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Fight! Part I: What Freeze/Flight/Fight Feels Like.
Fight! Part II: What Fighting Feels Like.
On to an actual fight scene!
Just kidding. This got too long for that. Next time. Seriously.
A little-discussed but equally dramatic element of fighting is not fighting. When you hit a point in the plot in which it would make sense to have a fight take place, it can be worth considering what would happen if it doesn’t, or if it’s preceded by an attempt to avert it. You can get an enormous amount of comic, suspense, or emotional mileage out of a scene in which a character desperately tries to avoid a fight.
There’s a lot of reasons why a character might not want to fight. Maybe they don’t know how or know they’re outmatched, and don’t want to get beat-down or killed. Maybe they have a disability or condition that makes fighting very dangerous. (There are a number of scenes in the Vorkosigan books in which Miles tries not to get his brittle bones broken.) Maybe they’re a great fighter, but are masquerading as someone who isn’t and know that they instant they start fighting, their reflexes will give them away and blow their cover. Maybe they’re morally opposed to violence. (There’s a great scene in the movie Witness in which an Amish man, played by an extremely young Viggo Mortensen, lets a bully shove ice cream into his face.) Maybe they don’t want to hurt or kill their opponent, because they’re being forced to fight or their opponent is someone they care for or their opponent is not up to their level. (See much of The Hunger Games.)
All these motives, however noble, may lead your character to look or at least feel like a coward or a tool. That’s half the fun of those scenes, if they’re played from that character’s POV. It’s also fun to not do that, and maybe have other characters make snap judgments that they later realize were wrong. (Some good examples of this in Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief series.)
Unless you’re dealing with career criminals, it’s often though not always the case that the more violence a person has experienced, the more reluctant they are to get into a fight. On the other hand, some types of past experiences with violence teach you that backing down, apologizing, or running will only make things worse. People with those sorts of experiences might try to bluff or threaten their way out of situations, though.
Whatever the reasons, you can avoid, or try to avoid a fight, by refusing to take a challenge, making threats, fleeing the scene, summoning help, talking your way out of it, or even maintaining a physical distance between you and the person trying to fight you until your opponent gives up.
I’ve used all those techniques at some point or another, but I’ll use the last one as a walk-through. It also comes closest to giving a sample of how it feels to fight when you’ve had some training, as the run-up to a fight is an important part of the fight itself.
(I can’t give you an example of an actual post-training fight, because I’ve never been in one. The other time I came close was when one guy accosted me, and while I was distracted, his two buddies stepped out of a dark alley and flanked me. I side-stepped the one on my left and ran like hell.)
I forget how long I’d been training at that point, but long enough to have a good grasp on the concept of distance.
In fighting terms, this means perceiving and maintaining various distances between you and your opponent. There is the distance at which you can kick, the distance at which you can punch, etc, and the distance at which they can kick or punch you. There’s the distance at which they would have to take more than a single step or slide in to reach you. There’s the distance at which you can hit them with some kind of close-in techniques, like an elbow strike, but if they have longer limbs, they’re too close to effectively hit you. Etc. These seem like simple concepts, but it takes a fairly long time for most people to internalize and effectively use them, especially as distance is constantly shifting.
( In which I translate theory into practice while getting menaced by a very, very angry man )
Fight! Part II: What Fighting Feels Like.
On to an actual fight scene!
Just kidding. This got too long for that. Next time. Seriously.
A little-discussed but equally dramatic element of fighting is not fighting. When you hit a point in the plot in which it would make sense to have a fight take place, it can be worth considering what would happen if it doesn’t, or if it’s preceded by an attempt to avert it. You can get an enormous amount of comic, suspense, or emotional mileage out of a scene in which a character desperately tries to avoid a fight.
There’s a lot of reasons why a character might not want to fight. Maybe they don’t know how or know they’re outmatched, and don’t want to get beat-down or killed. Maybe they have a disability or condition that makes fighting very dangerous. (There are a number of scenes in the Vorkosigan books in which Miles tries not to get his brittle bones broken.) Maybe they’re a great fighter, but are masquerading as someone who isn’t and know that they instant they start fighting, their reflexes will give them away and blow their cover. Maybe they’re morally opposed to violence. (There’s a great scene in the movie Witness in which an Amish man, played by an extremely young Viggo Mortensen, lets a bully shove ice cream into his face.) Maybe they don’t want to hurt or kill their opponent, because they’re being forced to fight or their opponent is someone they care for or their opponent is not up to their level. (See much of The Hunger Games.)
All these motives, however noble, may lead your character to look or at least feel like a coward or a tool. That’s half the fun of those scenes, if they’re played from that character’s POV. It’s also fun to not do that, and maybe have other characters make snap judgments that they later realize were wrong. (Some good examples of this in Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief series.)
Unless you’re dealing with career criminals, it’s often though not always the case that the more violence a person has experienced, the more reluctant they are to get into a fight. On the other hand, some types of past experiences with violence teach you that backing down, apologizing, or running will only make things worse. People with those sorts of experiences might try to bluff or threaten their way out of situations, though.
Whatever the reasons, you can avoid, or try to avoid a fight, by refusing to take a challenge, making threats, fleeing the scene, summoning help, talking your way out of it, or even maintaining a physical distance between you and the person trying to fight you until your opponent gives up.
I’ve used all those techniques at some point or another, but I’ll use the last one as a walk-through. It also comes closest to giving a sample of how it feels to fight when you’ve had some training, as the run-up to a fight is an important part of the fight itself.
(I can’t give you an example of an actual post-training fight, because I’ve never been in one. The other time I came close was when one guy accosted me, and while I was distracted, his two buddies stepped out of a dark alley and flanked me. I side-stepped the one on my left and ran like hell.)
I forget how long I’d been training at that point, but long enough to have a good grasp on the concept of distance.
In fighting terms, this means perceiving and maintaining various distances between you and your opponent. There is the distance at which you can kick, the distance at which you can punch, etc, and the distance at which they can kick or punch you. There’s the distance at which they would have to take more than a single step or slide in to reach you. There’s the distance at which you can hit them with some kind of close-in techniques, like an elbow strike, but if they have longer limbs, they’re too close to effectively hit you. Etc. These seem like simple concepts, but it takes a fairly long time for most people to internalize and effectively use them, especially as distance is constantly shifting.
( In which I translate theory into practice while getting menaced by a very, very angry man )
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