Due to swords being so common in fantasy, many people think they’re very easy to use in battle. At least in a fictional sense. Swing, stab, parry, stab, slash, stabbity stab, and the cycle continues. You can be very simplistic with your sword fights in those aren’t one of the highlights of the story. If you want to put more meat on the action bones then you’ll have to consider more aspects of swordplay.
Most moves in a swordfight are designed to create an opening. Unless the opponent is severely outmatched or unaware of the danger, a full on slash or stab will probably get blocked. This means you need to consider feints (fake attacks), parrying (blocking), and various other moves that are designed to disrupt an opponent’s defense. The actual strikes where blood is drawn will be fewer, especially any that cause major damage.
Injuries that don’t kill will force a swordsman to adjust. They can’t keep moving at their original speed if they have wounds. The pain slows them down immediately and, if things progress, the blood loss causes weakness. This is why you have to remember injuries and dole them out sparingly unless you have a reason why the characters can keep going at top speed while wounded. Location is important here too because the sword arm being slashed will have a greater impact than the non-sword arm.
The style of fighting must match the physical skills of the combatant. It’s not a one style fits all. A fast character will be better suited to use quick strikes and dodging instead of heavy blows and parrying. They would be building up speed and trying to throw their opponent off-balance. In contrast, strong characters will try to overpower with strong blows and minimal footwork. They’d be more likely to act as a wall and not try to out maneuver an enemy.
Swords need maintenance just like any other piece of gear. If you have a character who doesn’t take care of their blades then you have to consider that they will break in a battle. Those nicks and scratches make for a subpar blade as well as any spots where it could be too dull to cut skin. All you need to fix this is a few scenes where the swordsman is talking while sharpening or mending their weapons. Can even it do it once and people will assume it’s always being done.
Speaking of footwork, you don’t have to make it flashy. There doesn’t need to be flips and spins, which would normally get you stabbed at the point where you aren’t looking at your opponent. These are fun since it’s a fantasy setting, but we go back to the moves having to fit the character. For example, Luke Callindor is a dual-wielding swordsman who uses speed and agility to create openings. Him flipping around makes sense as well as him getting hit a lot. Delvin Cunningham is a traditional sword and shield warrior, so he’s not going to be in the air every often. It’s more parrying and countering with him, which is why he gets hit less than Luke.
It’s not always the pointy end going into the other man. Sometimes it’s the sharp part going through the other man. Slashing is a thing, especially against someone with thin or no armor. Even against an armored opponent, a slash has force and can knock that person to the side enough to create an opening. So, a slash isn’t always done when there’s a clear shot.
It really isn’t that easy to chop a head off. In fact, it requires the opponent to be unable to strike back. Think of swinging a baseball bat, but you’re aiming at something higher and meatier than a baseball. You have to get through bone too and it’s usually not from the back like an executioner with an axe. You’re typically come from the side or the front with no gravity to help either. So, this is a move that should be unleashed carefully . . . or not because it is flashy.
So, did you know swords are common in fantasy? I know, totally surprising. You’d think it has something to do with most fantasy stories taking place in a pre-firearm age. So, swords would be the most logic weapon to have in your story. Guess it also has to do with tradition and the weapon being a trope that transcends cliché.
Funny thing is that you can even find swords in a story that takes place in our world or futuristic ones. They might be used by a secondary character or be altered to fit the setting such as those laser slashing thingies made popular by that movie series. Really shows that even when bullets and lasers are flying, authors just can’t resist writing a slashing or stabbing scene. Why is that?
I think it can come down to a few reasons:
Action scenes in books can be drawn out more and possess more moves when you have melee weapons. Range weapons are all about aiming and hitting first, so they can typically be rather slow. At least if you’re going for realism. People also assume a bullet kills or severely cripples a person, so you can’t have the characters take multiple shots. Not parrying either. All of this can be done with swords and other melee weapons because it’s close range.
There’s an odd flashiness that fantasy readers still find interesting when it comes to swords. The whirling blade that they picture in their mind can really set a scene and show the full speed of the action. Characters tend to do flourishes and acrobatics in sword fights as well. It’s almost like a violent ballet.
