I think it's also important to keep in mind that things fall apart remarkably quickly in a real fight. So you can always add an element of "what the hell just happened" if you feel the fight getting stale, so long as it doesn't reek of Deus Ex Machina or Diabolus Ex. Your main character's winning handily when - oh no! - he loses his balance and gets dogpiled. The bad guy has your hero at swordpoint when - huzzah! - a stray arrow distracts him at a key moment. Your fights'll be choreographed, by you, but that doesn't mean your audience should get to see the figurative strings.
Actually, what I've heard from experts (I'm no expert, so relying 2nd hand info), sword fights tended to be over in few seconds on average, so rarely were there repeated clashes and separations before one or both parties were incapacitated or killed, regardless of whether we're talking about longswords or rapiers. Knife fights also tend to be over pretty quick although sometimes it depends on the wounds 'cause knives make much smaller holes.
Writing mass combat is a completely different thing from a one to one battle. Tactics matter a lot more. So does trying to stay with your unit or battle line or cohort. That was what battle standards (banners) were invented for. It is very easy to get turned around on a battlefield, and even more so when gunpowder was invented. Black powder produces huge amounts of smoke. More battles were won or lost due to sheer confusion than fighting ability. Then you have sieges, which are a whole different thing and both an art and a science in itself. Basically to write a full scale battle, modern or ancient, you need to know a lot more than "hack/slash/cut" or "shoot/dodge/hide" With regard to sword fights, how long a fight may last depends a lot on the period and equipment. A one on one unarmoured duel may be over very quickly. But remember that in a real to-the-death duel, people are far more cautious than fencers, even those fighting "realistically". There will be a lot more circling around, feints and aborted attacks, etc. Of course if one person runs up behind the other who doesn't see him coming, then it could be over with a single blow. Once you have armour and shields, there have been records of fights going on until the combatants collapsed from blood loss or exhaustion. And you have things like arrows falling all around you, or someone ten feet away hitting you on the head with a pole arm, two guys ganging up to kill you, and so forth, not to mention tripping and falling on your face, the strap of your helmet breaking and losing vision, twisting your ankle in a pothole .... Then you have cavalry combat .... What I am saying is that melee combat is an extremely complex subject, and writing convincingly about it needs at least some degree of basic research. Once you know more about it, you will find more to write than the hack and thrust that you find boring.
Action scenes are like dialogue, the key to writing them is 'less is more'. Concentrate on the important events that either characterise the situation or characters, or that advance the story/are relevant to the plot. There's nothing worse then writing an unnecessarily drawn-out dialogue or action sequence, and if you are bored writing it, your reader is guaranteed to be bored reading it.
The time period and equipment on hand is extraordinarily important even in fantasy novels. There is a book called Dragonsbane in which the knight who is a geeky sort of character and when the noble coming to the north asks him how to slay a dragon. The noble is shocked to find that instead of a sword he used poisoned harpoons from a highpoint to disable flight and chopping it's head off with a axe. This also comes into play in a modern or futuristic setting. Guns does not necessarily mean one kind of fighting. A team of untrained rebels or a hero who hasn't learned how to shoot and especially hasn't learned to shoot in combat conditions will "spray and pray" and will hit out of luck. A trained team will however just has to be about 150 meters away and the chance of getting hit drops exponentially for them. The trained rifleman however can hit a target at 300 meters minimum. Still a chance though. As for a pistol. A effective range for a pistol is normally 50 meters. A trained solider can hit from about 25 meters away, and support type solider depending on the level of drill and training might hit 10 meters away.
It's nice to see threads like this because it's a little sad how few authors actually do the legwork of researching the kind of fighting they write (be it medieval hack'n'slash or modern shootouts or whatever) not to mention going to train it themselves to gain some 1st hand experience of even the basics of swordsmanship / gun handling. Just a little while ago I read a published book where the female MC, a 16yo girl, couldn't learn to wield the longsword because it was too heavy. Really? Too heavy? A 12yo has enough strength to use one effectively (not even my words, but Guy Windsor's, who knows a lot more about historical European swordsmanship than I do). Another area where many fail is small unit tactics. Do they really expect me to believe professional soldiers or SWAT guys don't know how to properly clear a room or a stairwell? Or how to breach a door? How to move in corridors as a team? Or that someone who's supposedly an experienced / well-trained fighter has absolutely no idea how to conduct himself in a gun fight? Sandman Slim is a prime example of where the supposed experts behave like headless chickens when the bullets start flying. It really doesn't take that much extra work to get the details right; every single expert I've ever consulted (SEALs, ex-narcs, bouncers, self-defense instructors etc.) have been more than happy to share their knowhow for a book project (of course I promised to and will give credit where credit is due).
