How does one write a fight scene? I've written them before, but sometimes they feel choppy. They take forever to think of and visualize too.

With! Lots! Of! Exclamation! Points!! Bang! Pow! 

Seriously, everything we don't do in real life is hard to feel honest about in writing.  Now go get in a fight.

Don't swarm the reader with the names of combat moves (i'm guilty) like, "Mira did a stardust-dragon-triple-kick in the air and finished it off with a golden-cow-magic backflip!"

I am not a martial artist, but I could share a scene of firefight. If you are interested.

Honestly fight scenes are one of those things that you're just gonna get better at them the more you do them. There's really not a concrete way to approach them - you gotta find the approach that works for you, and make sure you're writing a fight you'd actually enjoy reading, cause otherwise the reader probably won't enjoy it either.

That being said, here's one tip to keep in mind: When it comes to fight scenes, nothing you can write will be as awesome as what the reader can imagine. Don't write it like you're going down a list of instructions, describing every little move the characters make; abstract it a bit. Write them in a way that encourages the reader to imagine something cool rather than telling them exactly what the cool thing is. Focus on staying in the character's head and building the momentum and rhythm of the fight, and usually reader imagination can fill in the spaces between all the important beats of the fight with cool imagery.

Also, the worst thing you can do for a fight scene in my experience is let it go on for too long, because then it just becomes exhausting and as a reader you're ready for the story to move on. So if you can err on the side of making fights shorter, I'd do so. Take it from someone who wrote a 12k word fight scene into their story lmao

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teichoscopy

CRACK.

Raiko head-butted the lead thug's nose.

The lead thug feel.

Thug #2 charged.

Raiko sidestepped---

THUMP.

Knee to the gut. The thug doubled over.

Raiko raised his arm---

CRACK.

Elbow to the back.

Thug #2 wheezed---and collapsed on the ground.

Something like that. I think fragmented sentence and short paragraph works best for action.

Payton writes things Wrote: How does one write a fight scene? I've written them before, but sometimes they feel choppy. They take forever to think of and visualize too.

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I probably have spent most of my editing time on fight scenes. The overall best advice, make it punchy, especially if the fight goes on for a while. Meaning, use shorter, more direct words, cut redundancy, do not over explain, and use visceral language. Cut, arc, violently, slammed, but do NOT OVERDO IT because that is what AI does. Space your adjectives out and try not to repeat. 

Character sentences and words will also be quick, so formal speech will go out the door, and things will be hectic, chaotic, wild, all of which are great words to throw into the mix. 

Do not describe anything in detail, because you want the POV from a quick, chaotic fight view. Meaning people won't notice detail. 

I have several fight scenes and have had 0 people complain about the actual fights, despite some being overly long (imo). You can break up how it is written with quick action, thought, and results. 

For references, from my book: 

Chapter 8: The first encounter, and though it is not a fight scene, it shows how to write people preparing for a possible fight. Mid-chapter is the encounter. 

Chapter 8 (Part 2) skim to the very end when you see the picture. That begins a fight lead-up, and the fight goes into Chapter 9. 

Chapter 10 (Part 2) Find the picture, then scroll down and you will see a one-off fight scene between two characters (Hinelin and Graks). 

Chapter 11 is literally called Massacre. It spans into Part 2, and into the beginning of Chapter 12. Here is how you can do a long, drawn out fight scene with many people involved. 

Hope this helps!

Ryan Andrew Wrote: With! Lots! Of! Exclamation! Points!! Bang! Pow! 

Seriously, everything we don't do in real life is hard to feel honest about in writing.  Now go get in a fight.

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Some of us have experience....lol. 

But yes, the vast majority of people do not have experience in fighting, so it is relatively easy for an inexperienced (at fighting) writer to convince readers (also inexperienced) that something is possible/probably on a base level, let alone the ridiculousness we elevate our characters to. 

After 30 seconds of actual struggling, almost every single person would be exhausted, as an average human. For an example. Professionals who train their whole lives, like boxing, go in 3 minute bouts for men and 2 minutes for women. 

Shows that have people getting hit with iron bars and baseball bats and continuing to fight...lol. A grown man physically fit could kill someone in one blow with either, or at minimum would shatter your bones with a single hit. 

Getting a single, small cut would freeze most people in shock, and they possibly would pass out, but most likely freak out. Ignoring the pain would be something only a super trained person could do. Everyone else would continue to fight--who could--would completely favor and protect even small wounds. Nausea would kick in, and probably vomiting. 

In any real fight, the real struggle is endurance. Once you start sucking air, a lesser-skilled fighter can beat you, just by outlasting. 