Scenes where a character is dying from being stabbed are fun to write in a macabre sort of way. Since they’re close to each other, a conversation can be had as long as they can still talk. Beheading clearly stops this. You also get more of a tussle as the injured can scramble out of desperation and become more erratic in the fight. This is because we expect them to be functional as long as the head is attached and the heart has not been pierced. There’s an extension of life that goes along with the weapon.
I remember reading once that people are more scared of getting stabbed than getting shot. Part of it is that we think a bullet will hit us and we die instantly. That or it will go through then we can get patched up. Swords and knives have a greater sense of invasiveness for some reason. They’re seen as a slow demise and they stay in there to cause more damage with every movement. Another part could be that those people think of how you shouldn’t take a knife out or you’ll bleed to death, which isn’t a bullet warning.
Those are all my guesses though. So, take them with a grain of salt. Swords are a staple of fantasy and I’m sure they always will be. People have written fantasy stories without swords, which is fine. There’s no rule against that. Yet, I’ve met many readers who feel like something is missing without one character wielding a medieval weapon at some point. There really is something to the genre when it comes to swords, which is another reason why it’s hard to go into depth. They’re like guns being in a Western or kissing being in a Romance. You can skip those things if you want, but people kind of expect them to be there.
I do find these animals fascinating. They’re so slow that they have microbiomes living in their fur. Their metabolism is so slow that they take days to digest food other animals can breakdown in hours. They stay in the trees and only come down once a week to go the bathroom.
Sloths are pretty cool when you look beyond them simply being slow.
Sloths fall into two categories, which are two-toed sloths (2 species) and three-toed sloths (4 species). The pygmy three-toed sloth is considered critically endangered and the maned sloth is considered vulnerable. There biggest threats are:
Deforestation, which destroys their environment. Sloths live in thick canopies where they can hide from predators. On the ground, they’re too slow to escape snakes and jaguars. If they are on branches, but are exposed than large birds of prey can snag them.
Poaching because . . . humans suck.
For more information, CLICK HERE! Now the pictures starting with the three-toed sloths
Brown-Throated Sloth (Most Common)
Pale-Throated Three-Toed Sloth (Commonly mistaken for Brown-Throated Sloth)
Maned Three-Toed Sloth (Vulnerable)
Pygmy Three-Toed Sloth (Critically Endangered)
Now for the two-toed:
Linnaeus’s Two-Toed Sloth
Hoffman’s Two-Toed Sloth
Can’t have an animal post without some cute videos:
A note on this last one. I picked it because there are a lot of videos where people help sloths cross the street. Many end with the sloth ‘waving a thank you’. I wondered about this and found an answer in the comments of this video. Raising its arm is a defensive posture. Sloths are just so slow that it resembles a wave when it’s really their version of putting up their dukes.
I don’t even want to see what I had planned for weekly goals. Partially because I can’t fix that post, which is very narrow. This is apparently what happens when I use the blocks or whatever WordPress forced upon us. I apologize for the ugliness and wish I could find a way to fix it, but there’s no point now. A week has past . . . passed?
Now, Sunday is where things started to go sideways. I woke up feeling terrible to the point where I took a home Covid test. Came back negative, but I wanted to be sure. I went to a clinic to get a rapid and that was negative. The problem is that the fatigue, coughing, and chills hit so quickly that the doctor wanted to be very sure. So, I had to take a PCR test, which meant I had to stay home from work for 3 days until the results came back. Those were negative, by the way. The culprit ended up being:
Common cold
Severe pollen allergies (Thanks, DC)
Exhaustion (Thanks again, DC)
Before anyone congratulates me on getting 3 more days of spring break, I wasn’t happy about this. Didn’t even try to work on the Darwin & the Halfling Hunt outline because of my mood. I did feel out of it for Monday and half of Tuesday, but I knew I just wanted to be back at work. Sure, I was there when the guy came to replace my car’s windshield, which cracked right before the trip. I made progress on ‘Pirate Warriors 3’ and the latest jigsaw puzzle. Yet, I really wanted to be back at work. I missed being in that Testing Center.
This isn’t to say I did absolutely nothing. All of the September posts are now written and scheduled except for Tuesday. I don’t want to do more Darwin & the Fate Bracelet teasers like July and August. The national holiday thing didn’t do anything. I’m thinking of doing teasers for Do I Need to Use a Dragon? (Fantasy Writing Tips) for at least that month. That’s going to be tough because it’ll be chunks of essays unless I stick to the openers of a few. Only need 4 of them, so this might be where I go since I can’t think of anything else.