A 12 year old girl could indeed stab or slash with deadly effect using a sword. The problem comes when the sword hits something solid - a body, a shield, another sword, etc. The jarring impact can be considerable. Plus a lot of grip, wrist and forearm strength is required when going sword to sword. Just look at the training professional tennis players do, and they are just hitting a little rubber ball. Try hitting a tree or pillar hard with a broom handle over and over. It is even worse on horseback. All that sword twirling isn't just for show. In training, cavalrymen were often required to extend their sabre fully out to the side and hold it there for half an hour at a time to build up the necessary arm and shoulder strength and endurance.
@Bryan Romer, I agree; the 12yo girl should train a lot to become effective. My point was, the 16yo girl in the book I read was in training to become a warrior (that society's equivalent of a knight, I guess), i.e. she'd spend a few years training combat every single day, hours a day (a few hours in the morning, a few hours in the evening), so with that sort of training (and she also had plenty to eat, including meat), I'd imagine a 12yo could very well become strong enough to at least be relatively effective. Sure, in all likelihood she wouldn't survive against men 2-3 times her size with decades of training and dozens and dozens of kills under their belts, but that's not the point; the point is that the longsword is not too heavy ('cause they're actually very light) for a teenage girl, and one could become good enough with it (esp. with the aforementioned regimen, i.e. years of rigorous daily training) to significantly improve her chances of survival come crunch time. And in the book the author specifically made a point about the weight of the sword being the reason why she couldn't use it effectively, which is just false. Granted, size helps, but we have plenty of stories of boys in their early teens (who aren't always that much bigger than girls who develop faster anyway) wielding swords. We also have real life examples. E.g. Miyamoto Musashi got his first kill when he was only 13 (and even that he did with a wooden stick in an actual duel against a trained grown man wielding a sword, so it wasn't even him sneaking up on an untrained guy or anything). I'm sure there are plenty of other IRL examples and while Musashi was exceptional, I have read no accounts that claimed he was in any way a gigantic 13yo.
Actually I wasn't disagreeing with you, merely pointing out that the true obstacle for anyone in becoming a competent swordsman/woman is not the sheer mass of the weapon but the kinetic energy, leverage, and Newtonian forces at play. In general, the solution women warriors (other than exceptionally large and tall ones like Boudicca) adopted to compensate for lesser upper body strength was to focus upon comparative speed and agility. I would add though that, Musashi is not a particularly good example for your case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi#First_duel
Oh, I got that, I just wanted to specify my position a bit because I thought I explained it a bit badly before. That I don't quite get; why is he a poor example? I mean, it did turn into a bit of a clusterfuck, but the other guy was still an adult and managed to draw his weapon (albeit "only" a wakizashi) and attack before Musashi downed him and pummeled him to death.
I meant as an example of a young person (especially a girl) of limited physical development being able to kill using a sword. First he didn't use a sword. Second he was obviously quite strong and trained since he was described as "throwing" (one assumes something similar to Jujitsu) his (armed) opponent to the ground, and third he beat the man to death with his bare hands. Such events are not easily (I don't say it is totally impossible) transposed to a 13 year old girl of average stature. Maybe : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoe_Gozen
one of mine uses one/dual swords/sword and staff/sword and barefist (he likes to mix it up, and ive done my homework) another likes using an axe/axe and sword/dual sword/sword.
