How to Build Tension in Your Fight Scenes

And how to deepen the overall action

Photo by Mateusz Wacławek on Unsplash

@Nicola asked:

I have a background in karate, and I know you do as well, so hopefully you'll understand when I say that my instinct when writing a scene where, say, a character comes at my protagonist with a knife is to have them block the attack, maaaaaaaybe kick their attacker in the knee, and then run. That's about the size of most of my fight scenes. And that's BORING. I know all the advice about writing action scenes is you should focus on the senses and not "limb A goes here", but obviously there needs to be some physical action there to cause the sensory reactions and I'm struggling to break out of the very minimal action rut I find myself in.

So I suppose my question is how do you choreograph fight scenes to build up the tension for the protagonist so there's more going on when someone grabs them than "stance, kick, break grip, control"?

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Okay, I love this question, so thank you, Nicola! You are in good company because almost all writers I know struggle with fight scenes, whether they have a black belt or not!

First, I’m going to point you to the post I did on showing versus telling because the same mechanisms will apply here. Yes, senses are important…but it’s not the factor that ultimately matters most.

In fact, it’s actually not much more interesting for me to write:

Jackson swiped sideways, dodging Brian’s fist.

than it is to say:

Jackson swiped sideways, dodging Brian’s fist. Air brushed his face.

These are both fine on the surface. They give us the basics…but we need more than surface. We need more than basics.

To elevate this simple arrangement of movements, we’re going to add:

1. context,

2. stakes and cost,

3. personal connection—i.e. thoughts,

4. and plot development.

So now our simple punch turns into…

Jackson swiped sideways, dodging Brian’s fist. Air brushed his face.

Well, crap. That was close—and oh, crappity crap on a cracker, Brian was coming in for a second attack. What the hell? All Jackson had done was admit that he’d spent the night with…

Ohhhh. Right. Eloise was Brian’s ex. And oh god, yeah, Brian had taken that breakup really badly, hadn’t he?

“Dude,” Jackson said, spinning to the left before Brian’s very clenched, very pissed-off fist could make contact in his second attempted attack. “I thought you’d moved on from her by now!”

“I literally told you”—swing—“on New Years Eve”—swing—“that I haven’t been able to date anyone else because I can’t stop thinking about her!”

Hmmm. Jackson vaguely remembered that. Sort of. Though he more clearly remembered how much pizza he and Brian ate before they howled at the moon on Brian’s back porch.

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Context

What’s our context here? We know that Jackson hooked up with Eloise, and ooooh boy, Brian isn’t happy about that because he’s still hung up on his ex.

That’s our context for how this fight began.

Now presumably, if your fight scene is coming at a point that isn’t chapter one in your story, then we already have this crucial context as readers. We already know how your characters ended up in a place of physical conflict.

But if you are going to start us en media res with a fight, then make sure you introduce the context of how we got here. Otherwise, it’s hard to know why we should care.

Okay…they’re fighting..and…?

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Stakes and Cost

Another way to make us care is to make sure the stakes and cost are clear. What will happen if Jackson doesn’t dodge Brian’s fist? Pain, obviously. But of course, that’s not the only thing at stake. Jackson also doesn’t want his friendship with Brian to get ripped apart because he was a jerk who forgot about Brian’s feelings.

While we hope that their friendship will remain intact, we can’t be certain. We have to keep reading to find out. This is what’s at stake.

On top of that, even if they do manage to resolve this, there is no going back completely! Jackson betrayed Brian’s trust, and now Brian has betrayed Jackson’s trust by getting violent.

Things will never be the same between them. This is the cost.

Often times, we go into a fight knowing who will win, but we don’t know how nor do we know what the consequences will be. James Bond might always live, but what happens if he survives the fight…and then his opponent does too? What is the cost of a fight with no clear winner?

One of my favorite fight/chase scenes on TV—that left me absolutely breathless—is in season 2 of The Expanse. A character named Bobbie Draper (whom we aren’t totally sure we like yet) is up against this horrifying alien creature that’s totally new to the universe. We assume she will win because she is one of the main characters as well as a totally badass soldier…

But how will she get through? And oh my goodness, what will the consequences be from her fight and escape? What price does she pay to make it out alive? And what if the alien survives too?

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Personal Connection and Thoughts

Moving back to my example above, what is Jackson’s internal narration throughout this fight?

By getting into his head, we have a much deeper connection to the action. We want the conflict to end! We want Brian and him to work this out—and we want to see how they’re going to do so.

To have a full personal connection, we need to see exactly how Jackson feels about the fight and what his thoughts are in real time.

This is what I talked about extensively in this post.

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Plot Development

Will Brian cool off? Or will his fist eventually connect with Jackson’s jaw? Or maybe Eloise will show up and tell them both to piss off because she dumped Brian for a reason—and hey, Jackson why didn’t you mention that you and Brian had become such good friends lately?

Basically, where will the story go after this fight and how does the fight change the plot’s trajectory? How does it affect Jackson’s character growth?

One of my favorite fight scenes I’ve ever written is in Bloodwitch with Aeduan and a character named Lizl

¹

fighting side by side. They are badly outnumbered, but they go in full-throttle and slay.

Unfortunately, the enemy they face is not the enemy Lizl or Aeduan were expecting—and because he and Lizl are only tentative allies at this point—Aeduan has a lot of internal narration about the situation.

We know he will probably live, but how? And at what cost? And what does Aeduan think about what’s happening and the enemy that they’re up against? And lastly, what does this fight do for Aeduan’s plot trajectory as well as his character’s growth?

He does not come out of this fight the same way that he went into it, and there are big, big story consequences from the outcome.

Do I still explain the fight’s actions step-by-step because of my martial arts background? You bet. But those steps are merely “stage directions” and the meat of the story is actually in everything else I write around them.

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Nicola, I hope this helps you! I love choreographing and writing fight scenes, and they are almost always the “cookies” I look forward to most in a draft.

That said, like you, I break things down and get too technical in early drafts. This is why I rely on my favorite layering technique! Thoughts and stakes, context and cost can always be woven in during a later draft.

Good luck! And thank you for being a paid subscriber. I still have six AMA questions to answer, and then I’ll open up a new one for all the new subscribers with burning questions of their own—and of course, for all the “old” subscribers who might have new ones.

💚 - Sooz

1. Lizl was 100% inspired by the aforementioned Bobbie Draper!