How to Write Combat in Fantasy

Isingforhim86

Isingforhim86

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I'm getting close to having to write a chapter that involves a band of six people (armed with swords, bows and throwing knives) whom attack a squad of trained men. Do any of you know about articles or books that I can use in order to help me set up battles?
 
I don't know articles and such, but this question came up last month sometime, I think Cathbad asked it, or something similar at least. I can't paste a link on my device, but it shouldn't be too many pages back.

Ill give a quick answer here too toufh. From my perspective, (and i cant speak for omniscient POV books, as i write close 3rd) your battle/fight scenes need to be ocussed on one character. I prefer no big sweeping, epic overviews, but grounding in your main POV and all their feelings. I don't want a blow by blow of how they positioned their feet for the next attack, sure give me some detail to go on, but let our imaginations fill in many of the blanks... What we can't picture is how your character is going to be feeling during the fight, angry, excited, tired, hurt, frustrated, bored? Give us those feelings interspersed with focussed, personal actions and I'd be happy with most battle scenes :)

Though obviously the epic, sweeping views can work, I recall I think in Sharpes Waterloo especially, there were these types of overview scenes, and they worked, but maybe at was because I'm interested in the history or if all, as well as the character. If that's the case then i think they work largely due to the author's interest in the history as well.
 
I think @LittleStar was referring to this thread:
How do *you* write a good battle scene?
There's also another thread about a book on swordfighting that you might find interesting:
Swordfighting, for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists (foreword by Neal Stephenson)

I'm sure I remember @Brian Turner posted something a couple of weeks back about a chap who's written a general book on fighting: how it affects someone, how fiction so often gets it wrong and so forth. I seem to remember the guy had a fair bit of experience with actual fighting (possibly worked for the police in the US?). Unfortunately, though, I can't find the thread anywhere. Mostly because I can't remember what to search for.:(
 
Isingforhim86 said:
I'm getting close to having to write a chapter that involves a band of six people (armed with swords, bows and throwing knives) whom attack a squad of trained men. Do any of you know about articles or books that I can use in order to help me set up battles?
Click to expand...

I get the impression by this that you're trying to write in Omniscient and struggling to understand how to describe all six characters in action. However, Third Person Limited/Close is the effective standard POV use in fantasy, and that means you'll only need to focus on the actions of the one POV character. That's pretty common in modern fantasy, so ensure you're reading recent books in your genre.

Apologies if that sounds patronising - I'm just interpreting what you're really asking.
 
To clarify, I'm writing the chapter in close third from the perspective of the archer. I'm not sure how much I should focus on what she is doing, and what is happening around her. I'm introing some new characters, so at the very least, I want to say what types of weapons they are using/when, where they are hiding in the forest in relation to her, if they get injured, etc. Feel free to comment if you know of any books I can use that have smaller scale battle scenes. I guess I'm use to seeing the epic ones that you can find in The Hobbit, etc.

I'm currently reading A Song of Ice and Fire, but I'm not very far in it yet. Maybe the opening with the three men will be helpful. *shrugs*

Anyway, thanks for the other suggestions. I'll have to bookmark them. :)
 
Isingforhim86 said:
To clarify, I'm writing the chapter in close third from the perspective of the archer. I'm not sure how much I should focus on what she is doing, and what is happening around her.
Click to expand...

Cheers for the clarification, and my apologies if I misunderstood. The same point stands, though - focus on the POV character's experience rather than pushing in information - let the latter come naturally.

It may be worth taking a look at something like David Gemmell's White Wolf, which deals with a travelling party and their fighting.
 
Isingforhim86 said:
To clarify, I'm writing the chapter in close third from the perspective of the archer. I'm not sure how much I should focus on what she is doing, and what is happening around her. I'm introing some new characters, so at the very least, I want to say what types of weapons they are using/when, where they are hiding in the forest in relation to her, if they get injured, etc. Feel free to comment if you know of any books I can use that have smaller scale battle scenes. I guess I'm use to seeing the epic ones that you can find in The Hobbit, etc.

I'm currently reading A Song of Ice and Fire, but I'm not very far in it yet. Maybe the opening with the three men will be helpful. *shrugs*

Anyway, thanks for the other suggestions. I'll have to bookmark them. :)
Click to expand...

If it's from the archer's point of view, I would keep it to what your archer sees and does. If he's focused on sending an arrow through the throat of a guy who's about to kill friend #1 with a longsword, focus on that. If it means missing out that friend #2 stoves in the head of another enemy with a mace, then so be it - your archer can always notice the man with a crushed skull when the excitement's died down.