@Bryan Romer, okay, I think I understand what you meant now about it being a bad example. I'm thinking we just looked at it from a somewhat different POV: I looked at it as an example of a 13yo in an armed confrontation, regardless of whether the significant moments involved the use of a weapon (or which weapon) or not, especially since the stick/quarter staff/whatever Musashi had was probably roughly similar to, say, a longsword in size and weight (i.e. a long, thin piece of hard material of similar weight). Fights have an almost infinite number of variables, hence almost anything is possible depending on so many of those variables. Musashi might've been stronger than average, better trained than average, or he may have had a natural knack most lack (i.e. he was able to internalize what was taught to him better / faster than most people), but my point was, whatever the variables, the end result stands that a trained, armed kid beat a trained, (better) armed adult. So depending on the specifics of the scene or scenario you're writing, almost anything is possible or impossible. It's just about the parameters you set for the part: the greatest, biggest, strongest, best armed warrior can die if he's facing certain circumstances and the weakest, most inexperienced, badly armed kid can triumph if the circumstances are beneficial for his / her survival. Of course, as is the case with just about anything, you can do that, too, either well or badly (e.g. relying on a deus ex machina or some such). And, of course, a lot depends on the tone you're after: do you want realism, grittiness etc. or are you after flashy and fantastic with no regard to realism? Or something inbetween that doesn't require too much willing suspension of disbelief. To return to Musashi's case, all we have are a few hazy details and speculation, but there are some fairly skilled girl grapplers out there. I even have IRL experience although it's not from a real fight, but from a sparring session: I was training senshido at the time and our sparring sessions were about as close to real fights as any training I've done, i.e. we had mouth and groin guards and just went at it. I was 21-22 and there was a 16yo ex-aikidoka girl in the group. Although most of the time I dominated her in sparring 'cause her previous training didn't really give her many tools for that sort of "live" training, after tapping her out, we squared off again (we usually sparred with roles, i.e. one is the attacker, the other the defender, "good guy"), and since I was the attacker, I charged in. She managed to grab my hand and did a perfect Aikido front wrist throw. She would've broken my wrist too if I hadn't jumped into a forward roll, but even then she did tap me out. I'd never have believed that technique to work, but it did. It's still not anything I'd do in a real fight since clearly the chances of success were pretty low, but I wasn't going soft or easy, and I didn't go for overly complicated attacks either (mostly relying on my krav maga and muay thai background), so, again, depending on the parameters, flooring an adult doesn't really take much strength at all, meaning Musashi wouldn't have needed to be exceptionally strong to throw his opponent on the ground. Another IRL example of a kid taking on an adult: I knew a 13yo kid when I was 15. He was very small and skinny, a late bloomer, but he was a wrestler, so when a 21yo guy came at him with a knife (this one was a real fight), he managed to do a double leg, take the guy down, disarm him, and then proceeded to kick and stomp his head while the 21yo was on the ground, hospitalizing him. The 21yo didn't know grappling (or not enough anyway), so the 13yo didn't even need exceptional strength to do what he did since the double leg (like so many throws / takedowns) rely more on mechanics of movement than brute strength. Maybe Musashi used a technique like that (or some other throw / takedown that doesn't take a whole lot of strength to execute)?
love the thread. I have some thoughts on both plausible fights and swordsmanship. One thing is T.Trian is that I can believe a swat team or Soldiers can behave like bunch of headless chickens depending on the level of training, experience and the situation. Most of the stories though make it a point to say they are well trained. A badly trained swat team like this They bunch up on the porch and at the door. Many not taking this seriously by the lack of speed, hands off weapons when breaking in and bad coordination all around. This is a slightly better trained team. A army national guard going through the paces of room clearing. They for the most part keep clear of the door and have a idea what to do. In combat this kind of team would be effective. This is what a decently trained team looks like and is what to expect from any professional soldier. Now to sword fighting I am not a swordsman or even in martial arts. I will point out that if you look at Newtonian mechanics and rotary motion the tip of the blade delivers the highest force. Murashi might have used a wooden sword for this very purpose. The edge of a metal sword cuts or gets buried and a lot of the energy won't transfer, but a wooden sword would deliver a kinetic punch of a baseball bat in a spot about 3 centimeters square. That by back of the napkin calculation is easily enough to break bones and rupture organs.
