Fight Write ― How to Write Believable Fight Scenes

In Fight Write you'll learn practical tips, terminology, and the science behind crafting realistic fight scenes for your fiction. Broken up into "Rounds," trained fighter and writer Carla Hoch guides you through the many factors you'll need to consider when developing fights in your fiction.

• In Round 1, you will consider how the Who, When, Where, and Why questions affect what type of fight scene you want to craft.
• Round 2 delves into the human factors of biology (think fight or flight and adrenaline) and psychology (aggression and response to injuring or killing another person).
• Round 3 explores different fighting styles that are appropriate for different situations: How would a character fight from a sitting position versus be attacked in the street, etc.? What is the vocabulary used to describe these styles?
• Round 4 considers weaponry and will guide you to select the best weapon for your characters, including nontraditional weapons of opportunity (think everyday items that could be used if needed) while also thinking about the details: how many gunshots could a character fire off by using X type of gun?
• In Round 5, you'll learn how to accurately describe realistic injuries sustained from the fights and weapons, and what kind of injuries will kill a character or render them unable to fight further.

By taking into account where your character is in the world, when in history the fight is happening, what the character's motivation for fighting is (and much more!), authors will be able write fight scenes unique to their plot and unique to their characters.