Things that People Forget About When Writing Sword Fights

You don’t have to dodge by a foot. You only have to dodge by an inch.
Not all swords are made the same way. You wouldn’t fight with a katana the same way you would fight with a broadsword.
You don’t need to aim for the heart or the head. Get the vein in wrist, and you could incapacitate that hand.
Small cuts matter. If you’re cut up enough, you’re going to start suffering from blood loss, and that’ll put you at a disadvantage.
The blade isn’t the only thing that matters. There isn’t some set of rules in sword fighting where you can only stick the stabby end into the other person. Hit them in the head with the hilt, and they’ll feel it.
If there are multiple attackers, you want to incapacitate or kill each one as quickly as possible. Endurance matters, especially when you’re not only swinging/stabbing/aiming something that is 2-5 lbs (ceremonial ones were a lot heavier, but wouldn’t be generally fought with) but also taking/blocking heavy blows from at least one opponent.

the-haiku-bot

You don’t have to dodge

by a foot. You only have

to dodge by an inch.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

english-history-trip

That final haiku actually makes for a pretty good maxim!

#writing #writing advice #good writing advice #fighting #fight scenes #swords #katana #good commentary #writing guide #omegamon #this #you dont have to dodge by a foot #you only need an inch #words to live by #:D #(Source : I Too Have RPed A Number of Fight Scenes in the Past and Yes All This Is CORRECT)#(Shoutout to my character who nearly survived an entire unwilling fight to the PsuedodeathTM* among a large group except I had to)#(Leave to take Japanese class at the last minute* and then the game ended abruptly while I was gone due to maxed out Dreamwidth comments)#(Ive since reused the inspiration from that to create for Repeatverse too lmaoooo)#({*That was literally like a year before Tri even aired})#not dgmn #dgmn relevant #(Theres a number of other Digimon that use swords canonically + in the TCG too but Cant Tag Everyone)#({*Also they were mostly trying to Evade + Survive but some other characters would pop up+confront&then FUN FIGHT SCENES})#(It was really fun back then with that style of RP because I could actually play out such a fight scene in full which is RARE to find in RP #(And my character was on Super High AlertTM like this all the time so once a character got up to them all of a sudden its like 'N O')#({They expected my character to be docile and meek and the Exceedingly Kind person they are in canon to near all but my character was Like}#not going to die here #(Lets Just Say It Was Extremely Amusing To Play Such Scenes)#({*&then almost all of the time my character didnt even land the final blow the others got but DID escape successfully in ways like this})