Your Biggest, Most Epic Fights

Tell about your biggest, most epic fights, could be on a large scale, could be on a small scale.

Or you could practice writing such scenes and build up to them, and share your results with everyone else to get hints.

As far as the one I did these things:

1) keep everyone in a good amount of focus, especially primary combatants.

2) One Crowning Moment Of Awesome or more a page. This keeps readers interested as things build up to ever greater awesomeness.

3) For me, the right music made it possible. Riot by Three Days Grace did it for me.

I feel like I ought to link this thread here - it seems like way too many people here have way too much emphasis on fighting in their works. My works generally have violence, I borrow action movie tropes, I have really big set-piece fights. But it's not what I consider important about them, and I don't like the implication that goes with this thread that "big epic fights" are an important part of a work. If you have them, they should be done well, but you don't remotely need them.

/soapbox

My works don't actually have a lot of fights. The ones I do have are very small scale. Like a couple people versus a couple of other people, if not one-on-one.

I am a shonentard, so I have a lot of fights.

I've only written one so far, and it is pretty much the least interesting fight. However, I think it's still a good fight, just indicative that bigger fights are to come.

My one problem is I like the trope Battle Royale With Cheese way too much.

I am seriously prone to Serial Escalation moments (I liked Beyond the Impossible better for that definition damnit!) in my fights. The dangers often just get greater and greater (or more dangerous in their own way), the size and importance of each fight becoming more critical in many cases.

And I've yet to reach the biggest and best fights of my first book yet.

I've yet to write any. Still in my head.

I haven't gotten to the chapters where they happen, but there's a few big fights in Forgotten Lore, mostly towards the end. The earliest one is near the middle, when the protagonists fight an evil necromancer features a long sequence where Zaran fights a horde of zombies. I'm normally not a huge fan of gruesome over the top violence, but since zombies are, well, zombies, having them getting their heads and limbs chopped or torn off is not only acceptable, but expected. The necromancer later returns from the dead for another huge fight, where the protagonists and their allies face his horde of ghouls and summoned Void creatures. One of the very last chapters features a Wham Episode type of deal where Zaran brutally kills a bunch of cultists (in her defence, they were about the kill the other protagonists and she gave them a chanse to release her friends without anybody getting hurt).

The very last chapter consists of practically nothing but an epic fight between Zaran's father (a demon overlordlord) and the Herald of the Outer Gods (an Eldritch Abomination), or more accurately of him trying to survive the Herald's attacks long enough for the protagonists to finish the ritual to cut the connection between the Herald and his source of power. It also features one character performing a Heroic Sacrifice to stop the Herald from killing the overlord and completing his ritual of doom, a flying ship blasting through a swarm of Void creatures and...the Herald having tea with Zaran? (That last one totally makes sense in the context).

edited 11th Dec '11 8:33:18 AM by Nomic

Well, currently the largest one that is actually written is the Marne, which is two million guys fighting over Paris before another million to a half-million show up and help win the battle for the French.

I think my favorite in the story is Operation Mobile Lightning, which is a German assault roughly analogous to the real-life Spring Offensive and almost sees them break the Anglo-French lines. It's very counter to the rest of the book's overtones, and puts forth a War Is Glorious vibe throughout that seems very... disquieting, given the story overall.

And then I subvert the fuck out of it when the Germans use a nuclear weapon on the French city of Amiens...

Eh...

My novel has fights, but they're not truly epic. *

edited 10th Dec '11 10:34:59 AM by Masterofchaos

Surprisingly, I only have one battle in Innocence Lost that lasts longer than a chapter (not that some of them aren't still going at the end; they just don't get shown again), but that's because the second chapter is a perspective flip of (half of) the first chapter to deconstruct Crowning Moment Of Awesome.

Actually surprisingly tame given the actual Power Levels of both combatants, but the climactic fight of my current project is... kind of insane. It culminates with the protagonist using the Power of Rock to reduce his god-like enemy to slag, along with the entirety of Australia/Africa (haven't decided which), which then falls back to Earth in a molten shower of fiery death.

Tamer fights involve flaming chainsaws that cut through time and space and handguns that shoot dragons.

This and this.

