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Navigation Image BarIntroducing Fight and Action ScenesHow does the fight's location make things difficult?What weaponry is available to you and what else you need to considerWord choice, dialogue and the actual mechanics of an action sceneFinally putting pen to paperFeeding in more than one opponent for your heroWhen there's more than one on both sides...Falls, Chases, Jumps and moreWho is the Hive Mind?Weapons Database

Step 6: Free For All

You have one on ones perfected. You're confident with your hero facing the odds on his or her own. It's now time to try the big one. The one where all your Scoobies take on a Hell God and her minions, the one where your X-team takes on Magneto and friends, the one… You get the idea.

As before, you need to go through your location details. If you have a lot of people fighting in a small space, both sides are going to be hampered to an extent, with the one with the fewest numbers probably coming off best. (Why? Because the opponents have fewer targets and are likely to get in each other's way in trying to get to those fewer targets.)

Weapons choice is also the same as before, bearing in mind that certain weapons are next to useless at close quarters while others are awkward to use.

The number of people involved is something you need to consider. This applies to both sides, particularly if you have a very much smaller team facing a horde (for example Buffy and the Scoobies taking on a Hell God's army). We have read far too many stories that have reached the climactic battle only for the author to forget about a character or characters who've been important up to that point.

Word choice is also very key. Short and snappy sentences to keep the action flowing fast and to keep the tension up. But in addition to word choice, there is also another language/style issue that needs to be addressed: The point of view you write the battle from.

This isn't something we have mentioned before because in general terms, a one on one fight will be written automatically from the point of view of one of the combatants while a one on many fight will generally be written from the one's point of view. (We note that neither of these are hard and fast rules, but simply the general/natural trend of writing.) With a big battle, however, point of view does come into play as we return to the question of how best to translate something very visual onto the written page.

With a television show or film, you can zoom in on different parts of the battlefield with ease or show the whole thing at one go. On paper, it is far harder, unless there's an innocent bystander who can give you the outside point of view, so you have two choices. Either you can use an omniscient point of view, or you pick limited points of view.

Pros and Cons:
- P: Omniscient will allow you to show everything without having to break things up too much.
- C: Omniscient can be potentially confusing, particularly if up to that point you've been using limited points of view.
- P: Limited allows you to get very much closer to the action and into the head of one of the characters during the action.
- C: If you're using one character, unless that character can take a brief break from the action to look around, it's very difficult to show what's going on around them without unnecessarily chopping up your action with scene breaks.
- P: Limited does permit you to concentrate on only one aspect of the fight at a time, essentially breaking it down into a series of one on one fights.

Which you pick will largely depend on what you're comfortable with and what your story requires. We would note, however, that if you pick omniscient please do not switch location mid-paragraph. Not only is this poor grammar but it is dizzying in a fast paced action scene and it will leave your readers confused.

Tips:

  • Keep a careful tally count of your characters from both sides of a big battle.
  • Location plans are especially useful for mapping out who is where on the battlefield.
  • If the prospect of writing a battle is daunting to you, go for the limited point of view option which will allow you to break the battle up into some little one on one fights.
  • We know that big battles are intimidating – we have been intimidated by our fair share – but the more tense and worried you are about it, the harder it will be, so our final word here is relax!

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