The script will inform the actor and the audience why two characters want to kill each other. However, even with the clearest scenes, as peaceful people it can be difficult to emotionally understand a fight to the death. So as a performer, how do we interpret and justify the stakes of a fight scene with deadly weapons?
The Christian concept of the 7 Deadly Sins (not actually in the Bible) was meant to warn adherents away from nasty behaviour. We can reinterpret this list as "7 sins that can lead to deadly conflict"
If your goal is to write scenes with exciting fights or an action movie, consider the iconic 7 deadly sins as justifiable reasons for a murderous rage.
Why Justify?
Audiences need to understand a character's motivation to fight or kill. Two soldiers on opposing sides of a battlefield are not interesting to watch, and we have no reason to cheer or feel pity. But if one of them killed the wife of the other, we root for justice to be served... unless the wife was a spy and had previously set fire to an orphanage, in which case, we'll cheer for our hero to finish off the husband as well.
In other words, audiences need to see a personal justification for murderous intent. A robotic killer is horrifying to us, and they are the villains of so many serial-killer films.
So if you want to play a cold-hearted and efficient killing machine, then play a videogame because no audience will cheer for your victory in the name of psychopaths. Or admit that you want to play a monster and expect the hero to kill you in the end.
Deadly Sins
If you're playing the villain, commit to one or more of these sins. If you are the hero, you might be motivated by a sin, but more often you'll be preventing the monster from murdering more people.
Envy: The target has something the attacker wants, but will not negotiate, so the attacker resorts to violence.
Wrath: The target is evil or has done something (murder, etc) that the attacker must destroy him. This includes all revenge plots.
Avarice: The attacker is a bounty hunter, mercenary, assassin or otherwise will gain financially if the target is killed or captured.
Pride: The attacker believes that the target must beg or be brought low through a beating. Or, the attacker's identity is threatened by the target's existence (nationalism, racism, homophobia, etc)
Gluttony: Addiction to hurting people? Drugs causing violence? Cannibalism? This one is tough to define as a cause of violence, but remember that it's uncontrollable appetite that defines gluttony, not just eating.
Sloth: Like gluttony, laziness is not an obvious reason to start a fight. Kings and other authority figures send others to fight and die for them, so that's relevant; however, that's often better attributed or justified with greed or pride. You may be able to find other ways in which it is easier to do violence than to solve problems, so the lazy route is to kill. From this viewpoint, torture or "enhanced interrogation" is an example.
Lust: Barriers to a strong desire (non-consent being a barrier to sexual lust, leading to rape). There is also such a thing as blood-lust and sadism/masochism.
Lies
The 7 Deadly Sins do not appear as a list in the Bible, and the enumeration of sins in several of the books in the Bible often includes “bearing false witness”.
On a recent episode of the Scriptnotes podcast, Craig Mazin talked about the three forms of lying that create conflict in drama, and how they reflect real life.
1. Self: The struggles of a character often involve coming to terms with a lie the character believes about himself. We all play roles, and feel like an impostor sometimes.
2. Deceiving others to achieve a goal: Lies told to other characters may be obvious to the audience, or the audience may be just as misled as the characters in the story until it is revealed later in the script.
2a. Selfish: The character lies in order to protect themselves or profit.
2b. Generous: The character lies in order to protect someone else or to achieve a greater good that would be prevented if the truth of the plan were known.
3. Pathological: What Craig calls chaotic-pathological, the character never tells the truth and loves the chaos they create by changing their story. What does the pathological liar want? Trouble.
Although your character may be motivated by one of the 7 deadly sins toward a fight scene, it is important to keep lies in the conflict. Not only is the revelation of a lie a type of betrayal and a cause of anger; most people understand that the sins are not acceptable to talk about, so they’ll disguise their envy, tone down their lust, and save their wrath for another day… until they are pushed too far.
The Conflict Formula
No one flies into a murderous rage for no reason. Find the deadly conflict in serious transgressions, and remember that your character wants to hide it, perhaps even deny it to themselves.
Audiences love to watch liars and want the sins of villains to justify our action scenes.
Stakes are higher with a time limit, so our formula might be:
(SIN + LIE) x DEADLINE = MURDER
Realism or Idealism
This talk of justifications for the audience makes the story not only clear, but also plays into their sense that the universe has order. The good are justified in killing the evil, and the evil are punished with death.
If you want your audience to be left in a confused chaos and the ambiguity of real life, then you have two choices:
- Invert the winner. The clearly good character dies, the evil character gets away with it.
- Don't justify the murderer, leave them without a reason.
Actor Training in September
Our next Fight Directors Canada certification course will begin in September 2014. Stay tuned for details, and start planning to spend 3 hours a day, 3 days per week, on creating emotionally authentic stage combat.
Head of Stage Combat at Academie Duello and certified Instructor with Fight Directors Canada. Head of Bartitsu at Academie Duello, the longest continuously running Bartitsu program in the world. Read more from David McCormick.