Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll.
Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast.
Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention.
Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them.
Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently.
ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face.
Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.
Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone.
A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way.
If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword.
ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters. (CLICK ME)
If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability.
People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot.
Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME)
If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)
Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here.
if your attacker is male, go for his junk - especially if he’s wearing loose pants. There’s no sportsmanship when it comes to assault so fuck them balls UP
punching pretty much ANYWHERE in the face is going to actually hurt you a LOT (just think - you’re punching your bones into their bones and ow). If you’re going for the face, my suggestion is to strick upwards with your palm.
see that meaty portion highlighted in red? There’s a lot of muscle and fat right there which makes it excellent for striking. Hold your hand as shown and aim for the nose or chin (though I’ve been told in extreme circumstances, doing this to the nose can be fatal but I’ve never really heard if this is true or not) and just aim upwards
other delicate areas:
the shin (hurts like a bitch if you kick it right - also, you can hit this spot if you’re being held in a choke-hold and if your attacker has to move in order to stop you from kicking him, he’ll have to angle his body so as to expose his stomach and crotch to the wild spastic jabbings of your elbows)
the solar plexus (either jab while holding your hand in a sort of spear position or use your elbows - unless you’re super strong, your punch probably won’t wind your attacker. Your elbow or a spear hand will, however)
Originally in (most) martial arts, you hit the solar plexus because it supposedly contained an important chakra. Now we know that it actually also contains like a bunch of necessary organs that are exposed just below your ribs and is also (roughly) where your diaphragm lives so getting punched there is not pleasant.
the clavicle (from experience, getting hit in your clavicle HURTS LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER. If you strike downwards with your knuckles, the person might just cry. Like I did.)
the ear (this is probably the best place to punch besides the throat. It’s all cartilage so it probably won’t hurt you all that much and most people will be like “DUDE YOU PUNCHED ME IN THE EAR WHAT THE HELL”)
the kidneys (this is harder to hit without training but if you somehow get your attacker’s back to face you, try to hit’em in the kidneys. Again, from experience, this FUCKING HURTS. You can’t really hit the kidneys from the front with any effect but from the back it is super painful)
if you’re held in a choke-hold, try turning your head so the forearm isn’t pressed into your throat. If you can position yourself right, you can sort of force your chin into the crook of the elbow, making you able to still receive (limited) oxygen and provide time for you to kick some shins or elbow some spleens and shit
Nothing much to add to this, it’s pretty much all there. So. Reblog. Oh, also, it’s really easy to break a nose - go for the eyes too. All it takes to avoid a shot to the throat is tucking your chin.
Also, that part about the ear - don’t punch. An open hand over the ear hurts a lot.
A little trip down memory lane. This is a small fight sequence I story boarded between Su and Kuvira. It’s short but packs a punch. Love the backstory here between these two as it added a ton to the stakes of this battle. I must admit I do miss staging these fights. What a fantastic show to be a part of. #korra #Lok #legendofkorra #storyboard #kuvira #sulinbeifong #joaquimdossantos #
Joaquim Dos Santos has left a long trail of incredible and memorable action scenes in his wake, and it would be tough to say which one was his “best,” or even which one is my favorite. But if I had to try, this fight would easily be up there near the top of that list. The dynamics, timing, flow, and clarity of this sequence are all top-notch. It’s no mystery that when Mike and I got the opportunity to make Korra, the first person we turned to was Joaquim.
character in a fight scene: *restrains their opponent by pinning them against the wall by their wrists*
me:
character in a fight scene: *pins their opponent down by straddling their waist and holding their wrists to the floor*
me:
character in a fight scene: *lifting their disarmed opponent’s chin slightly with the business end of their weapon*
me:
character in fight scene: *pins down the opponent and leans in close to whisper in their ear*
me:
character in fight scene: *restrains the opponent by twisting their arm/s behind their back and pinning them to the wall chest first with their own chest pressing against the opponents back*
me:
Character: *distracts their otherwise equally good/better opponent by flirting*
Me:
Character in fighting scene: *restrains opponents arms in a lock hold with their own, entangling their arms together forcing their bodies to be pressed together and faces in close proximity*
character in fight scene: *holds opponent by the collar, lifts them and brings them close to their face*
me:
Every time this crosses my dash it gets better.
Character in fight scene: *is pretending to be hurt, while the opponentcomes to them and then gets pinned down by them as they lean closer to them with and smirks*
Taking the bullet out does nothing to help the person, and if your characters are in the field instead of a hospital, may actually cause more harm than good.
Imagine for a moment that you (for reasons unknown to all) decided to turn your sink on wide open, pick up a handgun, and shoot the pipes under your sink.
Maybe it hit the drain pipe, which would be bad, since all the water coming through the faucet is now dribbling out all over the floor. But even worse would be if it hit the water intake pipe, right? In that case, water under high pressure would be spraying everywhere!
Two bad options if you for some reason shoot your sink:
The vascular system of the human body is essentially one big set of pipes. The drain pipe? Those would be veins—under low pressure, but still very bad to leak from. The water intake pipe? Those would be the arteries—under high pressure and VERY dangerous to puncture.
