Whether a side-street skirmish or an all-out war, fight scenes bring action to the pages of every kind of fiction. But a poorly done or unbelievable fight scene can ruin a great book in an instant. 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 battles and brawls. • 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 What really happens in fights on the street? 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, while also thinking about the nitty-gritty details of using them. • In Round 5, you'll learn how to accurately describe realistic injuries sustained from the fights and certain 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, you'll be able write fight scenes unique to your plot and characters, all while satisfying your reader's discerning eye.
Author
Carla Hoch is the author of the Writer’s Digest book Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes. She is the blogger of FightWrite.net and podcaster of the eponymous FightWrite podcast. Carla has training in nearly a dozen martial arts and fighting styles and regularly teaches workshops on the mechanics of fighting for writers as well as the craft of writing fight scenes. She trains outside of Houston, in the People's Holy Republic of Texas where she lives with her family, paranoid guinea pigs and judgmental cat. Carla Factoids:
- When Carla was in 5th grade she wrote to People Magazine and told them how much she loved their article on the E.T. movie star Henry Thomas. People Magazine wrote her back, she still has the letter, and helped Carla become an official member of the E.T. fan club.
- She was the Sam's Club Employee of the Month once. She was also surveilled by Sam's Club to see if she was stealing money but it turned out she was just super bad at counting down her cash register. They kept her and raised her as their own.
- She was almost suspended in high school for shooting spit balls. It wasn't so much the spit balls. It was that when she was told to write an essay on why she shouldn't shoot spit balls, Carla argued that her spit balls were a cry for peace and if everyone would put down their guns and pick up straws the world would be a better place to live!
- She is a descendent of William Shakespeare's mother's sister.
- She is really good at making popcorn on the stove.
- Carla has training in hapkido, MMA, Muay Thai, street defense, iaido and Filipino martial arts and is belted in judo, aikido, TKD and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
- Both her late father and late aunt were professional writers
