Action Items

If there's one thing movies may always hold over books, it's that action scenes are usually much harder to write than they are to simply...do.

It doesn't help that the words share a common meaning.  Actors acting out an action scene are often limited only by the expense of wire-fighting equipment and swiftly changing camera angles.  When all you have to work with is words, it's easy to find yourself desperately searching for a key grip somewhere in the wings.

It only takes a handful of muscles to punch someone in the jaw.  By contrast, it takes entirely too much precision to describe the punch, the jaw, and the flight of the poor bastard on the receiving end as he ricochets off the bar, spills two drinks and finally crashes, chin-first, into a nearby table, upsetting a polite game of poker played by some rather nice gentlemen who are happy to join in the scuffle now that their wagers have all been sent skyward.

Case in point.

Writing action scenes isn't always necessary:  plenty of beloved books don't have a single one.  However, even books that don't center on action may need at least a scene or two to evoke the desired blood-pumping pace in their readers before the end.

Action scenes appear in places you might not even expect:  romantic comedies often involve a sprint to the finish as the one lover realizes their mistake and must race to catch the other before their plane/train/taxi/burro carries them out of reach.  Political thrillers often rely on brief, potent moments of action to signify the very real threat of otherwise very cerebral notions.  Action isn't just the cotton candy of a writer's repertoire, it's a genuine tool that can trigger the emotions you as a writer desire to create.

Action doesn't just mean fight scenes, either.  Any sort of fast-paced, low-dialogue sequence wherein your characters are pressed for time or survival gets at the same nerve as any barroom brawl.  Between your main character's moment of epiphany and the final peak of triumph is a long road best taken at a heady pace.  Endangering the character or the people they care about along the way is also a great way to get your readers clawing at the pages between the two.

But the actual mechanics of writing action can be tricky to master.  It's difficult to know just how much detail to include and what points to gloss over.  If you stray too poetic, the reader can get lost as to who's doing what, but err on the bulky side and you may overburden or even bore the reader with the minutia; the exact opposite effect of what you're hoping for.

The first step is to put the movies and the comic books aside.  "Biff," "Pow" and "Crash" really only work in the DC world and Adam West's private laser tag arena.  You're going to have to think about how things react to fill in all the pieces at the edge of the room.

Look back at the example above:  a man throws a punch.  His opponent slams into a bar, bounces off, into a table, which in turn sends chips flying and angers three men.  They, in turn, may stand up in reaction, knocking their chairs to the floor in the path of a fleeing waiter.  It's a lot to account for, and you want to have it all clear in your head before you start typing.

Naturally, the danger becomes too much detail.  With a whole room to describe, how can you keep the reader focused on the action at the center?  Remember to obey the rule of Chekhov's guns:  if you describe something in the room, make sure it matters.

When the man's chin hits the table, the wagers are described as flying, not the cards.  The wagers only matter because it gives a reason why the men at the table are now getting into the fray themselves.  If they were all just sitting around eating bar peanuts, the men and what's on the table start to matter a lot less.

Pare down anything that doesn't have an impact on the scene or immediately add to the worth of the impact at hand.  Hitting a table at full force with your chin is a lot more painful to think about than landing on your shoulder.  If the injury becomes important later (e.g. the main character has a vocal audition in the morning), all the better, but sometimes it's worth it just for the 'oof' sound your readers will be making.

When your core action at the center is where all the detail lies, it may be time to start grouping smaller actions into broader terms.  Think of it like a watercolor:  keep your hands moving in quick, broad strokes and the picture will become clear on its own.  If you stop to focus in on the details, you risk muddying the waters and losing the overall image.

The bigger danger with action scenes is repetition.  The average fight involves ten to twelve attempted haymakers, a word for which there are only so many synonyms.  A chase scene is a lot of harrowing turns and fruit stands when you get right down to details.  You have to use the landscape to keep things interesting.  There's a reason so many chase scenes are filmed in southern California...

When the foreground gets boring, keep the background interesting.  Move your foot race to the rooftops and you can add skylights and clotheslines to your scenery.  Make your fights mobile, and bring everything in the room into the fray.  Chekhov's guns can also be Chekhov's beer bottles, end-tables, vases, framed pictures and common housecats. 

Another thing to watch for when writing action is purely grammatical.  There are two styles that consume many writers in their early days:  sentences that end too soon, and sentences that never seem to end at all.  Action tends to throw both styles into their respective death-blossom modes.  Short sentences become microscopic tidbits containing only the bare minimum structure required to keep calling themselves sentences, while my fellow clause-monsters and I begin dipping deep into the comma reserves.

Whatever your style is naturally, when you get to an action scene, compare it back to some of your less action-packed writing.  Once you're a few paragraphs in, start counting the number of words between periods.  If it's spiked or dropped suddenly, you may want to look into carving up or gluing together the descriptive bits you're working with.

Lastly, dialogue.  Dialogue can be a wonderful way to break up the monotony of even a creative action scene if it starts to go on too long, or if you want to add a humorous element to an otherwise frightening ordeal.  There are a number of good examples when it comes to splicing commentary into moments of high action, but there are far more and far louder bad examples out there drowning them out.

Dialogue in the middle of an action sequence always risks straying into the campy variety.  Crossing the Ian Fleming line into outright parody is disturbingly close to where many writers start, but adding "Guess he lost his head" to the end of a scene of outright gore is a habit best left to the one man who could get away with a villain named Pussy Galore. 

Even without the awful puns, a lot of mid-action dialogue will come off as clunky and awkward unless it's handled carefully.  Anyone who's watched even one anime has likely run across the worst of it.  characters who spend as much (or more) time bantering, threatening and generally wasting time than actually doing anything of interest to the audience.

The best method is to keep it quick.  A short line, even if it doesn't add anything to the meat of the scene, can be just the right dash of spice.  A line as simple as "That worked?!" in the midst of fixing the engines to get yourselves to safety can be all you need to turn the corner in the middle of a serious scene.  It helps to think of it less as a dialogue between characters and more as a character addressing the scene itself.  When the gun that keeps jamming is the other person in the conversation, it can keep you from going on too long talking and forgetting to unjam the damn thing and get back to firing.

If you need the characters to have a real heart-to-heart in the middle of their duel, consider giving them a moment to actually pause.  Cover in the middle of a fight is a great solution.  Gunmen duck out of sight when they pause to reload, sword fighters can lose track of each other in the scuffle over uneven terrain or in a heavily shadowed arena.  Once the forces stop fighting and catch their breath, it's a great time for a short chat before they launch at each other again to finish things once and for all.

Feeling breathless?  Don't sweat it:  action scenes in print aren't all that different from action scenes in the movies.  Start with what you know and what you've seen, keep the strokes wide and broad so that you don't risk getting too scientific and, as always, find someone to read it when you're done.  In the same room, preferably, so you can see whether they're checking the clock or leaving claw marks in the cover.

If you're able to get someone to read the scene under scrutiny, count the number of times they look away from the page for anything other than a smoke alarm going off.  Each time their attention drifts to anything but your words, that's one more read-through of the scene to search for what you can improve.  If you catch them rolling their eyes or groaning, it's possible you've crossed the Fleming line by mistake.

Shocking, that.