So now we get to the part where the fight scene starts to take shape. 

A storyboard is, for all practical intents and purposes, an outline of the fight. They can be drawn, and hey, if you can do that, go nuts. As for me, my fine motor skills are shit. Small repetitive motions like typing or shooting I can do well enough, but anything large or sweeping and my hands don’t like to cooperate. Fortunately, you can type out a storyboard just fine, with a little practice. 

The goal of the storyboard is to firm up the details of the fight and try to figure out what the final form will be. Obviously, this is going to look like different things to different people. Not everyone functions on the same wavelengths, and details I consider to be important you might not give a shit about, and vice versa. The important thing is that you have what you need to tell the story, and that you get it set in stone. 

And make no mistake, a fight is, or at least should be, a self-contained story, complete with arcs, character development, and maybe even worldbuilding. But that’s advanced fuckery. We’re going to stick with basic shenanigans for now. We might explore some tomfoolery later if there’s time, but I don’t want anyone getting overwhelmed.  

When I first start the storyboard process, I like to know where I’m starting from, and I like to know what the desired endstate of the fight should be. This is where the conceptualization part comes in handy, because chances are, I’ve already daydreamed up an ending. It’s usually way cooler in my head than it turns out on paper, but that’s because you can’t hear the throbbing industrial soundtrack. 

Aside: you’ll find that’s a perennial problem with fights. A fight never ends up looking as cool on paper. Don’t let that discourage you, though. If you daydream up a sufficiently awesome fight, even a 10% loss in coolness during the transition to written form will render a badass fight. Be kind to yourself. 

Anyway, if I know where I’m starting and where I’m ending, I can look at the two and chart out the most direct path between them. If they’re going to have a gunfight and I want the good guy to win, the most direct path would be to have them outdraw the bad guy and shoot them in the face. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it’s concise. But, it’s not always good storytelling. 

A swift, brutal encounter can make for a memorable moment, but for most fights, you’re going to want at least a few more story beats. So, you start adding extra steps between point A and point B. If you’ve done your conceptualization and your research, you’ve already got a choice selection of tasty action sequences ready to go. It’s just a matter of putting them in the right order and maybe filling the gaps in between them. 

Now, if you want to go with a classical climactic fight, you’ll try to order it so that your characters will start off fairly even, the bad guy will get the upper hand and wail on the good guy for a bit, the good guy remembers what they’re fighting for and hardens their resolve, and then the tides turn. That’s the bog standard Hollywood answer for structuring a fight scene. 

And yeah, I know what you’re thinking. From an artistic perspective, it’s tired, it’s cliche, and it’s overdone. Guilty as charged on all accounts. Having said that, they keep doing it because it fucking works. 

Starting off on even footing shows the audience that the good guy has a chance and that victory can be earned. Letting the bad guy manhandle them for a bit raises the stakes and the tension, and gives the impression that the villain might actually pull it off. And of course, the big turnaround reinforces the central thesis of the story, allows you to pay off the emotional and character development in a big way, and it comes with a fuckload of catharsis. 

Remember, kids: good writers borrow. Great writers steal. There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from people who know what they’re doing, because I promise they did the same. Obviously, plagiarism is bad and you shouldn’t outright copy anyone. I feel like that shouldn’t have to be said, but there’s always that one dumbass who has a favorite flavor of paint chip in the crowd. 

Having said that, things like tropes and cliches exist because they work. They’re tools, and just like every other tool they can be misused or abused, but you shouldn’t be afraid to use them, especially when you're just starting out. Learn how to use tropes to your advantage. Once you figure out the mechanics of how and why they're so damned effective, you can work on avoiding them or subverting them. 

See? I told you we'd get to the tomfoolery.