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“For a fight to have meaning, it must be essential to your story. Throwing in fights just to keep the reader’s attention and the action quotient high is something that Hollywood is often guilty of, but you don’t want to emulate a forgettable popcorn flick. Ask yourself what the purpose of the fight scene is. Is it to reveal character? To set up a crucial plot point that will have ramifications later? To create motivations for the protagonist or the antagonist? Write the action sequence with a focus on that goal.
If you remove the fight scene, does the storyline completely fall apart? It should. If your story is unaffected by the outcome of the fight, then your fight scene is unnecessary. In other words: the outcome of the fight must have crucial and irreversible consequences.” Fonda Lee
Maybe, it is an exaggeration that a story needs to fall apart if we take away a fight scene. However, it is a good criterion when looking at action scenes from this perspective. It gives you a theoretical rule to judge them and how they can be served to develop a narrative. A good fight is not necessarily an obstacle to the story. It can be used to develop deeper characters.
The fight between Ran and Anak is often mentioned as a good fight in terms of choreography and clarity. What is missed out in these discussions is that the fight was used to reveal characters and make us see them in a new light.
After seeing Ho take his life, Bam realized people live for their dreams. It gave him the motivation to fight for Rachel’s dream to climb the tower. when he and Androssi fought against Quant was for the sake of showing that goal.
The fight between Bam and Hoaqin in The Dallar Show was a battle of ideologies. Bam was the representative of humanity and White, the law of the jungle. Bam's belief was that human life is priceless. No amount of money or other goods (see goods as gaining power for White) equals the value of human life. Bam endangered his own life and his companions’ by saving White’s teammates. White believed the weak should be used by the strong and that humans’ lives are neither equal nor priceless.
Many other examples can be given, say, the game between Love and Viole ending up with the clash of Wangnan and Lurker, but I think this is enough. Fights can be important and be used to develop a more engaging narrative.
P.S:
If you remove the fight scene, does the storyline completely fall apart? It should. If your story is unaffected by the outcome of the fight, then your fight scene is unnecessary. In other words: the outcome of the fight must have crucial and irreversible consequences.” Fonda Lee
Maybe, it is an exaggeration that a story needs to fall apart if we take away a fight scene. However, it is a good criterion when looking at action scenes from this perspective. It gives you a theoretical rule to judge them and how they can be served to develop a narrative. A good fight is not necessarily an obstacle to the story. It can be used to develop deeper characters.
The fight between Ran and Anak is often mentioned as a good fight in terms of choreography and clarity. What is missed out in these discussions is that the fight was used to reveal characters and make us see them in a new light.
After seeing Ho take his life, Bam realized people live for their dreams. It gave him the motivation to fight for Rachel’s dream to climb the tower. when he and Androssi fought against Quant was for the sake of showing that goal.
The fight between Bam and Hoaqin in The Dallar Show was a battle of ideologies. Bam was the representative of humanity and White, the law of the jungle. Bam's belief was that human life is priceless. No amount of money or other goods (see goods as gaining power for White) equals the value of human life. Bam endangered his own life and his companions’ by saving White’s teammates. White believed the weak should be used by the strong and that humans’ lives are neither equal nor priceless.
Many other examples can be given, say, the game between Love and Viole ending up with the clash of Wangnan and Lurker, but I think this is enough. Fights can be important and be used to develop a more engaging narrative.
P.S:
- The full version of Lee's essay can be found here.
- All these fights can be understood and read in a variety of ways. A fight might serve several purposes in the story. What I said here are just a few of them. For example, in Bam and Androssi’s fight against the ranker, it was shown that Androssi can fight very smartly against her opponents, and rankers, known as gods for regulars, can be taken down under some conditions and constraints.
- This is what Bam believed at that point (The Dallar Show) in the story. I didn’t talk about whether he modified his view of human life, or whether he didn’t act based on this belief. What’s more, there is a difference between what a character says and how he acts. Actions are louder than words, after all. The true nature of a character will be known under pressure. The greater the pressure you put him under, the more he reveals.