Being a left-handed person myself, I occasionally find it hard to understand how a swordfight works when the combatants are both right-handed, and written like a right-handed person. I generally just switch their hands in my mind automatically though.

I don't think that helped.

when that author says something that doesn't fit with my mental picture I get very frustrated. Then I have to try to rearrange the entire scene and the locations of the objects, characters etc to fit what the author just said.

All that to say: plan out your scene well, and neither you or the reader should have much trouble.

I also had a thought a while back about making one of my fantasy races primarily left-handed. That would make things interesting.

I certainly don't see anything wrong with you making all (or most) of your main protagonists left-handed, since you, the author, are left-handed. However, you would still want to keep in mind that many of the other characters were right handed, and as Eleutheria said, make sure the reader is aware that the characters are left-handed since most people automatically assume right-handed.

It depends for me, and honestly, I never really put much thought into it. I'm left-handed but I can only do certain actions with my right hand instead of my left (i.e. throwing something, kicking, ect.) Some of my characters are ambidextrous, so for example, I can have them switch their weapon between both hands (like I do in tennis) whether they are predominately right or left handed.

~Calen

I don't write detailed fight scenes, so I don't usually have a problem with this. Janin is left handed, though, so I'm slightly familiar with it. I got the idea from reading "The Three Musketeers." When D'Artangen gets challenged to a duel by Athos he tries to back out by refusing to duel a wounded man. Athos had his right arm in a sling. Athos says he can fight just as well with his left hand as with his right, and it is young D'Artagnon who will be at a disadvantage, for it can be very confusing to duel a left handed man.

I thought it would be cool to have an expert swordsman be left handed, and play on the advantages that would give him when dueling right handed opponents.

You mean, my characters have to be one or the other.

Just kidding. I actually have never thought about this... I suppose, for my trilogy, it is one of those details I don't need.

I suppose I have cheated and escaped all this confusion by rarely ever mentioning which hand it is the people are using. I just say 'the other hand', if it even needs to be specified.

Yeah, and I think that often works, but I've been really thrown for a loop when the author suddenly makes the mistake of describing something in the scene and then showing it in relation to the character, implying that the character is using the hand I hadn't counted on him using, or something like that.

I can imagine...I will definitely attempt to avoid doing that to people in my writings.

It might be kind of interesting in the case of a scribe. Once his right hand gets tired, he just switches to his left, and when that gets tired, his right hand is ready again! hehe...

Good idea.