Fighting scenes

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by PlucharC on December 8, 2010 at 8:29pm

Hey James - Here's the good news. You don't have to write them! :)

That's right. In most cases, directors and stunt choreographers want to design their own fights, so you can simply make include an action line stating that there's a fight and give a general gist of it.

The only exception of course is if there's something absolutely critical to note that happens in the fight scene. Maybe a guy accidentally kills his best friend. Then that's worth writing out.

Check out www.imsdb.com and find a script you like that you know has a fight scene, then you'll get a sense of how the pros do it!

Hope that helps. :)

Take Care,
Chris

Permalink Reply by PlucharC on December 8, 2010 at 9:08pm

Unless of course you're writing a book, in which case, I'm not much help beyond suggesting you check out some of your favorite books to see how they do it. Good luck!

Permalink Reply by Rebel Rose on December 11, 2010 at 8:33am

First off don't give up!! If your writing a book read some other books that have some good fighting in it to get an idea what to write lol thats what I'm doing. I'm reading Dead City by Joe McKinney. So far there is a lot of zombie fighting in it.

Permalink Reply by PlucharC on December 15, 2010 at 6:25am

James,

 

I also recently came across this post on writing action scenes in screenplays.  Enjoy!

 

http://thebitterscriptreader.blogspot.com/2009/02/choreographing-fi...

 

Take Care,
Chris 

Permalink Reply by AJ on February 11, 2011 at 6:20pm

I love to write (in fact, it's what I plan to do for a living), so I'd be happy to help if you would be willing to post something you need help with or maybe just describe a scene. That'd be great! Also, I could recommend Married with Zombies (can't remember the author, but as feminine as the title sounds it's surprisingly brutal) and World War Z by Max Brooks. Also, Day by Day Armageddon has some great writing by J.L. Bourne.

Permalink Reply by Thomas "Fenrir" Platts on February 27, 2011 at 11:55am

When I have trouble trying to work out a fight scene, what I find helps me is I physically act it out, this allows you to think about how people would move and react in that situation which can give you a mental image to work off as your writing.

 

Hope it helps.

Permalink Reply by Craig Sabin on May 21, 2011 at 11:50am

If you're writing fight scenes for a screenplay, PlucharC is right-- generally they create their own fight scenes. Your job is to use the fight scenes to further define character. Is your hero tough, relentless, brutal, resourceful-- then have him do something that illustrates that. For instance, the final big fight in Limitless would have had to be written-- because the how is as important as the what. First, he has to get the drug, so he stabs that guy that just took it, and laps up the guys blood. Then he deals with the other two, using his superior intelligence. Does that make sense?