Another issue is going to be what I can do to keep myself occupied. It looks like I won’t get to any real writing until Memorial Day weekend. This weekend is slated for doing the outlines for the 2 books I want to write this summer. The next weekend that my son is with his mom has some family events, so I won’t feel comfortable writing during that time, especially since we’re hitting the big testing period. So, what to do?
I was thinking of starting in on the October posts, but that would be the ‘Monster Maker’ and other yearly things. Not sure I’m going to bother since my audience is incredibly small, so I might not be able to cover that. I was thinking of a way to revive the ‘Raven’ stories since there were 4 of them and October has 4 weeks. Each one had 30-31 sections though, so it isn’t like I can cram 4-5 into each day. That would be overkill. Guess an option would be to see if I can get enough for ‘Monster Maker’ and maybe make a poll for Windemere monsters. Though, I remember polls sucking now. Then, I can use one day to touch on each ‘Raven’ story.
I could also start working on November and leave October alone. Really depends on what people think, but I’m not getting a lot of traffic these days. So, I might have to just flip a coin on things. Not that I have any blog topics for November either.
We have Monday off for Eid, so I’ll be doing non-tech stuff with my son. Lego sets and maybe some drawing. We both need to tone down our video game time. Work should be exciting and fun, which leads to a relaxing weekend. Can’t remember exactly what the weekday events are, but each week of May has at least one. This is where a lot of projects come to fruition. Another reason I’m not going to be tackling any major challenges until Memorial Day weekend.
By the way, the last time I did any real writing was August. I haven’t written a new story since then. I’ve edited, outlined, and tinkered, but it’ll be 9 months of no writing by the time I take on another project. This is why I want to try to write 2 over the summer when I have more free time.
Goals of the week:
Outline the next two Darwin books.
Keep working on the LOTR puzzle
Try this Blackened whiskey made by Metallica
Watch more ‘Assassination Classroom’.
Work, parenting, sleeping, and hydrating as usual.
Legos!
Start planning either October or November posts . . . Maybe I shouldn’t try for anything special this October in the first place? Just ‘Monster Maker’?
Oh yeah! Set up the Tuesday posts for September. Can’t forget that.
The more complicated answer is: Yes if certain requirements are met.
Keep in mind that monsters are typically seen as primal and destructive. If they’re marching as a massive group then the reason is usually food, migration, mind control, or they’ve been angered. Many times this is a swarm of a single species, which makes it easier to handle in terms of juggling. One species means every member has the same abilities and habits. There’s no having to choose when picking an enemy for a hero to face in a specific moment. You lose all of this when the army is composed of multiple types of monsters.
The hardest part is figuring out why they’re moving together. Easiest way is to have them be summoned or controlled by a single figure. This means they’re not the ones making the decision and the army is unnatural. You sacrifice the free will of the monsters, so their actions have to be fairly self-destructive and lacking in independent thought. For example, they will not retreat unless the control is broken and any attempts at traps will strain the belief that they’re mindless. It will be a charge forward to destroy whatever is in their path without question. After all, mind control means they’re being made to act against their nature.
Another method could be having these creatures share a goal or having a history of working together. They might be trying to escape a common enemy and have lost all reason other than to run away. Maybe one species is the smart one and the others are riding beasts and pets that depend on them for survival. Think of how often goblins are made to ride wolves, which is classic. Having this type of alliance can make the army scarier for the heroes because there’s unity. Unlike the mind control or a random gathering, it’s harder to break the morale of monsters that are together for a common purpose.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having the monsters be together for no reasons other than heading in that direction. You could have them compelled to march by unknown forces and the heroes happen to be in the path. Doing things this way allows for the battles to be utter mayhem, which is fun to read and a headache to write. You have no real solidarity between the monsters, so they have a high chance of hitting each other when attacking the heroes. They simply don’t care about their traveling companions and some may even see them as food. So, you can gradually drive the battle into a state of anarchy that many would just try to escape. Keep in mind that you can only do this so many times (once per series in my opinion) before it gets old.
So, what do you think of mixing monsters in an army? I know. It’s a rather niche question and one that people don’t really think about. I’m trying here.
Legends of Windemere 