Leave the Dead and Wounded: Writing Realistic Fight Scenes

After watching the final episode of Grimm, it occurs to me that being realistic in fight scenes is not as obvious as I had believed. Before I start making claims that I know what a realistic fight scene is, I need to prove why I know it: I’ve been Military Police for 12 years in the U.S. Army, as well as holding a full time job for 4 years as a Deputy Sheriff in Elko, NV. Proof enough?In the final episode of Grimm (no worries, names are protected to prevent spoilers) Bad enters the room. Good, Joe, and Bill are in this room. Joe fights Bad briefly before Bad kills Joe. Good rushes to Joe’s side and sobs over his dead body for a good minute. Enraged, Good then rushes Bad, to which Bad deflects Good, then kills Bill. Good sees Bill fall mortally wounded, and races to his side, sobbing over his dead body a full minute and then – enraged again – rushes Bad. Bad deflects Good again, knocking him unconscious, and Bad leaves.To a normal person who hasn’t been in either the military or a police officer (remember, I’m both) might not see anything wrong with this. It was certainly allowable in Grimm which is netting money on Amazon Prime. But I’ve vowed everything I write will have quality, and I plead for you to ingrain that same standard into yourselves.THE REASON WHY THAT SCENE IS NOT REALISTIC:I’ll explain by using a real event that happened in my life: My local city police force was asking for volunteers to help them train on how to respond to a mall shooting. I volunteered to act as one of the victims in this faux shooting. Once the police officers entered the mall to neutralize the threat – guns up, body armor on – I was to run directly at them, screaming at the top of my lungs, “I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!” and then to collapse to the floor directly at their feet. Which I did. The police officers walked around me. One even stepped over my body and kept going. They did not stop to render me aid. They didn’t say anything to me. They all moved on deeper into the mall as if I wasn’t there.Now I’m certain that YOU see a massive problem with this. I’ve been shot, right? Every second I come closer to death if I don’t receive aid immediately, right? Yes and yes. However, the shooter is still in the mall, and every second he is not neutralized is another second he might shoot someone else. Further, if those officers had stopped to render me aid, taking their eyes off their objective and lower their guard, that shooter could step around a corner and shoot the officers. A dead police officer won’t render me aid and won’t stop the shooter from killing anyone else. So the shooter must first be stopped, and then only when the scene is secure, will the officer come back and render aid. The military teaches this as well. I might be dead by then, but at least no one else died as a result of the shooter.Going back to the last episode of Grimm, where Bad kills Joe and Good sobs over Joe’s body a good minute. While Good is distraught with himself over the death of his friend, Bad is STILL STANDING THERE and could HAVE KILLED GOOD WHILE HE WAS DISTRACTED WITH HIS DEAD/WOUNDED FRIEND. I wish I could make the caps bigger to super prove my point. If Good hadn’t been sobbing over Joe’s body, and neutralized Bad instead, Bill may not have died. But Bill did die, because the threat was not neutralized. Because Good was distracted by his wounded friend.To make a realistic fight scene, your character must first neutralize the threat, because if the threat is not neutralized, the threat will next attack other people or your character, whether your character is sobbing over their dead friend or whether your character is prepared to meet the attack.WHO DID IT RIGHT:Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:when Harry, Hermione, and Ron are playing the life-sized chess game and Ron sacrifices himself to make a vital move. Ron gets badly hurt, and Harry starts to step off his chess square to help him but Hermoine stops Harry, saying they were still in the game. They left Ron there, finished the game, and then went to Ron’s aid.Return of Jafar:Final scene when Jasmin is magicked into an hour glass and sand fills the bottom. Aladdin doesn’t rush to save her, because Jafar is still trying to kill him. Aladdin fights Jafar first, and once he is neutralized, he breaks the hour glass and frees Jasmin.WHY WRITERS IGNORE WHAT I JUST SAIDDeath shakes us to our souls. Whether it’s a justified killing (police officers, military) or the natural death of a loved one. Death sticks with us, which is why we have funerals and a marked grave to find the dead again, which is why military and police officers get PTSD from taking a life. This is realistic. We transfer this realism into our books and movies and cause characters to weep over the death of a good friend, which is what Good did during the final episode of Grimm. Death is beautiful in a sadistic way. We glamorize this death in books and movies by using slow motion, by spending a minute to air our griefs and acknowledge the passage from life. That is what Good did. That is why the producers of Grimm did it. Because it’s realistic.However…Good is featured as a police officer in Grimm. If he’s trained as a police officer, he should know that he needs to neutralize the threat before he attends to the wounded, just like I, as a real-life police officer, have been trained. So him not neutralizing the threat goes against his training. Not realistic.BUT YOUR CHARACTER MAY NOT BE A POLICE OFFICERIt doesn’t matter. Now you’re contending with every human’s core instinct: Survival. If you and your friend are out walking, and a shooter steps out from behind a building and shoots your friend, will you drop to your knees and sob over your wounded friend, or are you going to get the hell out of there to find cover where you can be safe for the moment to place a frantic 911 call? I bet you’re going to run for cover, because your brain shuts down and one word will gear your limbs to move. That word is SURVIVAL. You’ll get to your cover, and once you take a breath, your first thought will be, “How did I get to this spot?” The second, “I hope the shooter doesn’t come after me.” And only then will your thoughts spring back to normal with a, “My friend is hurt! Dial 911!”That scenario will change slightly, depending on the skill set of your character. If your character is a soldier or police officer, they are both trained to run toward the sound of gunfire, and one word will gear their limbs to move: NEUTRALIZE. They will most likely run at the shooter to stop him from hurting other people.BLOG HIGHLIGHTS:To make a realistic fight scene, your character must first neutralize the threat before attending to the wounded. If your character is not a fighter and can’t neutralize the threat, their survival instincts will kick in and they will seek cover first, to assure THEIR safety, and only when they feel it is safe to do so, will they come out and help the wounded. Leave the dead and wounded until it is safe to tend to them.