Fights and Weapons Masters: What you need to know to write a character who knows how to fight.

Fights and Weaponsmasters: What to do when your character knows more about fighting than you.

Further Reading
The Princess Bride (Good fights, Well-Written Fighters)
The Book of Five Rings (Mentality of a Warrior)
Iron and Silk (Pan Qingfu)
Bayuex Tapestry (Accurate visual depiction of Medieval arms and warfare)
Terry Goodkind’s “Medieval Lives” (Historical view of true medieval life)

Common Misconceptions

Fights go on forever
People get hurt and get back up

Depending on weapons, armor and style, fights last between 4 minutes and 4 seconds
Shotokan karate: 4 seconds
Fencing: until someone lands one good hit
Armor prolongs fights, but not indefinitely

Trained fighters are trained to kill, maim, or incapacitate
Bodies break
Fights to the death have no time outs

Weapons and Armor: Maintenance, what maintenance?
Blades dull, get chinks, and rust
Armor needs to be polished, oiled, repaired

A sword’s a sword!
Weapons are built around where the weight center is, which determines how they’re used.

Armor is Useless!

Plate Armor
Expensive
Custom-fitted
Curved to reflect arrows
Extremely good protection

Plate armor is heavy, but full suits of mail were designed to support their own weight
Knights could do ballet in armor (if there ever was a reason)
Three layers: leather, chain, plate.

Chain Mail
Good at stopping swords, slashes
Bad at stopping daggers, stabs
Even boiled leather is good protection

Some armor not always better than none
Armlets and bracers only good if actively used for defense
If they’re not aiming for your armored parts, and you’re not actively using it, it’s just dead weight
Celts fought naked

Armor is like a protective coating!
Armor requires training
Armor is used to deflect or redirect blows
Good armor you go around, not through

Training isn’t important/It’s ok, I’m self-taught!
The difference between a beginner and a master isn’t 12 years, it’s 200
No one can ‘teach themselves’, not even from a book
Training is the single most important element in combat

Training gives you access to genertions of technical refinement.
Average reaction time: .5 seconds
Master reaction time: .12 to .2
The ‘Fuzz’
No Master will fall to the untrained

Notes on winning through numbers:
Fighting in groups takes it’s own kind of training.
Greek Hoplites, Phalanxes
Most times, if a group isn’t trained to fight together, a 6 on 1 match becomes 6 one on ones.

People can/can’t do this, I saw it on the History Channel!

Yes
Shaolin Monks bend swords in their guts, break pipes on their heads, and break 2 by 4s on their legs
They condition their hands and bones to be hard enough to break stone
They practice moves like the ‘death touch’
Men can cut arrows in half in mid-flight.

No
No ninja on record has ever caught an arrow being fired at him at full speed
Yes ninjas trained in how to dodge bullets, but it was by watching hand movements and timing, not a DBZ thing

How master fighters view the world
A soldier learns to use a weapon. A master practices for hours every day.
When training you learn technical names and forms
On the field you think about weight placements, muscle tension, tactical movements, and openings
Fighters learn to read each other’s stances, expressions, and movements

You are what you think about all day
Master fighters think about fighting
Fighters see the world in terms of how to beat people

How to write a good fight

Good Fight/Bad Fight
Pirates of the Caribbean 1: good fight
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: bad fight
Good film fights: Rob Roy, Empire Strikes Back, Prince Caspian

A good scene
Develops character
Furthers plot
Conflict
Objective
Tactics
Events
Seen through the character’s eyes/knowledge and understanding

Fights are scenes!
Conflict (Why are they fighting?)
Objective (What do they want?)
Tactics (Fighting style, weapons, tactical decisions)
Events (What changes/happens? What’s important?)
Structure (rising action, climax, resolution)
Who’s telling the story? How much do they know about combat?

“If the writing is not exciting apart from the sword-work, it won’t be exciting with it. ” -Martin Turner

Writing Exercise/Prompt

Fights and Weapons Masters: What you need to know to write a character who knows how to fight.

by Adam Meyers on Feb 21, 2011

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Fights and Weapons Masters: What you need to know to write a character who knows how to fight. — Presentation Transcript