52 books in 52 weeks: Writing Fight Scenes – Professional Techniques for Fiction Authors

I set myself the goal of reading and reviewing 52 writing guides over the year. Here is book 9.

Writing Fight Scenes: Professional Techniques for Fiction Authors by Rayne Hall is the first in a series on writers’ craft* from the same author. It can also be found in the book bundle power pack 1.

First, one of my pet niggles: writers’ guides that claim to be on the craft of writing, yet are riddled with basic typos and editing mistakes. This is one of those – and the words “writer’s [sic] craft” are even part of the series title!

(*** personal opinion alert ***) I don’t know if the authors who continue to produce sloppy material are arrogant, ignorant or just plain lazy, or if perhaps I was just taught to have higher standards and basic pride in my own work. But it really, really narks me that if they can’t or won’t do it themselves, these people could at least be bothered to have someone else check over their work, preferably someone competent in basic English grammar.

Pet niggle over, this is actually quite a useful little book for anyone wanting to write fight scenes. It covers the basics in overview, and those who want to can go on to research their own chosen fight method in further detail elsewhere. The book is a good starting point.

There are no exercises, just easy to read, easy to digest snippets on weapons, words to use, blunders to avoid and historical information.

Throughout the book there are links to videos and pictures further illustrating the points made in the relevant chapters. I didn’t follow all of the links as many were no longer live, and as far as I can see from other reviews, this is largely the case (and the author does warn against this in the intro).

However, I found the words and advice were useful without the added support of the  videos.

Writing Fight Scenes: Professional Techniques for Fiction Authors by Rayne Hall is available on Kindle for £3.15 (or $3.90) and in paperback for £7.22 (or $8.99).

*I’m using the term “writers” as plural, i.e. craft for writers, guides for writers. Therefore, the possessive apostrophe is also plural.