Writing Combat Scenes That Feel Real

The best fight scene I ever wrote has almost nothing to do with fighting.

There's a moment in The Exile's Return where Cassian invokes the Challenge Right against Lucian. It's the culmination of the entire book—the exiled prince confronting the brother who murdered witnesses, burned a cathedral, and conspired for the throne. The court holds its breath. Steel rings.

And the thing that makes the scene work isn't the choreography. It's that Cassian fights knowing he'll spare Lucian at the end—and Lucian fights knowing his brother's mercy is the worst outcome possible.

That's what I mean when I talk about combat scenes that feel real. Not realistic in the technical sense (though I care about that too), but real in the emotional sense. A fight that matters. A fight that changes people.

Today I want to talk about how I approach action writing—the philosophy, the technique, and the specific traditions of Valdrath that make combat in this world unlike anything else I've read in fantasy.

The First Rule: Every Fight Is a Character Scene

Here's my controversial take: most fantasy combat is boring.

Not because it's poorly written—there are brilliant action writers in the genre. It's boring because too much of it is decorative. It exists to prove the protagonist is skilled, to raise stakes through physical danger, or to deliver the visceral satisfaction of violence. These are fine goals, but they're not enough.

My rule is simple: if you can remove the fight scene and the characters are the same people afterward, cut it.

Every significant combat scene in The Warrior Prince Saga is a turning point—not in the plot (though it usually is that too), but in the characters' understanding of themselves. When Cassian fights, he's not just trading blows. He's negotiating with his own guilt, his own capacity for violence, his own relationship to the Code that trained him to kill and then punished him for doing it.

The Challenge Right duel in Book 1 works because we know three things going in: Cassian is the better fighter, Cassian has decided to spare his brother, and that mercy will define everything that follows. The tension isn't “who will win?” It's “what will winning cost?”

The Shirtless Trial: Vulnerability as Spectacle

One of the most distinctive elements of Valdrath's culture is the shirtless trial tradition. When a warrior faces formal combat—whether it's the Challenge Right, the Seven's Trial, or other ritual duels—they fight bare-chested. No armor. No protection.

Readers often ask where this came from, and the answer has layers.

On the surface, it's a worldbuilding choice rooted in Valdrath's Warrior Code. The Code valorizes strength and courage above all else. Fighting shirtless is the ultimate declaration: I am so confident in my skill that I need no protection. My body is my armor. It's bravado codified into law.

But underneath that surface reading is something darker, which the series gradually reveals. The shirtless tradition isn't really about courage. It's about exposure. When you fight without armor, every scar is visible. Every wound is public. The shirtless trial forces warriors to display their damage—to make their history of violence legible on their skin.

For Cassian, whose seven scars map his entire journey from training yard to final duel, fighting shirtless means fighting with his story written on his body. The court doesn't just see a warrior. They see the boy who was scarred in training, the soldier wounded at the Crimson Shores, the prince who cut his own hand after the Seven Farmers Incident, the man burned rescuing people from a cathedral fire.

This is what I mean by combat as character. The shirtless tradition transforms every fight into autobiography.

The Seven's Trial: Ritual Combat as Narrative Engine

The Seven's Trial—where a challenged warrior must fight seven opponents in succession, bare-chested, without rest—is the centerpiece of The Warrior Prince Saga's combat system. It appears in different forms across the series, and each iteration carries different weight.

The trial's structure gave me something invaluable as a writer: pacing within a single scene. Seven bouts means seven distinct micro-narratives, each with its own rhythm. The first opponent tests technique. The middle bouts test endurance. The final opponents face a warrior who is exhausted, bleeding, and running on something deeper than skill.

That progression—from technical precision to raw will—mirrors the series' larger arc. Cassian begins the saga relying on his training, his discipline, his carefully maintained control. By the end, he's fighting on something more primal: conviction, love, desperation. The Seven's Trial literalizes that transformation in the space of a single scene.

