Writing Tournament Arcs!

Tournament arcs can be really great or really bad. Rarely is there an in between. Here we’re gonna talk to you about how to do them properly and what to avoid!

Elements of a Tournament

Tournaments are simply a competition. Just alike any sport. A series of matches of different opponents to see who comes out on top. So you have several basic things needed to make it compelling.

1.Contestants

The ones you’ll be following from start to finish. Usually several people in relation to the protagonist and those who expect to compete against each other at some point. But it’s also important to not have too much cannon fodder. There needs to be contests not in the main cast that could realistically do some damage to the main casts chances of advancing.

2.A prize

A lot of times this isn’t the main point of the competition. Sometimes the prize doesn’t even matter. The personal conflict between contestants and they’re reasoning as to WHY they want to win the prize so badly is what makes it good. The prize isn’t what makes the tournament interesting. It what you have to do to get the prize.

3.Stakes

These are different than free for all or death turnouments, because that’s when the motivations all start to blur and become the same. High stakes can be good when done right, but that doesn’t mean if peoples lives are at stake that it’ll automatically make it interesting. (Trust me, it can be boring.) Because no one wants to die obviously. But the more personal you make the stakes to each individual character instead of trying to give a bunch of people the same motivation across the board, the better. That’s not to say tournaments where people can die is boring, just that it’s should be properly set up. If it’s optional to kill opponents, then it could show what the characters mindsets are like after each battle if they choose to finish off their opponent or let them walk away. (You can even show this with the audience by having them boo if a winner decides to let their opponent go. They paid to see blood gosh darn it!)

Now there can also be pre-tournament events. Small competitions that happen before the main one, like preliminaries. These can also help the stakes after seeing how hard it is to get INTO the competition in the first place let alone try to win it. (You can introduce people and give basic power levels to people before the main event starts this way. As well as expectations so you can throw in some curve balls.) but if you don’t have any pre competition stuff, then you’ll have to establish in early fights just how the characters stack up. Either by some kind of ranking system or having some cannon fodder fights early one before things get good.

Why we Clash

Fights in a tournament shouldn’t just be mindless fists being thrown to be impactful. Fights should also be fights of the mind and telling a story through the combat. Mindsets and reasons for fighting should be fleshed out by the time the main events starts. Bad tournament arcs will just have mindless fights hoping the action will distract from the bad writing.

It won’t.

I’m talking about fights that get interrupted constantly or don’t have an actual winner because the author is to scared to have a certain someone loose.

DO NOT DO THIS.

You literally have the perfect chance to make match ups in fights you would normally never see in the stories universe outside of the main story.

Use this opportunity.

A good fight should have some kind of dynamic. A clash of powers, style, ideals or personality. SOMETHING to contrast each other in some way. They should play off of each other.Even if it’s just a filler fodder fight! Have a frilly girly character fight a buff macho character. Or someone selfish fight someone selfless. Engaging fights always have some kind of dynamic that tests both competitors outside of they’re limits while keeping things engaging at the same time. Even better if you have MORE than one of these ideas in a big main fight. Fights can be used to prove a point as well. You may have a cocky or arrogant character who looses because they underestimated their opponent. Or maybe one of your characters spams a power they have and an opponent scolds them saying they can only win because of that power. And the do. Which proves the loser right even though the other character won. You can win the physical fight and loose the moral one and vice versa.

And winning isn’t everything either. Main characters do not have to win the competition by default. In fact, everyone expects your main character to win. Because that’s usually what happens. But this isn’t always needed . If the protagonist has achieved their personal growth already, and the rest of the focus is on them ing others as the competition continues, then show that! If your protagonist looses, the tournament shouldn’t just automatically stop or get interrupted while there’s still powerful opponents left to fight. People want to see who wins! Especially if you balance the fights. The best fight doesn’t HAVE to be the last one. And the fight isn’t always about who wins.

Underdog stories

This is the PERFECT place to have one. Having a weak character develop their skill and prove them self in a tournament as it goes on is great for pushing you stories narrative and messages. The tournament should never distract from your story, but build on it. We all love seeing characters overcoming big odds. But they have to be actually be a threat. Don’t just give some rando a sob story and throw them at the protagonist expecting readers to be entertained. Most stories give the person a generic sob story, say why winning the tournament could make or break their life and leave it at that. And that’s fine- ONLY if it’s established through action and narrative. Don’t have the opponent go into exposition mode and just explain to the characters and the reader why they should care about them winning. Because if it’s just listed off that fast, doesn’t even have time to in depth or see how others react to the story, it’s basically pointless. It’s just clear at that point the opponent isn’t really a character and is just there to fight the main character. Which destroys the above points about narrative stakes and entertaining clashing elements. Before the tournament even begins, the reader should have some idea of who the main characters final opponent is probably going to be. And it should be known to them that this person is strong enough to give them trouble. That’s how you keep tension going.

There are a few ways this can go down with rivals. The first way is for the young protagonist going up against the biggest baddest opponent out there. When things start off, this opponent should be so over whelming that you have the readers thinking “how the heck will the hero even beat this guy? That can’t even come close to that right now!” This opponent steamrolls whoever they’re up against (and these should be powerful people) just to give that power gap some scale.

Next is the protagonist vs the best friend. They both want to win but still respect the other and want them to win too. So this will be a fight to give their all out of respect. This can be made really interesting by making you THINK the hero and the best pal will be the finalist, only to have one of them prematurely loose and have they’re final opponent be someone powerful whom they didn’t even expect to make that far. But if you decide to go all out with this instead and want to see the buds duke it out, this can be super emotionally impactful. But this doesn’t work if you make all the hero’s friends fodder tier. Having super weak friends to make the protagonist look better will not be able to make this type of rivalry work, because the readers will have no reason to believe that the friend can win. And if they do, it’ll feel out of place because they were never established to be that strong in the first place to even make it that far. The friend should be some kind of threat by the time the fight against the protagonist happens. Otherwise the fight will just be a joke and no one will take it seriously.

Last examples are the characters and their opposites or their foils. Weather it’s some kind of grudge or problem, this person wants to beat your protagonist into a pulp. This seems to work best when you have polar opposite rivals. Your classic ice vs fire, your insane attack vs unmovable defense kind fights.

And that’s the turnoment arc post! Hopefully it was helpful to you. I plan to make some more arc posts in the future, so stay tuned for more! See you soon fellow adventurers!

#adventureclub