PACKING THE PUNCH

Underneath the gloves of a fighter are yards of cloth wrap. The wrap tightly binds the bones of the hands together to protect them from the impact of a punch. If wrapped incorrectly, the bones of the hands are vulnerable to breaks. More likely than not, the break will occur in the bones of the pinkie. And although the pinkie is the smallest of the fingers, a fracture in it compromises the whole hand and can take even a heavyweight out of a bout.

Fight scenes are the pinkies in the hands of our stories. They are a small part of a much greater whole. But when the entire story is not tight, if even the smallest part is loose, we compromise the ability of the work to pack a literary punch.

And that, good fight writer, is why fight scenes matter. You give your work the best you’ve got because your reader deserves the best you have. Truly, our wants as writers are not all that different than those of fighters. Sure, we all want a technical fight, hard fought and decisively won. But what both writers and fighters want just as badly as a winning scene is for the crowd