Need help with my stories fighting tournament competition setting!

Not if they're too similar. That isn't the way a story works, The characters each serve a function, and if one character serves that function already you don't need another one doing the same kind of stuff.

Make them contrast each other in some important way, in how they relate to the central conflict the story is built around.

Is one the main character? If so then you've got a main character and a supporting character, a freind or a sidekick. That makes them different right there.

 

These characters might sound similar because they are defined by parentage plus a martial art. What I'd ask is who are they

To a structuralist,
Qxxl is an alien who fires lasers in Outer Space
is the same as
Jane is a student who takes photos in New York

A story starts when Qxxl meets Jane, and what happens in it depends on their characters. Most of the plot 'bones' set out on this thread are only those parts of the story that an AI could generate now. They don't really matter - either to the reader or the writer. If the character conflicts are plausible (e.g. Jane wants a scoop for the newspaper, but Qxxl has body confidence issues), the storyworld and even the plot can have loads of holes in them - the reader won't even notice if the combat is ludicrous or impossible if they're invested enough in the characters.

 

They're both main characters in the own stories, they just have similar conflicts with evil dads and possessed mothers. The Japanese MC has a bad sister and the American MC has a bad half-brother.

 

As @evild4ve already said, that isn't really their characters. That's just a really basic biography. You can give them very different personality types and very different story goals. Each one will have a different purpose for doing what he's doing, what he wants to accomplish, and a different set of fears to contend with.

You seem to really worry a lot (endlessly?) about all this stuff. You're not going to be able to get all the answers from here by asking these questions. There are really 2 ways to get the kind of answers you're looking for—learn story structure and character development, and just write some stories.

You can learn all you need to know about story structure and character development by watching a bunch of videos on YouTube. There's a really good community of channels with some highly knowledgeable writers explaining all this stuff in great detail. And once you start watching videos about writing it will keep showing you other related channels. Think of it as a course in writing. You won't learn all you need to know in a week or two, it's going to take some months to get a good solid idea of all this stuff. But I mean, you don't need to stop everything else, just watch videos when you can and get addicted to it, it'll vastly improve your knowledge level.

And of course you learn largely by doing. You can't solve all your story problems before you start writing by asking questions here or elsewhere. Nobody can give you all the answers you're looking for. Besides just watching the videos as I recommended, also seek out websites with good articles, and maybe get some books on writing and story structure and character development. But ultimately just write. I don't know how long you've been doing this, if you've already finished a dozen stories or if this is your first attempt or what, but you need to just write in order to get good at it. You'll gradually figure out what works and what doesn't, and if you're also learning form good reliable sources your work will begin to improve rapidly.

I'll drop a good video here that you might find very helpful to get you started:

Shaelin has a lot of really excellent videos on writing. Even though she looks like she's about 12, she really knows what she's talking about. I recommend binge-watching her videos for a few weeks and then move on to some other youtube writers (writing youtubers, whatever).

 

I find that a strange question because you already have a very unrealistic setting and you're now concerned about realism in martial arts. This is nothing against you, but I think you need to stick with the "write what you know" rule. That means you should probably focus on the premise of your death match, the themes of the story, and the overall violence that these characters will face, and quit trying to distinguish between which martial art is superior to the other and which will fair better. Because none of them will.

First off, the idea that an MMA fighter would know "a cage fighter mixed martial artist who has trained in fights and competitions doing all the moves a karate, taekwondo and judo fighter knows, plus more?" is 100% false. How many different ways can you throw a punch? Answer is not very many. There's little to no difference between how a person in karate throws a punch and an MMA fighter throws a punch. Kicks are all the same too. And all grappling follows the same basic principles. In other words, it's one move that is shared among different styles.

Do this: find yourself one MMA fighter and study that single fighter's fights. Every single shred of video and footage you can find. How many different moves do you see that one individual MMA fighter using? Maybe five. At most. There might be a fight or two he uses a move that's unique, but for a majority, it's going to be the same basic stuff. That's because the reality is that elite fighters don't know or use a lot of different techniques. German Longsword styles for example, has only 9 techniques. You read that right. Nine. And yet, it's an amazingly effective killing art with just those nine techniques. What you train if you do German Longsword is the strategy, not plowing in a lot of techniques.

A person who "only knows karate" is faced with an MMA fighter, grabs a rock and bashes that guy on the head. Who won that fight? Karate guy, obviously. Did it matter he "didn't know as much as the MMA fighter?" No. The taekwondo guy walks up behind a MMA guy and successfully puts him in a sleeper hold. Who won that fight? Taekwondo guy, obviously. Did it matter he "didn't know as much as the MMA fighter?"

Strategy plays much bigger role in winning as knowing a lot of moves. I go to a fencing school which is run by a very elite fencer. One of the things she said was that she had seen so many Olympic level competitors lose to beginners. How? How is that possible? Don't they know more? Don't they have more experience? Well, if you use the wrong strategy against the wrong fighter, you will lose. Period. It doesn't matter your experience or what you know!

And that's really where karate and these other styles lost their teeth. They're not less effective move for move than MMA fighters because as I explain before there is no difference! They are all the same. They all punch with their hands and kick with their feet. The thing that brought MMA back was the strategy. And thankfully, Karate and other styles have started to wake up and began looking back at their kata and back at their training and finding ways to bring the strategy back into the mix. And it has worked. Now we see some MMA fighters actually using karate as their base!

