10 Tips for Writing Epic Battle Scenes

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When I first started writing stories, I was obsessed with battle scenes. I would read about epic spectacles and think to myself “yeah, I want to write stories like THAT!”

I quickly realized that writing battle scenes is far easier said than done, though. After all, how do you capture the chaos of a fight without bogging down the story with unnecessary details? It’s one of those things that I’ve struggled with over the years.

So, let’s talk about it! I dove into the trenches of the internet so I could deliver you the best article on writing battle scenes ever conceived! Did I succeed? You’ll just have to read on to find out.

10 Tips for Writing High-Stakes Battle Scenes

A great battle scene gets the heart racing. It sets the stage for something truly monumental that will have a ripple effect on the rest of the story. In a lot of ways, battle scenes are self-contained stories with their own exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

They should take the reader on a journey and leave them with their eyes wide and their heart racing by the end. If the reader needs to take a break to get some water when they’re done reading your battle scene, then you did it right.

If you agree, then here are ten tips on how to create battle scenes that do just that:

1) Remember, It’s Not a Movie

Image: Andrej Lisakov via Unsplash+

If you’re like me, you have a mental catalog of fight scenes or battle scenes from movies that you’ve enjoyed over the years. There are so many, and plenty of them do an incredible job of capturing the spectacle and chaos of warfare, but that’s just it: they’re all about spectacle.

Movies and TV shows are a visual medium, so it makes sense that they would lean into the spectacle of it all, but this is not where prose and writing shines. In fact, the more you focus on details in your battle scenes, the more you’ll slow down the pacing of the fight.

While film and TV are good at providing visual details, prose has the benefit of being able to deliver other types of information quickly. For example, depending on your POV, you can give the reader a direct line to the inner thoughts of the character.

So, don’t fall into the trap of trying to create a Hollywood-style cinematic spectacle on the page. All you’ll end up doing is feeding the reader way too much visual information, which will kill the excitement and pacing.

2) Build Anticipation

Part of what makes battles so exciting are the events leading up to them. There should be tension, conflict, and concern in the reader’s mind as they turn the page to the day of the big event. You should consider battle scenes a pivotal moment in your character’s journey.

Everything they do should be leading towards this moment. Are they nervous about the upcoming fight? Are they eager to ride into battle? Or, will they try anything they can to avoid conflict?

Giving us a look into the character’s minds prior to the conflict or showing the general state of the world around them can build anticipation as well. Even if it’s a small-scale battle or a duel, you’ll want to build that tension and anticipation leading up to the fight itself.

3) Set the Scene

Image: Ahmed via Unsplash+

Before all hell breaks loose, take a moment to set the scene for your reader. What’s the weather like? What kind of terrain are they fighting on? What is the size and scope of the opposing side?

And, most of all, what is the atmosphere like in the moments before the fighting starts? Are the fighters all silent? Does the general give a rousing speech before they charge toward victory? Use this moment as another opportunity to further build anticipation and tension.

All of these things help establish the mood and atmosphere, which will become the foundation for the battle itself. This ultimately means you’ll have less to worry about when you’re in the thick of it, since you already set the foundation prior to the conflict.

4) Focus on the Characters

Credit for this tip goes to

Richard Pack

, who writes exceptional fiction here on Substack and has also written books for AudioMazes. I was on a writing group call with Richard the other week and I asked him for his input on this topic. Here’s what he had to say:

Focus on how the conflicts between characters manifest in the fight. Think about what they’ve done to get to this point. If you’re doing a fight scene where it’s 1-vs-1, you should focus on their motivations and their decisions that they make in the moment.

This is great advice. Fight scenes should always be used as an opportunity to improve characterization. Ask yourself these questions as you write:

• Why does the character make certain choices during the fight?

• How do these choices reinforce their character development?

• How do their choices impact their goals?

• Is this character a trained fighter or are they prone to making mistakes?

Thinking about these questions can give you an idea of how characters will behave, and it will allow you to discover opportunities to further develop them and showcase their motivations. It can even be a chance to illustrate how much progress they’ve made thus far in the story.

5) Keep The Story Moving Forward

Image: Jamie Spaniol via Unsplash

You never want a fight scene or a battle scene to exist solely for the purpose of throwing some action into the story. It should be moving the plot forward. This is where you have to find a balance between realism and storytelling.

Writing a realistic fight scene that discusses specific actions step-by-step may be accurate and realistic, but it doesn’t make for a very fun read. Even in films, fight scenes are all about the spectacle. They quickly jump from one visual to the next.

Allow your reader to construct the finer pieces of the scene together in their mind. Feed them the most important details, allow them to glimpse the characters’ thought processes and decision-making, but keep it moving.

