Love and Fight Scenes With Your Characters
How do you make them interesting?
Are you writing a love story? War story? Action story? Sooner or later, you’re going to have to describe that love (or intimacy), fight or battle. I’ve never written a battle scene, as my experience with them doesn’t exist, but I have written fight scenes, and had a little fun with them.
I have not written love (meaning intimacy/love/sexuality) scenes in a book, though I have in plays. I’ve tried to do both love and fight scenes in a way that’s focused on the story and isn’t there just because I think it’s time to have such a scene. But I won’t lie to you. I think love and fight scenes are extremely hard to write.
There are too many of them, for one thing. A lot seem like ones you’ve read a thousand times before. Fight scenes may be easier to change up, but both are about physical connections that tell the same story repeatedly.
So how do you make these scenes interesting? Why would they be interesting if we’ve seen them so often?
First, I’d say both love and fighting are about intimacy. You are getting physically close to another person, your emotions are driving the action and you are likely to leave the encounter differently than when you started it. Yet, there are only so many ways you can describe what’s happening between two (or more) people getting physical with each other. And, of course, it always ends up with the same result.
While there are times I read a love or fight scene and find myself skipping over it because I’m bored, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to find one that interests me. I can list hundreds of boring love scenes, but the ones I liked best have one thing in common: they are not so much about the physical act as about the people living them.
That means yes, the story may be the same, but the way it’s told varies with every storyteller. Who we (or our characters are) determines how we respond to our emotions and how we love (or use) other people. Our personas and experiences and the way we see the world makes whatever we do more interesting.
So how do you write a love or fight scene that gives readers and viewers a more interesting experience? The same way you write everything else — by getting to know your characters.
Of course, this is only my opinion, but I’ve been thinking about it after seeing a few different scenes that nearly put me to sleep, and I knew they were intended to do the opposite. Some featured characters who had trouble with their emotions, but what I kept wishing as I read them was that those reserved characters would show us who they were in their love scenes.
No such luck — but that’s okay. I decided to write about this to see what others find interesting about love and fight scenes, and to see if you agree with me. To make it easier, I thought I would share my favorite love and fight scenes from plays, films, and novels — and try to tell you why I chose them.
Love Scenes
1. Truly, Madly, Deeply (movie) — This sort-of comedic take on a woman losing the love of her life, only to have him return as a ghost who can interact with her physically, is not a very sexy movie. Yet it’s one of my favorite love stories because it gets at how this particular woman deals with grief, loss and finally being able to move on, mixing humor and sorrow perfectly.
2. Fates and Furies (book) — Lauren Goff’s novel is on my list of favorite books about relationships in general — and is a prime example, in my view, of showing us who her characters are through their intimacy.
3. Kill Claudio scene in Much Ado About Nothing (play) — Beatrice has always been my favorite female Shakespeare character (and should be yours too). Her scene with Benedick is the most classic example I can find of two people who were meant to be together and who fight like hell not to fall in love. This scene makes writing intimacy look easy. Of course, you have only to try writing something like it to know it’s not.
4. The English Patient (movie) — The relationship at the center of this movie (and I assume the book by Michael Ondaatje) built up to some supremely erotic moments and earned every one of them by showing us who the characters were through their actions. I didn’t read the book, but Ondaatje is one of my favorite writers, and I am sure he got it right.
5. All the Wasted Time (song) from Parade — The love song between the accused prisoner Leo Frank and his wife Lucille makes me tear up every time I see it; and being a musical, it must hit all the right notes musically as well as verbally. Following the characters’ lead shows us more of who they are in everything they do and say.
Fight Scenes
1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragons (movie) — the characters fighting in this movie show us exactly who they are and what they want in the fight scenes. My favorites are the ones in trees.
2. West Side Story Opening (play and movie) — The music is so delicious, you hardly notice you are celebrating gang members who want to destroy each other. Still, you can thread every moment of this musical from the start of this opening scene.
3. Rocky (movie) — I wasn’t a boxing fan until watching Rocky, but watching the title character’s idealism and kindness gave me a whole new view of this sport — and I understood how and why Rocky loved it.
4. Fight Club (book and movie) — To be honest, it’s been forever since I’ve seen Fight Club and I can’t remember most of it. (Never read the book, either.) I reviewed two clips while writing this and remembered the fights were mesmerizing to me when I watched them. Why? They seemed untethered from civilization, breaking the rules of what we believe and want society to be. Is that good? Not in real life, but living vicariously through the characters in this film, it felt oddly liberating at the time.
5. Mercutio, Tybalt, Romeo scene in Romeo and Juliet (play and movie) — This is my favorite fight scene, because the characters’ actions seem inevitable all the while we are horrified as we watch them unfold. We also have to witness the death of a particularly interesting and beloved character (Mercutio), which sets in motion the tragedy at the end of Shakespeare’s story. If you can see only one fight scene, ever, I think you should see this one to learn how to do it.
Thank you for going along with me as I try to figure out what works best (and what doesn’t) in love and fight scenes. If you agree, disagree, or want to share your own, I hope you will! If you have thoughts after writing your fight or love scenes — please don’t be shy about sharing them.