Assuming you write in close third person POV, try to be even more mindful of keeping it "through-the-eyes" of the MC. The greatest difficulty imo is spatial confusion, but if you do that, not only do you visualize it better, but also the reader can accept that he sees only what your MC sees. So you have less need to keep perfect track of what's going on around. 

It can participate in the immersion imo, as long as you don't stray and show what they can't be aware of. But not every author likes to write like that

Payton writes things Wrote: How does one write a fight scene? I've written them before, but sometimes they feel choppy. They take forever to think of and visualize too.

"Ouch!"

You hurt your butt. You look around and see a green plain all around you.

You mutter to yourself, "I was just writing on my PC, how did I-"

"Are you 'Payton writes things'?"

You turn around at the voice and see a man in a fine suit staring at you.

You reply, "Uh, yes?"

"Good!"

Suddenly, he rips his clothes in one smooth motion. He's in his underwear now, a pair of boxers printed with the US flag.

"Lesson one!"

BANG!

Suddenly your view becomes the sky and you see stars. He must have punched you, but how did he move so quickly?

BANG! BANG! BANG!

You try to get up, but he kicks you down.

"Action is first, you can explain it later!"

You finally have room to breath. You turn your head towards him, and see the President fiddling in his pockets.

You scream full of injustice, "You psycho, what the **** are you hitting me for?! You could just tell me, you don't have to-"

He pulls out a minigun and aims it at you.

"Lesson two: drama first, logic second!"

DUDUDUDUDU

You donkey roll away from the line of fire, and mid-roll pull out a mysterious, glowing syringe.

You sigh to yourself, "So I have to use this in the end..."

You prick yourself with the syringe and absorb the glowing substance, but you don't gain radiation burns and organ failure. Instead, your size doubles, and your eyes glaze over.

You say, "Haha! If this is how you play, then I'll play along!"

The ground collapses behind you with every step you take. 

The minigun fires at full power, but none of the bullets penetrate. They make a 'clang' before bouncing off your skin!

You reach the President and raise your hand to punch-

"Lesson three: the ending must be satisfying!"

He pulls out a golden fly swatter, and it extends itself to 10 meters long!

"It's the Fate-Reversing Golden Fly Swatter! How do you have that!"

Without knowing when, you found yourself flat on the ground. Your eyes return to their clarity, and your body shrinks back to normal. You scream in agony as it feels like every bone in your body was broken.

"AAAGGH!"

The dust clears, and the President appears again in his fine suit.

"There's a lot that can't be explained, only felt. If you wish to learn, you must make an effort and notice yourself. Writing, and in fact, many skills in life, cannot be given; instead, you must learn them on your own."

He looks dramatically at the sky, with eyes full of wisdom.

"Do you understand now?"

The difficulty of writing a fight scene out can vary depending on what you want done. Is the fight a casual spar or something meant to show case a new skill or ability, then details can be kept light with some emphasis on those big moments.

For fights with weight to them, then like others have said you want to allow the readers to imagine the fight in their head. Set the scene of the fight, get into the characters head. Describe how their body is moving, what kind of impact their blows have, and how their foe responds. Don't be afraid to describe the thoughts of the character as the fight goes on. While the fight may be fast paced in the story, that doesn't mean that the writing itself needs to be fast. A well written fight scene can span for multiple paragraphs or pages in a story, even if less than a minute passes for the characters.

That said, you don't want to give the fight so much weight that things feel unrealistic. My early fight scenes gained a bit of critique because of how often I had the combatants spitting up blood from their damage. Fight scenes can be a careful line to walk, and I'd advise reading some other authors fight scenes to find a style that you like. And if you have trouble visualizing things, try watching some live play DnD. The fight scenes can be very descriptive in those, even if they can run for hours long.

assuming its an important and long drawn out one I would recommend writing it like Aaron Dembski-Bowden or Dan abnett do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1__1fHv56E

1. make sure at the end of each fight atleast something changes. for important fights.
2. have the characters feel reactive
3. use the environment in fights
4. ya i got nothing else but have fun

there is not a single formula. if someone tells you how to do it, please...

how ever, there are traditional rules.

1- don't repeat beats, surely not back to back. 

2-try to make each shift unique, not he punched and he kicked.

3- movement, gravity, however you want to call it, the fight must go somewhere not just pure becasue you can.

4 which is must. enjoy your scene. if you don't enjoy it, assume others wont as well

that's my opinion. good luck.