That's what you need to focus on. And guess what? You don't have to spend a single second studying martial arts to be able to write compelling fight scenes when you focus on utilizing strategy. Isn't that awesome? I can guarantee Suzanne Collins knows nothing about fighting, yet her scenes in the Hunger Games were well written and believable. Because she didn't try to focus on "Okay what works better than what." She used overall strategy to craft her scenes and make it believable. Katniss won the first games because she used the better strategy in the end. So it didn't matter that Cato was the better fighter. Katniss wasn't fighting his fight. So, whatever he knew was completely irrelevant.

So, get off this "style" stuff. It's stupid. Think strategy. The most strategic mind will win. The one who thinks most outside the box. The one who doesn't play by the other people's rules.

 

Thank you @Xoic, this is very helpful for me and I will look into these videos and spend more time learning from them. And like @evild4ve said, it's the goals of the characters that will separate them both. I still have it that both MC's enter a death battle competition, run by both their evil dads and both of them being half demon, due to their mother's side. So I can keep this the same for both MC's as long as I make their goals different

 

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. As I've mentioned, I'm not very knowledgeable in the martial arts but like you said, if they are using strategies to fight and different skill sets to win like in Hunger Games, it should work out well. And I can make up some of the styles?

 

All styles are "made up." Have at it.

 

Came here to say the exact same thing.

A wrestling stance is a lot different from a tae kwan do stance. A boxers punch would have a lot more body rotation than a karate fighter. Judo and BJJ are both grappling arts but generally a Judoka would have the more effective takedowns and throws while the BJJ practitioner would be a lot more comfortable working off their back.

 

You've got a lot of input into your starting query. I'm not entirely sure the fighting styles particularly matter when there's demons afoot. You could have a chess master, supercharge their prowess and let them lay waste. Realism, to my mind, is not required. The thing that struck me most in the thread was this:

This could be a real opportunity to do a sliding doors effect, if I'm using that term correctly. You could write the same characters, as such, with contrasting or oppositional narratives, different courses with different outcomes. That, I think, could really be intriguing. Gives you a chance to write the same story and answer your own "what if" questions.

 

I just found out more about this, and it's true. That's why Iwas getting confused with hearing that anyonefrom any style can perform the same move

It would give me a tremendous amount of help if I could do this. Not sure how I'd go about doing it, but maybe I can speak to some martial artists on the forums?

I would like to merge them but it may be too difficult to do, do to the fact the mother is supposed to be a demon so maybe the Japanese MC can be the one that never knew about being part demon until the father's tournament and learns why the father killed the mother for being a demon. And the father and MC never knew about eachothers existence but the MC does not agree on the father's terms for what he did to the mother?

And the other MC could of been aware they were a half demon but never knew the truth until the father's tournament that the whole time the father was a shapeshifting European dragon and the mother was a dragon slayer or just a regular martial arts woman who the father had tried to kill, along with the young MC, who now returns years later to get revenge on the father?

Are both MC stories different enough?

 

I agree, I discovered more about this.

While yes it is true that this is all fantasy fiction, there will still be heavily grounded aspects to go along with it, like one kick or throw from a particular style should still be emphasized on how another fighter that uses a different style with a different way to kick, throw and their stance would differ too.

I actually made two versions of both MC's, both different stories just now to compare them.

What do you think of it? They contrast each other slightly different or not?

 

Yeah, there are important differences in the various martial arts, hence why when the Gracies introduced Brazilian Jiu Jitsu into MMA it was literally a game changer. Everybody had to scramble to learn it or they didn't stand a chance at the ground game.

It's also why Ronda Rousey totally dominated with her Olympic level Judo skills until she started going up against skilled boxers or kick boxers and they wiped her out every time.

But as Kalisto said, most fighters learn several martial arts, but if they're doing a strictly Karate event for instance they don't use anything else. But if it was MMA they can use all of it (barring of course the things that aren't allowed like eye gouging etc).

Have you watched much martial arts (I don't know)? It would doubtless be very helpful if you would. You could just spend some time on YouTube watching some UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) or whatever and you'll learn a lot from that. You could also watch some teaching videos about it as well. I really enjoyed watching some of the women's MMA like Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate and Cyborg Santos etc, and some of the guys like Connor McGregor, Jason Mayhem Miller was really fun to watch, T J Dillashaw, Wanderlei Silva.

Just to give you a starting point if you want to pursue it.

 

This isn't strictly fighting, it's more about sheer insane personality, but the guy also has some solid skills and talent. Also a long string of arrests and felony charges, many fighters do. Hey, this kind of stuff is important if you're writing about fighters:


And this might get you going on looking into women's MMA. Ronda Rousey was the one who made women's MMA mainstream and super popular:

 

Okay I got it!

I'm going to start learning more about this and watch more of it so thanks for the tips and advice!

This gives me some good inspiration for one of the fighters that competes in the matches so I like the influence behind this, it is very helpful!

 

My only problem now is I decided to change my heroine instead if the monkey king girl, she will just be one of the fighters that mimics a monke style.

The heroine will be a half demigod human fighter but her mother would have water based powers. Is there any other culture of a female deity that uses water that would be more or just as interesting as the water Chinese deity? Any other culture I can use inspiration from? She would be more of a weather type of deity with different weather powers

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_water_deities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess

(obviously, there can be sensitivity considerations when taking inspiration from people's actual gods)

 

Thank you! Maybe I can make it up? Is there a culture that has rarely been touched upon?

 

Considering the sensitivity from using inspiration from other people's gods, I think I'll just stick with the heroine as the Monkey King's daughter, only her and her mother are Chinese American, with the mother mixed of being half Chinese half white, making the daughter mixed as well. Is this okay?

And if the daughter was raised in the US her whole life, what martial art style would fit her most in the most modern times and show how her powers make her a good fighter?