Michael asked Sebastien de Castell:

I feel like your fight scenes are some of the best written I have encountered. I know your experience makes you extremely capable in this regard. What do you see as the keys to writing a great fight scene?

Sebastien de Castell Thanks for the kind words, Michael.

As to the key aspects of writing a fight scene, I've written about this in a couple of places but I'll give you the short answer and then point you to the articles.

1. The fight needs to be about something, and whatever that is, everything else (weapons, styles, moments in the fight) needs to connect to those stakes.
2. We have to have some sense of jeopardy for both sides of the fight. The more we know about how important winning is to the villain (assuming there's a villain at all in the scene) the more we care about what happens. Even some thing as simple as a woman in the forest fighting off a cougar becomes more interesting if she's aware that the cougar's territory has been encroached on by the townspeople, year after year, and now it's in danger of starving.
3. At some point (usually early on in the fight) you need to show the reader how the weapons or styles work. They need to be able to picture the motion of the blade or the way a punch is thrown. Once you've done that just a bit, the reader can then imagine the rest of the fight, which can then be more focused on the viewpoint character's emotional responses to what's happening and any dialogue between the fighters.

For more on this, check out these short articles:

http://decastell.com/the-sword-on-the...
http://decastell.com/5-tips-for-fight...
http://decastell.com/fight-scenes-on-...

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