Forums » RP Discussion » Choreographing fights (tips and advice needed )

In the past I've always felt that writing fight scenes with or between multiple characters challenging either feeling clunky or stale. I think it's because of the delay, and that what might be normal length of text for dialogue becomes to limiting for other players. I think the delay is the bigger kicker because we are used to communication taking a while (texts, emails, even letters) but if we say throw a punch at someone we never have to wait a day for them to react.

Anyway does anyone have any tips or advice to combat these problems, or overall make fight scenes feel more organic?

You could try switching to lightning rounds -- these are portions of or entire RPs where each person's post must be made in under five minutes, or their turn that round is skipped.

Some people like taking a long time to think up perfect phrasing and write a paragraph or multiple paragraphs, but sometimes, this gets in the way of the excitement of the thing. An instant response, even if short, can drive up the energy and interest in a RP ten-fold, because it makes clear: We are both engaged. Having fun. Connected. Invested in this scene. Not multi-tasking but focused on this scene. It moves a story forward by leaps and bounds in just one night.

This is often much more reflective of the energy of a fight. It's true, response length may drop to 1-5 sentences, but that's still plenty of space to accurately describe a reaction, an action, a verbal response, and leave room to respond to.

Simple descriptors can go a long way; rely on the senses. It doesn't have to be a huge paragraph to express a great amount of detail. What does it sound like? The crunching of bones, the snapping of a broken nose or ribs, the jaw-numbing impact as teeth rattle loose in one's mouth, etc. Granted I tend to like writing fights as a visceral, knock down drag out thing, but even just picking two senses a post can work.

Dom grit his teeth, tasting blood in his mouth as his cheek began to swell from where the Elite had struck him with the back of its weapon, the soldiers helmet having only absorbed part of the impact. Condensation lined the edges of his HUD display and he could smell his own adrenaline and sweat recirculated through his armor breathing system. The strange alien laughed, confident in its victory, and that's when Dom lashed out like a whip. His right leg swept out, flashing into his opponents legs, and knocking them out from under his enemy even as the force of the impact made it feel like his own shin was broken...

And so on