Doing some writing and need your expertise.

[KT Samurai]

I intend to do some writing down the line concerning, among many other things, a race of people who utilize unarmed combat in their military endeavors. This will be a fantasy story, of course, as having strictly close combat units in any military is a silly idea. I'll have a myriad of things to help level the playing field.

I enjoy writing action sequences but have no practical knowledge of how combat works outside my own personal (and very limited) martial arts training. What I need is a model, something to look at for inspiration. And I'd like to know what you fellas think.

What are some great, stylized martial arts that can also be converted to more practical and simple means? It is also possible for me to use more than one. I'd been thinking about using a few Filipino styles as they tend to be quick and dirty, but I also need something that just looks cool.

Thanks in advance for all your insight.

[lordtariel]

There's nothing silly about close combat in the military, especially in this time of urban warfare.

The problem with using a particular style is you will find that you tend to go into more description than is necessary for such combat. Also, if you use specific names for moves, only people that read your story that are in that art are going to understand. You would probably be better off just finding some combos (there's lots of them in the strategies and tactics section) and incorporating them.

That being said, I believe Krav Maga is actually the official art of the Israeli military and the Chinese military use San Shou. Don’t really know much about either, but it’s somewhere to look.

Another place to look is in novels. R.A. Salvatore does a really good job of describing martial arts style combat in some of his books.