Your goal once you enter a fight scene should be to get out again.

Another podcast I listen to for writers once said that your goal when you start a fight scene should be to get out again. The reason for this is because once you enter a fight scene, the pacing begins to slow down until you’re out of it again.

So get into the scene, leverage the momentum, keep your sentences short, and keep your focus tight on moving the story forward while also revealing more about the characters and their mindsets.

6) Scare Your Readers

One of the biggest appeals when it comes to battle scenes is the thrill of not knowing whether or not your favorite character will survive. It’s that combination of danger and fear that makes them thrilling.

So, when you get into a battle scene, my advice here is to let your character or characters get wounded. Show the reader that they aren’t riding into battle with a full suit of plot armor. Remind them that there are real stakes to this fight.

Now, you as the writer will secretly know whether or not they’ll be fine but lean into the fact that your reader doesn’t. Make them fear for the life of this character they’ve come to know and love. By doing that, you’ll get them emotionally invested in the scene, which is precisely the point.

And, of course, you don’t have to kill your character, but you could leave them with scars. This can be physical or mental, and it’s something that they could carry for the rest of the story as a reminder of what they’ve been through.

7) Keep Dialogue to a Minimum

Image: Andrej Lisakov via Unsplash

To be clear, when I say this, I mean dialogue during the fighting. I am all for a rousing speech to get everyone prepared for an epic battle. In fact, I recommend it! Once the fighting gets started though, you’ll want to avoid too much talking.

A battle is the last place to strike up a conversation. You can have characters shout commands or quick remarks to one another, but that’s about as far as I would go. Now, that being said, a great piece of advice I saw in this Reddit thread about writing battle scenes, was a comment describing the style of Bernard Cornwell.

In essence, his fight scenes are structured like a conversation. When someone attacks, that’s a sentence, and the other side perceives and responds in kind. This will look different based on the skill of the fighters, but I like the concept that the battle itself plays out like a conversation with a sort of back-and-forth rhythm.

8) Leverage all Five Senses

The best fight scenes in storytelling are rooted in the present. The characters aren’t thinking about what they did yesterday, or what they might do tomorrow. They are locked into the moment, and the best way to illustrate this is to describe what’s happening around them using all five senses.

By doing this, you’ll ground the reader in the present, which will make every second that passes feel more intense. Now, there’s a balance here to ensure you don’t drag down the pacing.

Describing things using the five senses is great for imagery, but you must also keep your descriptions relevant to the battle at hand.

So, we don’t need a breakdown of every little detail, but we do need details like how the weapon feels in the character’s hands or the sounds surrounding the characters. You could even describe the way blood tastes in their mouth if they get hit. Things like that.

This will of course change based on whether you’re doing a large-scale battle or a 1-v-1 type of fight, but in either case, leveraging all five senses will create a sense of place and help ground the reader.

9) Make it Feel Chaotic

Battles are not organized. They are chaotic, uncertain, and constantly changing. Lean into this with your scenes. Your sentences should be short. Your character’s thoughts should be erratic. After all, they’re fighting for their life.

Mention sounds, describe what’s happening before their eyes. Take us into their thought process as they decide what to do and where to go. Are they calm and collected, or are they panicking?

The events around them should be chaotic, but their minds can be chaotic as well. It all depends on the character and their training.

You can also illustrate chaos in the aftermath of the battle. Once the dust settles, you could spend time describing the gruesome destruction left in the wake of all the fighting.

In this case, the destruction is a direct result of all the chaos the reader was just hearing about. It’s a powerful way to illustrate the true cost of what transpired over the course of your battle scene. The cost of chaos, as it were.

10) Be Aggressive with Your Edits

Image: The Battle of Grunwald. (Europeana via Unsplash)

All of these tips combine to form the basis for a great battle scene, but at the end of the day the pacing is what’s most important. That’s why, for our final tip, I suggest that you show up to edit your battle scenes with a sword or axe in hand.

Be relentless with how you cut things. Reduce the scene down to its most important elements. Cut any and all fluff like it’s an enemy in your line of sight. Delete extra words or flowery language that sounded good in the moment but ultimately slows down the scene.

If need be, reduce the number of characters or POVs in the fight to tighten the pacing. This may not always be doable, but it’s something to consider so you don’t spend too long in the midst of the battle itself.

When you’re done, the entire scene should be streamlined and finely tuned for perfect pacing.

My Fellow Writers, We Ride at Dawn!

With these ten tips, hopefully you feel better equipped to write some amazing and epic battle scenes into your current projects or future works. I’ve always wanted to hone this aspect of my craft, which is why I decided to take on this article.

Did I miss anything? Do you have any tips you would like to share about writing battle scenes? Let us discuss tactics and strategy in the comments!

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