Your Biggest, Most Epic Fights

My fight scene.

Well, whether or not fight scenes are disproportionately important in a work depends on the genre of a work. If I was writing a slice-of-life webcomic with the amount of fighting in most of my ideas, yes, you should be concerned. However, most of my fiction is superhero or science fiction war stories of some variety, and thus it should be expected that there is a lot of asskicking of some manner...

When I see people talking about their characters on this forum, there seems to be an awful lot of focus on their powers/Power Levels as opposed to their personality. Again, I write Military Science Fiction. I have a large number of space battles (although "fight scene" isn't the word I'd use), and I'd hope they're done well. Obviously, some of them are quite important to the plot, in many cases crucial. But I wouldn't want them to be what draws people to my work.

When I see a focus on fight scenes on here, the implication is that some tropers view them as the most important part of their work. Even if it's not deliberate, most cases of people talking about their works on here are basically advertising for that work. And the fact that people spend so much time talking about fighting implies that that's what they think is going to bring people in. That worries me.

—raises hand—

I'm writing a comic book.

A shonen-inspired comic book.

While the fights aren't the only thing I want to write, I would hope that it's a huge draw.

I, by and large agree. Though, in my case, the fighting is a large part of the plot, since, you know, war.

I dunno. I try to avoid such things. I actually don't often define characters by such things, but I do often define plots by such things.

Again, if you have such a problem with these ideas, why not make a topic about it and how to improve upon it, instead of raining on a definitely good thread since the very first post?

I doubt it would do much good (plus there was already a topic like this that I linked in my first post). And originally, I just meant to put in one post expressing my concerns about this topic - everything else has been responses to other people.

@nrjxll: My target audience is young, straight males. The fights are going to be a big draw for that demographic whether I want them to or not (and since stories with lots of fighting and not a huge emphasis on plot are my own personal preference, I kind of want them to). I find myself seeing where you're coming from because your arguments are articulate and well-reasoned, but still disagreeing with you just as strongly as I did when you posted your opinions about sex in stories.

That being said, I've written 3 fight scenes for the first Mythology 101 book that are truly epic, so I do have something on-topic to contribute.

• #1: A Local Hangout — which happens to be an actual, real-life restaurant in downtown Norfolk, Virginia — is attacked by a vampire and a pack of werewolves who are hunting the Elf that Nathan has taken there on a date. The cops arrive, and it turns into a huge, masquerade-breaking clusterfuck.
• #2: The Battle of ODU (Old Dominion University, again in Norfolk, Virginia) occurs when the same vampire, the same werewolves, some Dark Elves and an Orc all attack the college... on the night of a huge, epic sorority party. An Attempted Rape by football players further complicates things. The battle goes on for nearly three chapters, and culminates in Kylie beating the everloving crap out of the Orc with a cue stick, and another character getting disemboweled and living to tell about it.
• #3: The Battle of Aberforth is an attack on the main good-guy kingdom (the Gondor of this particular 'verse) that, once finished, will go on for approximately 50 pages and result in multiple character deaths, one of which sets up the Cliffhanger to lead into book 2.

I have a slave revolt that turns into a battle nearly as long as Aberforth and a couple of smaller-scale, but still epic gladiator-arena fight scenes planned for the second book (picture Spartacus Blood And Sand as a literary work instead of a visual one and you'll know what I'm going for).

With this and the stuff in the Super Weight thread, I now find myself really wanting to read that. Unfortunately the namespace switch seems to have neutered the page—the Main page redirects to the Troper Works page, which no longer exists and helpfully refers you back to the Main page.

When was this? I don't remember ever posting my opinions about sex in stories on here.

Or do you mean sex as in "biology", not "physical intimacy"?

I might have you confused with another avatar-challenged person, but I thought it was you. *shrugs*

How do I fix that? It's a new development, and I'd like to retrieve the old page's data if at all possible. Troper Works moved to Darth Wiki, so I can just port it over there if I can recover the old article.

No idea how to fix it. I'd talk to the admins—backups most likely exist.

Wow, this thread's really gone off the rails...

You don't mean yourself do you?

edited 12th Dec '11 4:45:28 PM by PsychoFreaX

"Fights are frequently the crux of a story, the capstone."

That's the saddest thing I've heard in a while.

Oh, snap!

Depends; an intelligently written fight should have supporting context and significant consequences that affect the plot, characterisation or both. Star Wars is a great example of this.

Regeneration is an amazing war novel, and there is not one fight scene in it. Unless you're trying to one-up Tite Kubo, there is no reason on earth to bother making a fight scene the pinnacle of your narrative.

edited 12th Dec '11 10:23:55 PM by kashchei

Tite Kubo writes good fight scenes?

Almost there.

edited 12th Dec '11 10:42:39 PM by kashchei

Whatever it's and opinion thing.

A fight scene should be the pinnacle of your narrative if it makes sense for the narrative's conflict to ultimately be decided by a fight. I have never completed a story of that nature, but I do not think the stories I've read that use a fight scene to decide the conflict are necessarily worse than the ones that use, say, a philosophical argument.

A story which focuses solely on the physical outcome of a fight fails to note the larger context behind the fight.

Lord of the Rings had epic fights left and right, but Tolkien made sure to show where true heroism lay.

Give me a call when we actually start discussing fight scenes instead of their level of importance within a story.

Maybe we're using "pinnacle" to mean different things. I'm describing the climax. As best as I can tell, you're describing the story's reason for existing.