They are the best fight scenes.

edited 10th Dec '11 11:17:49 AM by Dragonzordasaurus

What nrjxll said. Sort of. My work has very little emphasis on actual fighting of any sort, in part because I'm terrible at writing those sort of kinetic, blow-by-blow scenes, but also because I really don't particularly see any merit in glorifying physical violence. Yes, there is violence in my work, and yes, writing such things, especially on the ugly end, can be quite cathartic (albeit in a retroactive "what is wrong with me?" way), but why should I portray it as anything less than what it actually is? Anyone who has actually been in or seen two people get into an actual fight knows that it's a frightening, brutal thing to endure; saying otherwise tends to imply either naïveté or an unduly vicious nature.

That said, I have always found the more, ahem, absurd end of combat fairly amusing, if only because such things tend to cross the line so far that any bitter taste is pretty much subsumed by that of delicious ham. This requires at least some self-awareness, however... or total obliviousness. On that end of things, I do have one rather entertaining scene, but explaining it spoils the insanity of the affair. Needless to say, things explode.

Which is pretty much what this thread is really about anyway, I think, though I can never really be sure about such things.

Outside of both categories, perhaps, is the one scene in which the Great Worm appears, but I'm not sure that said event really qualifies as a "fight" so much as... I just don't know, really.

edited 10th Dec '11 1:25:16 PM by JHM

Mine so far are mostly one-on-one or two-on-one, but one of them lasts for a chapter with the two constantly pulling out new stuff against the overwhelmingly powerful one. Rather liked writing that one.

My fights are short. But then, I'm not terribly verbose in style either, so that is to be expected. None of them, ever, occupy a complete chapter.

There is, I think, a practical cap upon how large you can scale a battle. There must be a level of personal interest; this tends to leave you at the squad level, or if you're not afraid to jump around, platoon. View through someone's eyes when dealing with larger combats and remember the constraints of such a thing.

This does not prevent large-scale things from happening. It simply means you deal with them from a small perspective usually. The intervention of supporting arms into such low-level combat is, and always should be, impressive. When the starships come to town in In The Service, the results rarely seem short of apocalyptic. One of them wiped a battalion-sized unit out with its sonic shockwave in a low pass; others have shattered regiments moving into the attack with their guns.

At a more personal level, there have been various levels of swordplay. They tend to get less visual description and more psychology the more skilled the combatants are, though not always. Gunplay is mostly written as detached for characters of experience with it, which tends to match both my personal experience of it (I have admittedly never fired in anger; that doesn't mean I haven't thought I'd need to) and that of others I've had opportunity to ask about it.

People tend to default to certain rote modes of operation if trained for combat, often very simple in nature though they might produce complex behaviors. Operating outside these can either be the sign of a superior mind or somebody who's losing it. It can be difficult to tell a Random Idea Generator breakdown from a thinking opponent from the outside.

@JHM: To be clear, I have written many "epic fights" - it comes with the genres I tend to work in. I could fill a post talking about them. But if I thought they were the most important part of my works, then I would probably have some pretty bad works, because they shouldn't be. What bothers me about this thread isn't so much that people have "epic fights" as such, as it is that they're apparently seen as important enough to be the subject of a thread.

edited 10th Dec '11 4:37:00 PM by nrjxll

This seems somewhat...skewed.

If you write them, they are important enough to merit a thread in a place about all aspects of writing.

I think having an entire thread devoted to them, out of all possible features of a work, does suggest that fight scenes are considered to be disproportionately important compared to more meaningful aspects of troper works.

Which is, indeed, more than a little distressing in and of itself. And from there I went to... different concerns, namely more personal ones.

I never really got why a lot of people seem to think fights scenes are mainly about violence and a displayal of power. They're just toppings at most, or rather a means for you to be able to write the main events. Which are the mental and emotional aspects. Those are what makes the fight good.

The mental aspect include the character and the reader understanding their situation and both thinking how they will prevail. Yes in even the best works, the victor of a fight scene will be ninety percent predictable. Since even the writer wants the hero to win. It's the how that can be unpredictable and keeps people interested.