Yes, my comments were all based on the original "using a sword" question, so perhaps we were talking somewhat at cross purposes As I mentioned, Jujitsu is the descendant of the grappling and joint lock techniques developed by the Samurai for use when disarmed, so I would guess that Musashi used something similar.
It really does depend on what type of fight/battle scenes that you are writing. H2H or projectile combat? Mano y mano or massive epic war battle scene? Keep the small scale fights, short and sweet. The only time you should be really descriptive is when it comes to the finishing blow.
Try to match the pace of the writing to the pace of the battle. Hand to hand tends to be very fast, and an ovserver won't see all the details, so keep the sentences terse and focused on the main strikes and parries. No time for feelings or detail. At the other end of the scale, a battle between spacecraft or planets at distances of thousands of kilometers may take hours or days between the firing of a weapon and it striking or missing its target. It's almost like a game of chess or Risk played by mail, but with life or death stakes on every move. The psychology and the stress are dominant.
I write low fantasy so there's a lot of magic and swordfighting and modern guns in it, so that's fun. What I do for sword fighting is I watch videos. I'll look at how they move. Do they brutally hack or do they dance around their enemy? Then I do it myself. I have an antique machete and I go into a blind spot in my backyard where no one will see me, and I swing it around. Then I'll go write down what I did and add in the opponent. I'll usually break the attacks in with thoughts. In one fight scene (in the middle of a huge battle), a grenade blows up right next to the character. He falls to the ground and goes, "The sky is so blue today." Then he snaps out of it and jumps back up and fights again. ' For magic, I just log into a fantasy game and just mess around, watching the arms move and then I describe it. "I bend my finger, and a moment later I raise it again, sending a massive wave of fire towards the man ten feet away from me." This is the easiest to write because I can do whatever I want with it. For gun fights, which I rarely do, I sort of describe it. "I lean down into my scope, take a deep breath, and squeeze the trigger. Not even a second later I see the man drop through my scope." For obvious reasons I don't write these too often. There's not enough danger for the main character in it and it just isn't successful.
Tell that to the snipers who do that in wars. Or if it's not only snipers you write, to the marines, SEALs, and other soldiers who engage in shootouts around the world. Or even LEOs going head to head with thugs armed with firearms. I'm pretty sure they think those fights are plenty dangerous. It's good to note that when e.g. you watch free play videos e.g. on YouTube, like longsword bouts with (almost) full contact, in full gear (plates and all), almost every exchange would result in a fight-stopping wound or death. It's just that because the fighters use blunt swords and very well protecting armor, they can spar safely (since their purpose in those bouts, unlike in e.g. muay thai, is not to hurt their opponent). Real sword fights generally lasted seconds once the two fighters engaged. Of course, the better the armor, the harder it was to hurt the guy, but even then the fights generally weren't the long exchanges you see on the big screen and swords generally aren't the best weapon against plate armor, but things like maces, morning stars etc. Oh, and firearms of course if they exist in the same reality! Come to think of it, they'd be the weapon of choice in almost every altercation...
Well it's always dangerous, no denying that. But it's not danger you want to read. I crossed the street today and almost got hit by a car, but that's not entertaining. That's why I try not to write it. I don't know how to make it entertaining so I keep it to a minimum. And usually it's just the other people getting cut down, but sometimes there's someone who can actually fight and it's more challenging. And for my writing at least, firearms would be the best choice if bullets weren't hard to come by.
I think it depends on how you write it. I've read several very exciting scenes involving firearms (and even more boring, i.e. badly written ones), even snipers. They're sometimes trickier to execute well, but with skill, it definitely can be made very exciting to read. Even challenging sword fights between two fencing masters are usually very short and over in 1-3 exchanges (judging by what I've seen in free play matches), lasting less than a minute unless they wear high-end full plate and wield only longswords. Maybe they can learn to reload cartridges if they're short on ammo? It's not all that difficult.
I've never used a firearm so I won't pretend to write scenes involving them well. I'd love to figure out how to write them, but for now I keep them simple. Swordfighting, I mean there'll be three strikes usually before the killing blow for real opponents, but I'll add a few sequences. Multiple opponents. It makes it easier to write battles, for me at least.
