Have you ever read a story with tons of physical fighting, and yet you kinda just want to skip over it? Like, yeah…yeah… Dude kicks other dude’s butt… Hero will win… Blah… Blah… Blah…
What did you think was missing (and no looking at the blog’s title to get a clue). Oh, you so looked… Yes, tension was likely missing from the actual fight.
How is that even possible you may ask?
Often writers, especially newbies, believe that conflict=fight=tension. (Don’t worry. That is all the math I’m going to do in this blog post.) This idea is wildly off the mark. Tension can be positive, conflicts can be positive, but fights… Not so much.