McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Melee Combat, little help here...
Kali:
If you're in first-person, you just have to decide if the narrator would use those terms. Is he a technical fighter who'd think, "Ok, now I'm doing move X against Hold Y" or would he just punch the other guy in the nose?
If it's third person, then yeah, you have to acknowledge that at some point you're either writing to an audience that will appreciate the technical fine points (like David Weber/John Ringo who spend, quite literally, pages and pages of text on finer points of how Gun A works vs. Gun B) or you're not. If you are writing to a specific audience, get as technical as you'd like. If you're writing to a wider audience, you're going to bore some people by getting too technical.
In the latter case, I'd suggest writing it in whatever way fires you up the most. Then go back and read it, pretending it's about a topic in which you have only a passing interest and try to figure out at what point your eyes glaze over. Some technical terms will add verisimilitude and a certain colorful twang. Too many, and it's as bad as 4 pages of washing machine parts inventory.
eviladam:
Also get a lay person, some one who knows nothing about the subject matter to read it and give you a brutally honest report. Or a few lay persons.
Rabidpancakes:
Well, all seems to be going well. My contacts have read it and they like it. I found a balance between technical and something for everyman. So thanks for all the input. It was all helpful.
WedgeWolf:
Combat always gets to me too. Honestly, I think the best thing to do is just rein it in. I have the same problem where I want to over-describe everything, but in the end, while I might care exactly what type of Eskrima/Boxing/Kung Fu/Whatever, the character is using, in the end it's the cinematic play-by-play in the reader's mind that matters.
As for authors, for a good martial arts writer check Barry Eisler, particularly the final chapters of Hard Rain, you're looking for the knife/baton/pit bull fight (the book's pretty sweet too, if you're into that genre - espionage/assassin). For somebody you can check right now, read the Amazon preview of Matthew Stover's Heroes Die, which contains, hands down, the best fight scenes I've ever read in a Fantasy novel.
Link here to HEROES DIE, copy and paste: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0345421450/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-5814108-7130251#reader-link
The Corvidian:
(I take it that they are flying via magic.) Have them trade insults.
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