Writing Fights

Even though it seems ironic for me to be writing about fight scenes, I'm doing it any way. 

I've struggled with writing good, intense fights from the very beginning. If you do too, maybe what I've been doing will help you out as well.

Problems with Fight Scenes and How to Solve them:

Problem #1: I don't know about you, but one of my biggest issues with fights is that I've never been in an actual fight. How the heck am I supposed to write something so intense when I have no idea how it feels?

Solution #1: There a couple of things you can do. The big thing for me was to live through others in order to experience fights. Since I was writing a sword fight, I looked up scenes from Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, along with other movies that had sword fight scenes. I also looked up scenes from favorite books for inspiration and to see how they kept things moving. Even though it doesn't have any sword fights, Divergent was a great source to see how to keep any fight moving. 

Problem #2: My second issue was that I didn't know how to keep the fight going. Things always seemed too rushed and it made it move too quickly for most readers. 

Solution #2: Again, Divergent was amazing for this. I read scenes, analyzing how the author would keep the fight going long enough. Here's what I discovered: Keep a scene flowing with more moves when they fight, imagery as the fight goes on, and the character's reactions and thoughts throughout the fight. Another thing I did was take it piece by piece. Since I needed to slow it down, I needed to slow down the writing process. I wrote a page or even less a night, picking up where I left off the following night. I'm still not finished but I am much happier with how the fight is going.

Okay! So I hope this was at least semi-helpful. Let me know if you have any other suggestions or other comments.

Thanks all!