Tutorial Tuesday - Put Up Your Dukes 2

This is the second in a series on writing fight/violence scenes.  Last week, we zeroed in on how to be sure your violence wasn't gratuitous.  This week, we're talking the nitty gritty elements that make up the fight.

The Devil is in the Details
Do your fight scene a favor.  Get into all the minutia you can imagine, even if it might feel you're going overboard.  Why?  Because as I wrote in last week's tutorial, this fight is important to your characters.  As they engage in battle, it should consume their complete attention.  So don't rush the conflict.  Give us not only the sights and sounds, but smell and touch as well.  Make your reader aware of the blades of grass standing at attention in the breathless air.  Let them feel the single drop of sweat running over your character's nose to hang suspended at the end of it.  Make them feel the force of the blow landed, how dull pain blooms in your protagonist's knuckles as his fist slams into his opponent's jaw, the reverberation shuddering up the wrist, through the forearm, along the elbow, all the way up until it dissipates somewhere near the shoulder blade. 
Along with putting your reader in the thick of the action, putting in so much detail also means a high word count, a little trick that tells your audience that this fight really, REALLY means something.  It's a way of waving to them and saying, "Hey, pay attention.  This is important."
That means you can't settle for something like He slapped her across the face, knocking her to the floor where she huddled and cried.  Depending on whose point of view you're coming from, you should give us his expression as he struck her, the look on her face as she fell, how it felt to deal or receive that blow, and if the blow came as fast as lightning or seemed to move in slow motion.  Also think of the emotions involved:  is the attacker as shocked as his victim that he's hitting her?  Is she thinking something along the lines of Not this again?  And feel free to document the reactions of any witnesses.  Even if a single slap is all that occurs in your 'battle', make it last for as long as you can.  Detail gives the fight its heft.

Accuracy is Everything
Because you're writing in such detail, you will have to pay close attention to getting your information right.  If you have a gun battle going on in your story, you better know how many bullets or rounds the firearms hold at a time, what caliber they use, etc.  If someone dies from a single knife blow, you have to do your research to discover the optimum place to shove that blade.  You can't fudge this stuff or readers will be writing ugly reviews and making fun of you.

Plausibility, Please
Not only do you have to get the technicalities right, you have to make your fight plausible.  When a character has been shot twenty times, one leg is broken, and half his ribs are smashed yet he still manages to leap on his foe and beat him senseless, you can be sure the readers have lost their suspension of disbelief.  To pull off a character fighting through just half these injuries to win the day, you must have already set up his overall good health, Navy Seal training, general toughness, and desperation to win the day.   Obviously, a battle-hardened soldier returning from active duty is more believable to win such a fight then a fresh-faced sorority girl. 
It also helps to know how people react to violence and injury in the real world.  In my work with the government, I have had the misfortune of seeing cops and psychotic drug addicts shot.  Let me tell you something:  the good guys do not shrug off bullets tearing through their bodies like Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwartzenegger in the movies.  The police officers I've seen shot, including the one whose body armor safely absorbed the bullet, screamed like rabbits – high pitched, vocal cord shredding shrieks.  It's the psychotic and drug addled men I've seen take bullets who either didn't notice it or were made angrier by the attack.  Be aware that normal people, even if they bulge muscle and machismo, will be tremendously affected if shot or stabbed.  They lose fine motor skills, develop tunnel vision, and panic like any one of us would.
So to review:  be detailed, be accurate, be knowledgeable, and keep it plausible.  That's what will keep your fight scenes dramatic instead of eye-rolling comedic.