I prefer fight scenes with introspection. I want to be inside of the POV character's head, like in Dune when Paul fights Jamis. This is the end of the fight. 

Quote:Paul pressed the fight now, circling but not attacking. He had seen the fear in his opponent. Memory of Duncan Idaho's voice flowed through Paul's awareness: "When your opponent fears you, then's the moment when you give the fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous moment, but the terrified man can be trusted usually to make a fatal mistake. You are being trained here to detect these mistakes and use them. "

The crowd in the cavern began to mutter. They think Paul's toying with Jamis, Jessica thought. They think Paul's being needlessly cruel.
But she sensed also the undercurrent of crowd excitement, their enjoyment of the spectacle. And she could see the pressure building up in Jamis. The moment when it became too much for him to contain was as apparent to her as it was to Jamis . . . or to Paul.

Jamis leaped high, feinting and striking down with his right hand, but the hand was empty. The crysknife had been shifted to his left hand.

Jessica gasped.

But Paul had been warned by Chani: "Jamis fights with either hand." And the depth of his training had taken in that trick en passant. "Keep the mind on the knife and not on the hand that holds it, " Gurney Halleck had told him time and again. "The knife is more dangerous than the hand and the knife can be in either hand."

And Paul had seen Jamis' mistake: bad footwork so that it took the man a heartbeat longer to recover from his leap, which had been intended to confuse Paul and hide the knife shift.

Except for the low yellow light of the glowglobes and the inky eyes of the staring troop, it was similar to a session on the practice floor. Shields didn't count where the body's own movement could be used against it. Paul shifted his own knife in a blurred motion, slipped sideways and thrust upward where Jamis' chest was descending--then away to watch the man crumble.

Jamis fell like a limp rag, face down, gasped once and turned his face toward Paul, then lay still on the rock floor. His dead eyes stared out like beads of dark glass.

Choppy almost always comes from writing a fight as with too many details, one move per sentence, block, dodge, punch, step back. It reads like directions and is void of feelings. Two things to fix that.

First, anchor every hit to the point of view character's intention and cost, not the motion. Not she swung and he blocked, but she went for the opening she had been baiting for three exchanges, and he closed it a half second early, and now her whole plan is gone and her arm is in agony. Same action, but now it carries a goal, feeling, and consequence. 

Second, that also fixes the visualizing problem. You do not have to describe the whole thing like a stunt coordinator. Readers track momentum, not every step, let them imagine. Vary sentence length to control pace, short and hard on the impacts, longer through the maneuvering, and the choppiness smooths out on its own.

If a specific fight does not feel right for you, paste a few lines and let me give a try to see how I would approach it.

Hello Payton,

If your fight scenes feel choppy or hard to visualize, it usually/maybe means you are focusing too much on the choreography (the "moves") and not enough on the gravity, the stakes, and the immediate physical consequences.

A great fight scene isn't about beautiful prose. It is about making the reader believe the danger. If you know what it is to fight someone—what it is to really take a punch in the face, the plexus, or the liver—or what it is to combat with your own life to save and the will to take another, it completely changes the way you write violence.
Here is a framework to build that realism.

1 & 2. Who is fighting? (Match the Physiology)
A character's background dictates how they process pain, fear, and spatial awareness.

* The professional: They (usually) don’t panic. They manage their breathing, accept that they will take hits to land better ones, and focus entirely on efficiency.

* The untrained civilian: Total chaos. There is no posture or guard. They flail, scratch, bite, and waste their energy in seconds because adrenaline has completely bypassed their logic.

3 & 4. Stakes and Mindset (The Psychology of Violence)
What a character is fighting for changes their brain chemistry during the clash.

* A tournament: Calculated, technical, and frustrating. The mind is still thinking about points, rules, and form.

* Life or death (e.g., protecting children): Form vanishes. It triggers a primal, animalistic ferocity. There are no clean exchanges; people gouge eyes, strike throats, and use the environment to crush their opponent.

* War and Combat: This is an entirely different level of life-or-death survival. It demands extreme professionalism, discipline, and tactical execution. You are there to take a life or lose yours. However, when "**** hits the fan," even the best military training often goes apart. When the plan fails and chaos takes over, the polished soldier is stripped down to pure survival instinct, fighting through sheer terror and desperation.

* Tunnel vision: In a real fight, internal monologues disappear. Characters don’t philosophize mid-punch. They experience raw sensory overload: the desperate need for oxygen, flashing colors, and a deafening rush of blood in their ears.

