Quote Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime View Post

And another thing is, a lot of writers don't make characters fight with melee weapons properly either. They typically have them attack each other's weapons instead of attacking the opponent. e.g. swords bouncing off each other. This makes absolutely no sense. The objective is to kill the enemy, not to play percussion by whacking your swords against each other. Also, swords don't bounce. When two blades meet they lock and the two fighters engage in a kind of sword-to-sword wrestling match, because the first guy to lose is going to get sliced. Admittedly I have limited knowledge of melee weapon fighting, but I'm sure that trained melee weapon martial artists here like 1AZRAEL1 can shed more light on this matter.
This is very true and is often quite entertaining, striking the right distance is like 80% of the skill sometimes.

Also you don't want to lock blades for more than a fraction of a second. You either try to use it and unfoot your opponent or go in for a grapple(can be more effective than prolonging the fight). There's a general guideline where the top third of the blade is used for cutting, the middle third for parry and the bottom third for blocking. Swords are valuable(and only used as last resort, guns/bows/spears are more efficient) and therefore you don't want to keep smashing it against another.

Source: Iaidoka