and calculated moves rather than just random flailing about. So in a summary a fight scene is more about your characters personality and emotions than the actual action itself. You are also completely right about the giant paragraphs and such throne in during each jump or so you might see in a comic book thats just stupid no body does that, you can throw in short sentences or occasional grunts if there is something really important that needs to be said but besides that let the characters movement do the talking for you.

842305
Awesome!

I still need to work on those lectures to expand and add more detail to it (as well as fix the crummy names with some more catchier ones XD), but hey, I'm glad someone took something from it.

Yup, I got the PM. Currently awaiting your invite on Skype.

Having been in my fair share of tumbles with less than pleasant types, I feel that I might be able to help here in more ways than one.

Note, much of the advice I can give is assumed that you are using fully pony characters, spiced with a bit of all-around/humanoid advice unless you ask otherwise. I figure that most people are not anthropo or HiE like myself. You guys want to write about Faust's Mane 6 as they are/close to, probably not if they were a humanized ODA. Much of this comes from personal experience as well, in parts. Want more, just ask, and I'll be happy to help.

The first thing I think that helps describe a fight is simple. The body.

By that I don't mean go off on some tangent about how their muscles flex, how the fabric of their clothes move over toned muscles, and how a thin layer of sweat shines . . . on . . . sorry. Miles away.

What I meant to say is that the way the body acts is (and the mind thinks), at times, not even nearly important as how it reacts both before and even (sometimes especially) after that engagement. The way the young stallion's pupils dilate as he faces down danger. He is looking death in the face. Not just "death", really, but Death stands before him poised for action. In a second, or maybe less than a second, he isn't there anymore. He's back home again, safe. There it's sunny and warm, the locals speak his language, and he's back in a time when his smile wasn't so wooden. He remembers Mom, doting over her "wittl' baby fiwwy" (and how he longs to hear her utter a babyname he once detested) off to make a stallion of himself. He remembers Dad, a stout old stallion of a man despite his age; a veteran himself, who sent his son off with a firm hoofshake, and some final words of advice only a man who has seen this scale of death could truly comprehend. He thinks of his sister back home. She looks at him like a hero and writes him a letter every day since he's been gone. She talks about her new special somepony, about how all the ponies at school want to know about her brother and what he's doing, and she wants to know if he'll be back in time for the Summer Sun Celebration this year to watch Celestia since he wasn't able to make it last time -- and even if she doesn't say as much, letters from Mom tell him how she locked herself in her room and cried for the entire night's fireworks show when it really hit home that he wasn't coming back.

Then he's back.

A shift as jarring as a buck straight to the nethers.

He could react in a number of ways.

The young soul, a filly forced by fate to do a stallion's work, is so scared that he might break. His knees will buckle, hooves will fail him. Maybe even his body will betray him (that's right, it happens). In short? Unless a stallion more couragious than he swoops in to protect him, you have on your hooves one very dead pony.

Or he might get scared, but he doesn't back away or break. He's too proud. No if anything he advances, despite the swollen lump in his throat that's making it so hard to breath. That's what a stallion would do, and Celestia be damned if he's not a stallion! He knows himself well enough, bolstered because he's bucking well-sure that he can fight harder scared than any of those piles of hayseed in front of him can angry. He'll be frantic, heart racing, each move done with a speed like he fears a moment's hesitation will be his last -- and it very well may be. He may die. He may not. In the end, if he proves victorious, the stallion that walks away is but a bloodied shadow of the filly that chose to hold his ground rather than follow the seemingly more rational instinct to run.

For the veteran? The pony that has seen more battles like this one than the young colts of his squad have had Hearts and Hooves Days? He's the "Old Breed", who saw the landings at the Fillyppines when the Marenes got slaughtered by the hot and loud barrels of Gryphon guns, or he was at Fetlock Hill when a brave four hundred were encompassed by the better part of eight thousand. He feels it again. That -- that itch that nestles somewhere in between his whithers, maybe in his fetlocks, or maybe it's something more personal in a physical sense: the Cutie Mark. It was given to him by fate back when he was a bright-eyed foal who didn't imagine that he would ever leave home, or that Mom and Dad could ever leave him. Just around that mark always tingles when he just knows the fight. It's the sixth sense that tells him when the first bullet is about to fly, or the first hoof swung. It lets him know when something in his group's well-laid plan is about to go horribly wrong. It lets him know when it's over. His muscles relax as pupils dilate. His hooves become planted, while his neck muscles tense. He lowers his head and he braces himself for just another small, personal war in a field of thousands.

If you would like me to ramble on about terrain, physical actions (in the body and the flow of the battle itself)knowing the body as well as the mind, and many things more then just ask and I'll be happy to assail you with sickeningly large walls of über-text should you wish it of me. Or if you just really like punishing your eyeballs.

That's a standing offer to all interested, not just (though especially to) you Idle Prose. What is knowledge if not something to share?

I'm kinda glad you made this thread, since I can never seem to get the flow of my action scenes right. I'm actually considering rewriting quite a few sequences in my story right now, and all the suggestions people are giving you are also helping me out a lot. (Thanks, everyone.)

In lieu of giving you tips (since I'm still learning), I'll give you a coupla links to stories that manage action scenes well. For starters, you should hit up Coming Back. bats posted earlier in the thread already, and reading his story should give you some idea of how his methodology plays out in an actual story (it helps that the story is also really good).

While it isn't quite so strong on the physical mechanics, Austraeoh bears mentioning as it has some of the best (and funniest) mid-battle banter that I've encountered in a story, yet.