I can think of a couple of fights in ASOIAF that might help you, but they're later on in the series. Most fights in that series are watched rather than participated in. Orcs by Stan Nichols is quite good, but it head hops a lot in battle scenes.
 
I found this interesting regarding the use of archery in combat. The person who has done research into how bows were or might have been used in combat.

This video is a little campy/flamboyant, but Lars Anderson's skill is simply amazing (watch him split an arrow shot at him!). I believe that he probably is correct in some of the techniques used in ancient archery, so you need to take some of this with a grain of salt.
 
Loren said:
I found this interesting regarding the use of archery in combat. The person who has done research into how bows were or might have been used in combat.

This video is a little campy/flamboyant, but Lars Anderson's skill is simply amazing (watch him split an arrow shot at him!). I believe that he probably is correct in some of the techniques used in ancient archery, so you need to take some of this with a grain of salt.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that guy can put together a flashy video, but he's basically wrong from start to finish. It's mostly down to editing the videos, camera angles, utterly impractical moves that are overly practiced, and appropriating non-European archery techniques and claiming they're "lost" to modern archery. Thinking what he's showing off in his videos is practical in any way is kind of like thinking you can learn to really fence in a life-and-death situation from watching old Errol Flynn swashbuckler movies, where they famously just move around a lot and slap swords together without actually trying to hurt each other.
 
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I found a few youtube videos demonstrating real swordfighting techniques to be helpful when writing a scene. In my book, I wanted to do a kind of 'homage' to the hilarious scene from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, when Chow Yun-Fat slaps around Zhang Ziyi with a switch while she hold a real sword and can't do a damn thing against him. :LOL:
 
Incidentally, I had a conversation with an NRA (National Rifle Association) instructor yesterday. I was looking for a tactical shooting instructor skilled in combat techniques inside buildings. When I told him I was writing a fiction book he smiled and said that I would not believe how many writers and producers do this.

He said there is a lot of material on the internet and there are a number of forums dedicated to tactical shooting (and I am sure historical weapon fighting techniques as well) that I (you) could draw information from. You could also solicit beta readers from those forums to critique any scenes you write.
 
What style are you aiming for? Crouching Tiger (as mentioned) is VERY different to Princess Bride which is very different to the Revenent.

One thing I can tell you from a lot of years of reenactment and a reasonable amount of combat archery is that in close quarters, you are screwed as an archer when two guys with shields come at you. Even if you are good enough to hit one well enough to put them down, there's no chance you can nock, draw, lose, avoid a shield up close and hit. Then you have nothing to defend yourself with and despite what you may watch on movies, it takes more time to draw and ready a weapon and be ready to receive a charge from someone than it does for your opponent to close on you and bitch slap you with their shield. Its not pleasant and really gets your adrenaline going :)

That said - one guy with a bow can effectively tie down 3 or 4 lightly armoured and especially shieldless opponents. Unless they are suicidal/berserk, no one is going to charge an archer and take a hit for his buddies. So you end up in a stand off where the archer doesn't want to shoot because even though they will score a hit, they will get murdered before they can reload, but the opponents won't move because they don't want to be shot. It becomes a waiting game until someone else can arrive and tip the balance one way or the other.

Have your archer speed up reloading by holding an arrow in their teeth and/or in the bow hand. Or jamming them into the ground in front of them - but that plan falls down if the fight is dynamic.

Shooting into melee is risky - I'll admit to friendly fire incidents before. I once shot one of our knights in the back of the head from about 20 foot away and I'm actually a pretty decent shot :)

Trained opponents would concentrate on nailing the archer asap.

So it depends on what level of realism you want.
 
Not really sure what style I want. I can tell you that I want to write a situation in which the squad gets ambushed by a band who knows the area better than they. Perhaps the men unknowingly march into an area where they will be trapped, or that has a lot of cover, making viability iffy.

My archer isn't very experienced, so I have her using a crossbow. From the research I did, I deduced that they were easier to master. If I remember correctly, this puts her at a greater risk. (Will have to look back at the notes I took in order to see why exactly this was. Think it had to do with the number of arrows she could fire in a given time.)

Your comment defiantly helps. Think I might have a few guys with shields in the mix. ;)
 
I'd think about how big and powerful a crossbow it was as well then. A hand pulled one, even with a foot stirrup, could probably put a bolt through a shield at close range - but probably not through a shield, mail and leather. A big ass hand cranked heavy cross bow could probably slam a bolt through a shield and do enough damage to put down the guy carrying it. But... it would take an age to reload. On the plus side, crossbows are heavy and usually have steel arms so you could comfortably batter someone to death with one and not worry about breaking it, unlike a hunting bow say.
 
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