But back to the sink example. Say you shot the pipes and hit the drain pipe (vein). Now there’s water pouring out onto the floor. Your roommate says “Quick! Wrap your hand around the pipe to hold the water in!” (“Put pressure on the wound!”) And you do! Water is still slipping out from under your hand, but it’s leaking a lot less than before! Right now, you COULD find some duct tape (bandages) and secure the pipe further so you don’t have to keep holding it.
Instead, however, you say to your roommate: “Hold on! I’ve got to find the bullet!” You let go of the pipe (stop putting pressure on the wound) to dig around in the cabinet (body) for the bullet. Seconds, maybe even minutes pass, and that pipe is freely gushing out water the whole time.
Finally, you find it! You pry the bullet out of the wood, hold it up to your roommate, and drop it in a little metal dish with a ‘clink’.
“Job well done,” you tell yourself. “We’re out of the woods now.”
Except that, you know, the pipe is still damaged and gushing water out onto the floor, and the bullet wasn’t actually doing anything harmful inside the cabinet. Also, while you were rummaging around for little Houdini, you weren’t putting pressure on the pipe, so that sink (patient) lost a whole lot of water (blood) that it didn’t need to. Can you imagine how much more it would have been if you’d hit the water intake pipe (artery) instead?
I know what you’re thinking. “But in movies—!!” And I know. But here’s the thing: Hollywood? It’s a bouquet of lies. I’m sorry. I really am.
In fact, even that distinctly bullet-shaped thing you usually see pulled out of people in movies may not always be true. Many times the bullet mushrooms out or becomes malformed. Depending on what that bullet ran into (like bone) it might have even broken into a dozen pieces. Try digging those out of your protagonist!
Now sometimes, but not always, doctors WILL remove the bullet (or fragments of bullet). For example, if they’ve already got the patient in surgery, and AFTER they’ve already repaired any veins, arteries, and organs to the best of their ability. Or if the patient doesn’t need surgery (if it didn’t hit anything major and is just lodged in the muscle or fat) but doctors notice that the bullet or fragment is likely to cause damage if left inside the patient.
More often than not, however, the bullet isn’t doing anything actively damaging while inside the patient, or the removal of the bullet would be more dangerous than leaving it where it is. This is why most bullets don’t get removed at all.
This is true if your characters are at a hospital, but ESPECIALLY if this is a field job. If trained physicians with all the tools at their disposal, blood transfusions, and a sterile environment most likely won’t take the bullet out, then Dave McSide-Character should DEFINITELY not be sticking his filthy, 5-straight-chapters-of-parkour fingers or his I-just-stabbed-a-guy-but-I-wiped-the-blood-off-on-my-pants knife inside the protagonist to fish around for some bullet that isn’t even causing harm. The recommended way to deal with a gunshot wound in the field? Pack it with gauze (or yes, even a filthy we’ve-been-on-the-run-for-two-weeks-in-the-same-clothes t-shirt if that’s all you have. Wound infection is a different post) and keep constant pressure on it.
Remember: stopping the leak in the sink is the most important thing. Not rummaging around in the cabinet for the bullet. Taking it out does literally nothing.
Two perfectly realistic reasons why you might have a character take the bullet out:
Now, sometimes, depending on the characters or the world you’re writing in, this might be different. In some instances, you might want to write the lead-scavenger-hunt scene in!
The first reason is if they just don’t know
And that’s really important when writing realistically. Not everyone is a professional in emergency wound care. Most people get all their knowledge of emergency medicine from Grey’s Anatomy and House M.D.
If your character has any medical training? Probably don’t do it
If your character has any military or police training? Some know, some don’t, so writing it either way is believable. It’s a toss-up, but they DO have more experience with gunshot wounds (either personally, witnessed, or in training videos and word of mouth)
If your character is a 17-year-old art student who saw blood for the very first time two chapters ago? Well now that character might just try digging for the bullet
And hey, maybe they’re like “I’m gonna get the bullet out!” but another character (the one who was shot, another character in the room, maybe even a 911 operator) steps in and says “No, no, no! Just put pressure on it!”
But regardless, injured characters in movies are always suddenly on the mend after the bullet is taken out. The vitals start to rise, they aren’t gasping for breath, their hand closes firmly around the love-interest’s hand, etc. And this doesn’t happen. Regardless of what your characterdoes, the rules of biology are still in play.
In the end, though, that bullet’s just minding its own business in there. The #1 priority is fixing the damage it caused on the way in.
The second reason is if the bullet is special
This is more for the SciFi/Fantasy writers.
If your character is a werewolf and was just shot by a silver bullet which is stopping their healing process and is slowly killing them? Yeah, take it out
If the bullet is actually some sort of tiny robot designed to burrow into their organs one by one? Yeah, take it out.
If the bullet had a spell or curse placed on it? Yeah, take it out.
If they need to get transported up to the med bay, but the bullet would cause some kind of issue with the transporters? Yeah, take it out.
But in all of these examples, the bullet has to be inherently dangerous. For normal humans with normal bullets, its just a hunk of lead.
Hope this helped some of you action writers out there!
Good luck and good writing!
Disclaimer: In the event that you or someone you know has been shot, the best thing to do for them is call for an ambulance and follow the instructions provided by the operator. This post is intended to give accurate writing advice to authors and script writers, but I am not a medical professional. While I do believe that the research that I’ve done on this topic is factually accurate, it should not be taken as actual medical advice.