The best example I can think of, though, is probably Incepto Ne Desistam. It's, effectively, 25k words of almost non-stop action. The author wrote it to 'practice' fight scenes, but from how well it's paced and how clear its imagery is, I don't really think he needed that much practice. It's a fanfic, but he manages the visceral, destructive forces of a fight sequence better than pretty much every book I've read in years.

842491 I was a little disappointed that you didn't have any stories posted. I was looking forward to reading them.

I like to use metaphors to draw the reader away from the action momentarily; give them a false sense of security, before shoving s gruesome death or fight scene in their faces. My story Plight of the Pegasi has a sequence involving an aerial battle. It involved premeditating what each individual element of the fight would react and how they would interact with each other. I went with an easy approach due to the first person narrative I have adopted. I show how the protagonist feels after every scrap with death and after every slain foe.

I think it can be a good idea to introduce levity into the equation. Have the character feel remorse or self doubt. These can be useful building blocks for both the fight and constructing your character as a whole.

Quick and punchy passage make the action quick and spontaneous. Great prose of a visceral nature can show a well though ut series of actions. However, the opposite can also be true, In the first person genre the character endures and feels everything that happens. I agree to imagine the fight taking place is useful. But sometimes getting your brother to perform fight sequences in the garden can prove invaluable.

Also don't be afraid to say blood to many times. Blood is inside, except for plants. To many synonyms and clever descriptions of blood will make the reader's attention dwindle and they will not care for the impact of the story.

Hope my rambling has been of some assistance to you my good sir.

Sorry about the blatant spelling mistakes. I was writing too fast

The best thing to do is to study some form of fighting. I study Karate, and have for thirteen years, so I find that very helpful. One of the things i do is add adjectives to each move to make them seem more real. If you do that, it adds personality to the fight.

842017
There's a great deal of advice already, and likely the basics are covered. So I'll be brief and specific.

Don't use a lot of named OCs we've barely met in a single fight. Seriously, people just won't remember who's who. Eyes will glaze over. If you need to do it, split things up as much as possible, and focus on as few as you can at any time.

Actually, do that anyway. Big, confusing melees might be realistic, but they're a chore to read and keep track of. If you're going to have a lot of neat stuff going on at once that you want to show off, don't mix it in with all the rest. The whole thing gets diluted.

Writing action is a bit of a balancing act. Too much description drags it down whereas too little description leaves readers confused. One thing to pay attention to is sounds, smell, and sight. Why? Because in a fight the adrenaline gets flowing and makes everything more vivid. Adding these little details in the right places helps suck the reader into the action.

Also make sure to have the character's abilities well in mind on what they can and can't do. For example giving your unicorn the ability to teleport is a bad idea since it is by no means a common ability.

Other than that you have to think about character placement and location so the reader knows where the character is and how the fight flows about the space. A fight on a catwalk would be very close in with very little room to maneuver (unless a pegasus).

Other than that, keep checking to make sure what's going on is plausible.

842536

In random non-promotional aside: that are some in the works, friend. Some day soon.

And Idle, what's being told to you here is some pretty solid advice. Just remember, knowing is not half the battle. There are innumerable factors that comprise a single battle, with not one of them even being close to half. GI Joes are liars!

Silly, your magnum opus can't be declared before it's done. That's called cursing it to fail.

842313
Oh, quite true. Fighting styles are just the framework.

842491
I like this, and I just may take you up on that offer. First, though, I have to be That Guy: you know a filly is a young female pony, right?

842536
Thanks for the suggestions. I've seen Austraeoh on the featured box more than once, but I've never figured out what the heck it is. Given my Read Later list approaching the triple digits, yeah...

845561
I'm calling it a magnum opus due to its length. Hopefully it'll achieve a few other qualifiers once it's released into the wild, but I'm holding back any other expectations!

846694

Buck it, man! I'm a Marine, not an equine expert!

Yeah, I realized my mistake long after I posted. lol. Would have gone back to fix it but I didn't want to have to spend the time editing a minor error like that out of something that isn't an actual story worth the effort.

846694 I'm about halfway through it on my Kindle. What it is is the best adventure epic on the site, from what I've read so far.

846694
>implied length = quality
Your magnum opus is supposed to be the greatest possible work in your life, where there is no conceivable way to improve upon it.

848679
From yonder Wikipedia: Magnum opus "refers to the largest, and perhaps the best" work (emphasis mine). Also, "Sometimes the term magnum opus is used to refer to simply "a great work" rather than "the great work" of a specific person." I'm seeing my project as my magnum opus of ponyfic writing due to length and the effort I am putting into it. Hopefully I can hone my skills to the point where it will also be the best, but that remains to be seen. After it's done I will be moving on to novels.

I suppose it's all a matter of differing definitions. For yours, yeah, definitely premature to say. For now, the ponies just keep having to pony the pony when ponies go pony ponies pony poni pon pony.

850719
I like to apply myself to a school of thinking where quality is far and away more important than quantity, so we seem to have inherently different definitions of magnum opus. Seriously, fuck English and it's taste for cannibalizing other languages that don't quite fit.
Related:

851293
English: the language that ambushes other languages in dark alleyways, beats them up, and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.

Anyway, action scenes. They're so... action-y. <.<

851357
Yes. They are.
Really, they're a lot like dialogue. Incredibly easy to fuck up, important to a scene, and it's imperative for the characters to be in their character for it to work. There's my relevant two cents.