So you could say “She grabbed one of her opponent’s fingers and dropped him to the ground” or you could phrase it totally differently. It doesn’t say much to me when someone writes “She hit her opponent in the face and broke his nose”. It’s different if you write: “She slammed the heel of her hand into his nose with a sharp movement, blood seeping from his nostrils.”

Since the fight is going to stop, the tempo of the action is going to change. Therefore, you don’t necessarily have to describe a joint-lock at the same pace as what has gone before. I could, for example, envision a fight told in a fast-and-furious tone, which then switches to a slow and detailed description of what happens when the tendons in your wrist are twisted a quarter of an inch farther than they’re prepared to go. Follow the pain of up the forearm to the shoulder, and how the whole body involuntarily doubles over…etc., etc. It would be a lovely way of selling the scene (and hey, a typical science fiction reader would get a kick out of the anatomy lesson).

Or, if you have a smartass point-of-view character (as many of us do), you might say, “The shoulder bone’s connected to the arm bone, the arm bone’s connected to the wrist bone, the wrist bone’s connected to the finger bone, so if I do *this* to your pinkie…look, you smack your nose on the floor!”

In the one duel/fencing scene I’ve written, I concentrated on the physical exhaustion, the pain of small wounds from minor hits, and the movement and terrain. And, of course, I had my characters talk to one another as they circled.

Fencing also moves so quickly that it’s impossible to film properly. Seriously, watch Olympic fencing sometime. It’s just lunge-thrust-point-done. Competition fencing requires four corner referees to watch for hits, plus a president to make the final calls. This means that it takes paragraphs to describe moves that take just fractions of seconds.

Finally, if you want to see some really damn good stage fencing, check out the 1950s classic Scaramouche (cheesy acting and plot, very realistic smallsword fighting, recommended highly by my fencing instructor) and The Duellists, with Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine. Especially watch the second smallsword duel, between Keitel and Carradine, for realism. It’s over in a few moves.

The cool think is that his jockey characters are so used to getting the snot pounded out of them on the track that they know how to deal with pain and injury and still operate, so that allows his characters to get things done while most of us would be hiding out in the ICU. They play through the pain, so you get the best of both worlds - realistic fight consequences, without a week-long break in the action.

Although to be honest my favorite fight scene ever was with Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live! Totally bogus in terms of realism, but dead-on if you’re jonesing for an extended play, all-out butt whuppin’ performed by two boys who really know how to sell a good throwdown.

Seriously, I couldn’t agree more with you about #1. A lot of movies make the mistake of thinking action scenes are just for eyeball kicks and explosions — Snooze! Give me a fight scene with plot *and* character development, and I’ll be your fan for life.

My thoughts on this would fill several blog posts (which someday I’ll get around to making), but I can boil it all down to three things:

1) A fight, like any other scene, should serve multiple purposes at once, and if it doesn’t you should just gloss over it. Don’t put in in just for spectacle. Further the plot, develop character, and so on.

2) Even if you don’t know the mechanics of fighting, you can make a damn interesting scene out of those things mentioned above. People behave differently when their lives and bodily integrity are on the line; what does that do to your character? Get into her head and focus on what she’s thinking and feeling. Or give physical details like people gasping for breath or interacting with their environment. You don’t need the technical terminology to make it interesting.

3) Go read Dorothy Dunnett’s The Game of Kings, and gape in awe at the single best third-person fight scene fiction is capable of holding.

And yes, the quick action/slow narration conflict makes these things a real challenge.

I should clarify that I’m far from a martial arts expert, unless watching Enter the Dragon six million times qualifies me.