When drawing or writing a fight scene between two individuals, there are those who feel that just putting a ton of action counts as making a good 'fight scene'.

If you're the kind of person who think this: Then you're right depending on how bombastic and amazing your written or drawn fight scene actually is.

What I mean to say is that some people just like it if you're able to beautifully bring life to a 'fight' through your own style of writing or your style of drawing.

There will obviously be nitpicking critics who think drawing/writing is easy but their opinion doesn't really matter since what you draw/write is your own work.

There's no need to follow a specific pattern when writing or drawing 'fight scenes' because it just depends on the style of writing you've already adopted.

I myself have been heavily influenced by eastern web novels and am now unable to write in other ways than that...

Getting back to the main point, I'm just going to state down my opinion on what great 'fight scenes' in general mean to me rather than to anyone else.

It may be right, it may be wrong, but who cares? I'm just an amateur writer who writes for fun so my opinion means both compared to 'professions' anyway.

Now on to the main event~! What makes a 'fight scene' interesting and worth watching/reading for me specifically?

Well friends, let me give you the easy steps to distinguish a good or bad fight.

1. What are your fighters 'quirks'? (Don't say what they did, say 'how' they fought.)

And no, I don't mean the same ones on My Hero Academia. I mean the traits that distinguish your character from others. This can be his ferociousness in battle, his ruthlessness towards other people, or even just his weakness.

Any character within a story usually has things that make them an 'Individual'.

Their own dreams, desires, flaws, and even obsessions drive them forward.

These don't have to be superpowers or anything tangible because the whole point of 'fight scenes' are for strong Individuals to clash against each other.

Just having a move name concocted through putting together three or four randomly generated words isn't enough.

You need to show their thought process and their way of 'handling' situations.

It doesn't have to be an in-depth analysis like: "He'll dodge left, so I'll punch that way, do this, this and etc."

Just throw stuff like that out of the window and think of them as tacticians who have their own style of fighting.

I'll give a good example just I can make my first step a little more clearer.

For now: Let's say your MC is a Battle Mage in a fantasy setting and the person he's fighting is the antagonist.

It's easy to guess the fight isn't going to be smooth since antagonists are almost never stupid enough to fight a plot-armoured protagonist without a plan.

If it were that easy then they would've been named Cannon-Fodder instead.

Let's say that this Battle Mage has a few Spells. And I mean a FEW dammit!

Do you guys know how many authors create OP character that seem to have no weaknesses whatsoever?

Even if they do have weaknesses, most authors seem to think that repeating a weaknesses is boring as hell.

While that sentiment isn't wrong, it's far from being accurate in my perspective.

Take Ikki Kurogane from Chivalry of the Failed Knight. That 'underdog' story has it so the main character is the 'weakest' despite his talent on swordsmanship.

So what is Ikki's main weakness? Is it his lack of pure power? I think not considering how powerful his techniques are in actual combat.

Even though he's not the most powerful at using 'Magic', he's still able to keep up through his physical and martial prowess. These are the 'quirks' of his character and build up what is seen as his 'overall combat capabilities'.

He's OP in close-combat and has techniques that help him shorten the distance between long-ranged fighters.

He's smart and able to copy the swordsmanship of other fighters.

However, his glaring weakness that is always repeated time and time again is his inability to fight drawn out battles.

Though he does have some problems when it comes to long-ranged fighters who use bows or guns, the most prominent weakness of his is 'stamina'.

I've read the Light-Novel and although I wouldn't consider it a masterpiece, I would still say they did the 'fight scenes' right by considering their characters beforehand and coming up with ways that the MC is forced to improve himself.

Generally, there are times when weaknesses are just unable to be overcome through hard work or sheer willpower. These 'weaknesses' in the MC makes him a lot more believable than say... a certain World-Traveller who was transported to another world with his smartphone and had no 'flaws' at all.

Let me simplify this so that you readers who got bored with the super-long explanation to understand in simple terms: 'Both individuals in the fight scene need a weakness that could be exploited in the right circumstances'.

If you don't at least do this to some extent, then your battle will just boil down to who can throw the largest energy fart at his opponent. You can spice it up by giving these energy farts names and abilities but they will always be an energy fart at the end of the day.

2. How do your fighters 'grow'? (What path did they take that lead them to this fight?)

And when I say that, I mean how they grew both as fighters and as people.

It doesn't have to be something deep like they found out the meaning to life or some other nonsense. It could just be them realising their own flaws or gaining a new understanding to someone or something they didn't know beforehand.

Let's say your character is a Boxer and he hadn't really thought about the weakness of his style of boxers because he had only been fighting other boxers before the fight. The realisation that boxing isn't invincible is a form of growth in a story perspective.

No matter how small the growth is, a person who learns from his mistakes is a lot more interesting than Mr 'Perfect'.

In my opinion, making the abilities of the character weak or making his use of his power crude allows room for growth.

In different circumstances, the many routes a character can take regarding 'growth' is something very interesting depending on the overall narrative.

I'm giving another Chivalry of the Failed Knight example because I really do think that one has great fight scenes.

The showdown at the end of the Anime was really well done as both characters fought in the way they have been fighting their battles since they had been introduced. Ikki's fighting style was essentially no different from how the series began due to the nature of the 'new attack' he made to strike her.

Ikki Kurogane's fighting style has always been to come up with a method to win before going all out with his strength.

Since his opponent had an lightning fast sword drawing attack, his only option was to swing his sword faster than her.

To burst out with ALL his strength!

Perhaps this battle isn't appropriate when it comes to explaining this step...

However, my point still stands. Only those with room for growth use tactics.

3. Where are they actually 'fighting'?

[IMG=H5Q]

A lot of Authors tend to just disregard the world they set up and instead focus on the two individuals as they fight.

Though this works out most the time if your characters are interesting. The best way to spice up a fight is through the 'environment' around them.

Sometimes, there are objects just waiting to be used as makeshift weapons and people who would just love getting in the middle of the action.

What makes a fight scene 'good' is when you throw out the notion that it HAS to be a match between two people and allow them to just do as they want.

One fighter could be chasing to kill another fighter, or it could be that the environment is dangerous so they have to be careful to not die by an accident...

Whatever you come up with. My main point is to not block-out the rest of the world around them when making a fight scene. The world around them also has its own personal after all.

4. Why do their actions matter? (Pacing your fight well.)

To me, doing a YuGiOh where each fighter continuously activates their trap cards isn't something I'd call a 'battle'.

For the last step in creating a good fight scene, just remember that there is more than one way of defeating someone.

Sometimes the best way to pace a fight is to first set down the fighters 'goals'.

If they are in a forest and their only goal is to kill each other. Then continuously activating trap cards may not be a bad thing since it will make the fight smarter.

However, smart fighting to me is more along the lines of taking advantage of the opponents personality or traits.

For example, if the fight took place in a populated area. You can decide on how both fighters would react in those kind of circumstances and how it'll end.

A heartless MC won't have much of a problem when bystanders are involved but a compassionate MC would easily be taken advantage of in such a situation. This coincides with my other steps since putting everything together in a way like this creates a 'fight' for me.

In the end, these four steps are what I think are 'most important' in a fight scene. The 'winner' of the battle doesn't matter compared to the fight itself.

So that's all I have regarding 'fight scenes'. What do you lot think?

I hope this was able to help even a few of you come up with ideas.