The emotional aspect of a fight include feelings such as fear, desperation, anger, determination, thrills etc. These are especially effective when cominbed with the mental aspect.

edited 10th Dec '11 5:10:25 PM by PsychoFreaX

Most "fights" in my work are over in a few gunshots; there are a few epic fleet battles near the Grand Finale, but they take place offpage while the main characters are busy with covert operations. Especially since my two primary protagonists are a Guile Hero metastrategist and his Number Two, so if they are anywhere near said gunshots something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

There are maybe three characters who are involved in more elaborate action scenes, and they are mostly Steven and Iris's personal Sword of Damocles.

In my story, one guy stabbed another guy.

Blood everywhere.

I'm about to write the closest thing I've ever done to a proper fight scene, so I'll try sketching out an outline of it here. This is just a summary, so don't expect much stylistic quality

— — — —

The location is a run-down strip club, not long after the world has begun to fall apart—not quite a brothel, if only for legal reasons, but not exactly high-class either. The initial defenders are a very large, slightly stupid furless quadruped of unknown origin, and the unnamed bouncer who uses it as a guard animal. The attackers are ten spider-like creatures, with blades at the ends of their limbs, and a pudgy, balding man who gives them orders.

The quadruped doesn't last long, and the bouncer dies with it. Patrons and employees of the club run every which way, but the spiders are already guarding the available fire exits. Few of the people present have any means of defense, and none are quite certain how to react to an attack by spider-monsters. It threatens to become a slaughter.

A nerdy-looking fellow, who had been sitting alone in the corner, seems unsurprised by this turn of events. He pulls a kitchen knife from under his jacket, and with inhuman speed, he slashes at the flesh of a spider that's about to kill one of the patrons. The wound heals almost instantly—the spiders don't die that easily—but he doesn't seem to care as he rushes past another spider and slashes it as well, then another, moving too quickly for them to catch up to him, drawing their attention as he approaches the pudgy man.

The pudgy man merely waves his hand, and the nerd is slammed backwards, bleeding from his mouth and nose. "Who the fuck was that?" he asks the air. "Judith, are you watching this?"

The pudgy man watches the body for a telltale breath, but doesn't see one. His attention is soon distracted by a patron attempting to reach the exit. "Sneaky, but not sneaky enough—"

The nerd's knife goes halfway through his neck.

"The Go! International Karving Knife cuts through even the toughest meats!" the nerd crows, his face bizarrely serious. "And it's available free with your purchase of three hundred dollars or more of cutlery!" Within a moment, his expression cracks. "I did it! I fucking did it! I killed a fucking demon! I hope you are watching this, you old hag!" Humans and monsters alike gape at him as he doubles over laughing.

edited 10th Dec '11 7:39:41 PM by feotakahari

@njrxll: That in itself seems a somewhat bizarre pronouncement. Fights are frequently the crux of a story, the capstone. Climax often means action, after all.

They also provide a great of deal of opportunity for drama and lasting repercussions. Characters will do and say things under such pressure that will occur nowhere else. They offer opportunities to reveal and explore character without stealing their agency as most similarly stressful events do.

Yes, we should be concerned with how to do a good fight scene, whether it involves fisticuffs, blades of some sort, guns, or nuclear weapons. They are an immensely useful tool when handled well. So what are you trying to say with "more meaningful aspects" when there's really not an aspect of writing that such a situation cannot touch on?

(And for that matter, who are you to say that entire genres of fiction like military sci-fi or average shonen works, which are founded on the concept of a fight, are not simply represented well here?)

edited 11th Dec '11 2:11:33 AM by Night

Why, on a forum dedicated to writing and the aspects included in that, is a thread about fight scenes seen as the writers here putting "too much importance in fight scenes?"

It's a goddamn forum about writing. It doesn't matter how important you think the topic is. If it's not a topic you want to talk about, you don't have to be here, but it's still perfectly valid on its own. If you want to argue the importance of fight scenes, then maybe you can make a topic about that.

Anyway. I really like fight scenes. I love action, I don't think there's enough good action in literature nowadays. I personally love fights where you can feel what the combatants are feeling, fights where you take a second to go, "Damn, that must have really hurt." Especially if the fights are more than just a contest of who can hit harder.

edited 11th Dec '11 1:47:55 PM by HeavyDDR