5 & 6. Making it Real Within Your World
Even if you are writing fantasy, LitRPG, or sci-fi, physics and biology must have gravity. Armor is heavy. Blood makes weapon grips slippery. Mud makes people trip. Magic should cost physical or mental strain that mirrors physical exhaustion.

7. The Style: Clinical Realism (The Cormac McCarthy Approach)
To make violence hit hard, avoid glorifying or decorating it. Cormac McCarthy is a perfect example of this—where the disgust, the horror, and the casual, factual reality of the act are far more important than a fancy way of narrating it.

* Leçon d'anatomie : If you have ever taken a real punch, you know it isn’t just "pain." A blow to the plexus freezes the diaphragm, locking the lungs. A shot to the liver causes a delayed, chemical agony that drops the legs instantly. A punch to the face brings the taste of iron, a dull cracking sound inside the skull, and blurred vision.

* The unglamorous truth: Real violence is ugly, clumsy, and fast. Don't tell the reader a strike was "epic" or "monstrous." Tell them the jaw shifted, the cartilage popped, and the person folded into the dirt like a sack of wet flour.

8. The Sensory Overload: Smell
A serious life-or-death fight—not a minor bar brawl—is an assault on the nose, and writers completely forget this. Fear and death are foul.

* At best, you are breathing in your opponent's stale breath and sour sweat.

* Very often, when terror peaks or bodies drop, sphincter control vanishes—the scene smells of piss and ****.

* At worst, you are drowning in the copper stench of spilled blood and ruptured entrails. On a battlefield, this cloud of filth is thick enough to choke you. It saturates a character's mind, triggers the gag reflex, and breaks their focus faster than any physical blow.

9. And about Fear...
Fear is a topic by itself. It is not just an emotion; it is a violent physiological hijack.The physical paralysis: True terror turns limbs into lead. The brain screams at the body to move, but muscles lock up. Shaking hands make it impossible to reload a weapon or grip a hilt properly.The degradation of skill: Fear makes people stupid. Complex training evaporates, leaving only raw, clumsy instincts. A character frozen by fear will misjudge distances, walk into obvious strikes, or overcommit to a single desperate move because their panic has blinded them to the bigger picture.


When you treat violence as a heavy, irreversible, and deeply disgusting event rather than a dance routine, the scene stops feeling choppy and starts feeling terrifyingly real.

For fight scenes, what always helps me is actually moving while I imagine the action. Doing the movements as if I were fighting, getting hit, or simply watching the scene helps a lot with rhythm and natural flow.

Of course, most of the time we don’t actually perform those movements literally, since they can be difficult or even impossible. But imagining the full choreography before writing makes a huge difference.

After that, the secret is in the details that make the scene feel coherent.

For example, a first-person close combat fight:

---

As our punches collide, the shockwave throws us in opposite directions.

I roll across the ground before quickly recovering with a fast jump.

On the other side, my enemy is already on his feet, charging like a bullet.

His fist comes straight at me. I react immediately, stepping back several paces.

Then I rush in as well, unleashing a sequence of strikes, but they’re all blocked.

When I bring down my next punch, he grabs my fist.

My body stops, as if an invisible force is holding me in place.

I look at him and see his hand wrapped in a crimson aura.

"Aura?!"

"Ah!"

He tightens his grip on my fist. I drop to my knees.

His red eyes show contempt as he watches me cry out in pain.

"Puny mortal… do you really think you stand a chance?"

I stay silent, enduring the pain and the pressure forcing me down.

The weight increases, but I try to hold on.

I hear low laughter as the pain in my body worsens.

"Still conscious? Let’s see how long you last."

I feel my strength fading, my consciousness growing heavy… until everything fades to black.

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In the end, the secret is rhythm. There’s no need to over-describe every strike, but to give weight to what actually matters. In this example, there aren’t many detailed descriptions, but you can enrich the scene with environmental details, varied movement, positioning, strength, and character reactions.

There are pleny answers, many more detailed and extensive than I could ever write, so I'll focus on something else. 
To get started on the feeling of how to write good fighting scenes, I'd recommend you two basic tactics. 

1. Keep them short.
A bad short fight scene will always be better than a bad long fight scene. Why write an exchange of a hundred punches if they wont really affect the fight's outcome? Sometimes, all it takes is a single punch to make the story move forward.
Eliminate the unnecessary fluff and the fight will be much better, or at least, much less of a drag to read through. 

2. Fights aren't only about the physical actions.
Dialogue and feelings are as important, if not more, than the fight itself.
Fear of being wounded or defeated, rage felt by a companion's death during the fight, urgency to finish the fight because something else is going on... Do this and your fight scenes will not only be longer, but also much more interesting.