Writing Fight Scenes

more than forty short stories.

she practices shorin-ryu karate

who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material.

The Grandmaster said nothing, so they began to circle each other. Sen’s attention was split, trying to avoid him and learn from him, all at the same time. Body angled away, hands up like— She leapt back from a sudden flurry of punches, staying out of range. But not too far out of range, or she wouldn’t be close enough to hit him. What was the best distance?

Like any other challenge in fiction, though, it gets easier with research and practice.

Pull it all together, and you’ll hit your reader like a punch to the gut.

In that mild, deceptive voice, the Grandmaster said, “Begin.”

Sen rushed the boy.

Because there are only two people involved, and the environment is minimally complex, it wasn’t needed.

As for the structure of the fight overall, I knew it should be relatively long—after all, this is when we first see the thing the story as a whole is focused on—and it needed several beats to showcase different things.

The boy seemed about her age, which would put him around his third year of training. But they weren’t equals—not anything like equals. Sen had thought her test would be a class, like Dancers had every morning, where the teacher could observe her for an hour or so. Not a fight, with no warning and no instruction, against someone by far her senior in training.