k3ng

just wanted some feedback. How long should battle sequences be in a book? Whats the optimum length before it gets a little repititive and boring?

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mammamaia

depends on how good the writer is...

one page is too much if a beginner drones on and on in poorly-written, boring narration...

and whole chapters will fly by, if written by a master...

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Ajax

Build it in waves of tension.
Let the opponents take measure of each other.
Let them consider the ramifications of engaging.
Describe their fear and their anger as they move toward each other.

When the combat actually occurs, each blow can be described in a quick short sentence or drawn out for paragraphs. If you want a battle to last for a long time, and yet still be interesting, then you need to put material in the paragraphs that engages the reader. Talk about what the character is thinking as the blade streaks towards him. Does time seem to slow down? Does he get tunnel vision? Does he reflexively try to dodge or block because he was trained to react physically (and now watches as his body does what it was trained to do)?

Combat it more than hack and slash. It's thinking. And it can be a lot of fun to write (and read). But when someone writes a continuous stream of physical motions in an attempt to describe what is visually occurring, I think that's what can be boring.

If you're doing SF and you've got a gun battle going, then it's going to be more about objectives and finding cover and concealment. It's going to be about avoiding the enemy while you accomplish your goals, or it's going to be about getting shot.

And in all cases you can have short dialogs between attacks whenever you need to. You can use these for intimidation, coordination, compliments, and/or threats.

Break it up, and build it in waves.
Listen to Kashmir by Led Zepplin and you'll see what I mean.
You want to give the reader some peaks and troughs.

Anyway, that's my $.02

Captain K.

This is a topic that's always been of interest to me. In the first book I wrote, I had a number of martial arts sequences. Something I found very early on in trying to write one of those it that it gets very tedious for the reader (and me as a writer) if you have paragraph after paragraph of "so-and-so threw a punch that his opponent blocked. His opponent tried to kick him but he jumped away... yadayadayada"

What I try and do instead is firstly set it up, describe the first bits of action, and as Ajax said, spread it out over a few paragraphs by adding the character's emotions, thoughts, etc about what is happening. If it's going to continue much longer, I usually choose to summarise a bit to save space, save time, and save the reader from boredom. eg.

"For the next ten minutes, Mr Hero fought furiously, trying unsuccessfully to find a break in Mr Villian's defenses, but he never come came close to touching him. It was frustration that finally led to his error. Mr Hero hesitated for only a moment, but it was enough for Mr Villian to kick him in the head."

A bit tongue in cheek, but hopefully you get the point... choreographing every single move in these ten minutes might be exciting to watch in a movie, but will likely be tedious and repetitive in a book.

DavidC

I think would depended a lot on the type of battle itself. Is it martials arts as mentioned, or is it a massive clash of armies? The size as well is also important. Take Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as an example of army clashes. Each encounter in a battle like Helm's Deep last a paragraph or there abouts, yet in a few pages he manges to cover several clashes and fill out an entire night. Individual fights are more tricky because you could easily go into so much detail and bore the reader. Ajax hit it on the head there with the use of summary. Don't be afraid to just give a breakdown of what the fight is like instead of detailing every single hand movement, as too much of that takes far too long. The importance of the fight is also key. Is it the main two characters? Or is it a major character and a minor one? Choosing which fights to detail and which ones to play out fully can be very important.

Fights can be used to show character traits, so perhaps the first fights if they are to be part of more battles or are the lead character's first time in the story of beign in combat should be slightly more detailed then later clashes so you can put across more about how they act and feel, so that the reader can learn more about them.

Note though that just because big armies clash doesn't mean they should each have a paragraph describing what they're doing. An encounter between two people can actually be more detailed then a huge collision of forces.

Talia_Brie

Unfortunately there's no real set rule. The only thing to keep in mind is 'keep the reader itnerested'. As long as you're doing that, you're ahead of the game.

But the advice everyone else has provided is all excellent, and I don't disagree with anyhting that's been said so far.

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