But the trial also serves a thematic purpose. Seven opponents for a kingdom built on a Code that demands dominance. Seven fights for a man who killed seven farmers. The number isn't coincidental. Every time Cassian faces the Seven's Trial, he's re-enacting his original sin—and trying to transform it from tragedy into meaning.

The Choreography Problem: Less Is More

When I draft a combat scene, I write it twice. The first draft is long, detailed, technically specific. I research historical swordsmanship—the mechanics of longsword combat, the physics of grappling, the way fatigue degrades technique over the course of a prolonged fight. I want to understand exactly what's happening in three-dimensional space.

Then I throw most of it away.

Here's what I've learned: technical accuracy and narrative effectiveness are often at odds. A historically accurate description of a bind-and-wind technique is fascinating in a HEMA manual. In a novel, it stops the reader cold. The eye glazes. The emotional momentum dies.

My second draft keeps maybe thirty percent of the choreography and replaces the rest with interiority. What is Cassian thinking as he parries? What does he feel when his blade draws blood? What memory surfaces when he takes a wound in the same place as an old scar?

The reader doesn't need to know the exact angle of the sword. They need to know the exact weight of the moment.

I use a few specific techniques to maintain the feeling of real combat without drowning in detail:

Sensory specificity over technical precision. Instead of “he executed a hanging guard and transitioned to an overhead strike,” I write “the leather grip bit into his palm, sweat-slick, and the blade came down with the full weight of twelve years of exile behind it.” Same action. Completely different experience.

Pacing through sentence structure. Short sentences for fast exchanges. Longer, breathless sentences for grappling and holds. Fragments for moments of shock. The prose rhythm should feel like the fight.

Strategic silence. The most powerful moment in a fight scene is often the pause—the breath between exchanges where both fighters know something has shifted. These silences carry more tension than any clash of steel.

The Violence Question: When Restraint Matters More

Fantasy has a complicated relationship with violence. The genre's roots in epic and myth mean that combat is often celebrated—the hero's skill, the glory of battle, the triumph of good over evil through superior swordsmanship.

I'm suspicious of that celebration.

In The Warrior Prince Saga, the most significant combat moments are defined by restraint, not by killing. Cassian's decision to spare Lucian in Book 1 is more dramatic than any death blow. His refusal to fight, in certain scenes, carries more weight than his victories.

This is deliberate. I wanted to write a series where the most powerful warrior in the kingdom gradually discovers that his power is least meaningful when expressed as violence. Cassian can beat anyone in single combat. That ability matters less and less as the series progresses—not because the fights diminish, but because what he's fighting for changes.

By The Forging of Kings, Cassian's most important scene isn't a duel at all. It's a speech to the Great Council about his scars—about what they cost, what they taught him, and what true strength looks like in a kingdom that has confused violence with virtue for centuries.

That scene is, in its own way, the ultimate combat scene. Just fought with words instead of steel.

Writing Action: Practical Advice

For writers who want to improve their combat scenes, here's what I've learned across eight books:

Start with the emotional stakes, not the physical setup. Before you choreograph a single blow, know what each fighter stands to lose emotionally. The reader will follow the feelings even if they can't visualize the footwork.

End fights before they get boring. A common mistake is letting combat scenes run until they reach a natural conclusion. Most fights should end abruptly—interrupted, cut short, decided by a single decisive moment. Brevity is tension.

Let injuries matter. In too much fantasy, characters sustain grievous wounds and fight on with no consequences. Real combat is shaped by pain and fatigue. A wound in chapter five should still hurt in chapter ten.

Use combat to reveal, not just resolve. The best fight scene doesn't just determine who wins. It shows us something about the fighters that we couldn't have learned any other way.

The sword is never just a sword. The scar is never just a scar. And the fight is never just a fight.

Experience the shirtless trial tradition, the Seven's Trial, and combat scenes that are really about the soul of a broken prince. The Exile's Return is where it all begins.

→ Read The Exile's Return

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