Trouble Spots: Action Sequences

Courtesy of M. T. Dremer

Some writers have a natural gift for writing action, some have a natural gift for writing emotion, or perhaps you are more skilled in dialogue. What ever form of writer you are it is common for you to hit a wall when trying to write one of the areas you aren’t skilled at. I myself struggle with personal emotions. Sure I can get down the anger, hate, and joy but more often than not you need subtle emotions in a book. This is especially trying when you haven’t experienced a whole lot of them, or just not enough of them, in real life.

However this trouble spot is going to focus on action sequences, the times in a book where the main character unsheathes his sword and takes the bad guy to town. But before jumping in, let’s look at the circumstances of the action.

• Ask Yourself:
• What type of action is it?
• Is your character running from something
• Are they jumping through city streets over obstacles?
• Is it a fight, a battle of epic proportions?
• What fighting medium is it?
• Martial arts
• Weapon based
• Dirty fighting
• How large is this battle?
• One on one
• Five on Five

o       Seventy Thousand on Thirty Thousand

Run Damn you, RUN!

            In terms of the type of action you probably already know what you need to write. So let’s just say for argument sake that you chose a character running from a monster through a city. Obviously if you just say, the character ran down a street, the character ran down an alley, the character jumped over a cat, it will get boring really fast. First thing, beating the hell out of your character is necessary to increase suspense and it is surprisingly fun to write. For example when he leaps over the trash can, have his foot snag it and send him skidding on his face down the alley. When he hops that fence have the wire snag his pants. When he slides around the corner have him fall in a puddle or into other people.

            It is important to show realistic faults while putting a bit of the unreal in there. Sure someone running in panic would make a few mistakes, but in a book you need more; narrow escapes are more entertaining.

            For example His feet slipped out from under him as he rounded the corner, his fingers grasping for the brick building but coming up short before he fell face first into rain water. Without time to think or even curse, he was back on his feet charging down the alleyway driven by the fear and constant growls close behind.

I’m taking you down

            After running through city streets or magical forests your hero doesn’t make it, or perhaps they do make it, but either way they are now faced with a one on one battle. Don’t panic, if you panic you are dead. First determine the kind of battle like I mentioned above. Since I have written a lot of fantasy, we will choose swords as the weapon and have the actions be rather epic in proportions; so for example when the good guy blocks, the force of the blow sends him flying against a tree. Now you need to form a sort of balance between strikes and blocks, or offence and defense. You can’t have your hero dealing all the blows or vice versa with the bad guy. Of course you can do this if the point is to show how weak one is over the other, but in my scenario I am assuming the bad guy and good guy are evenly matched.

            When you want to describe a strike try to keep it simple; for example He brought the hilt up behind him, the blade arching in the air as he slashed for the dark figure’s skull. In this one line I didn’t mention any advanced fencing tactics or battle strategies, I just said what he did; something that anyone can do or at least picture. Of course you can get more detailed but be sure to keep it simple enough that the reader can read it really fast. Remember that action sequences are meant to be blazed through; they are meant to drive your eyes along the page at mach speed because it is so frantic and exciting. That is why over description can sometimes grind the action to a halt.

            Back when I first started writing battle sequences I got the feeling that I wasn’t describing enough. Like I wanted to describe advanced tactics and moves that people who actually knew how to fight would appreciate, or at least it would provide a better picture of what was going on. However the more I read, the more I realized that if you go too much into advanced descriptions, it will just throw the reader for a loop trying to keep up.

You want me to fight what now?

            Okay now let’s say you want to write a large battle sequence. First it is important to know how many combatants there are. One on one is nice because you only have to focus on two people, it gets harder the more people you add, and if you choose to have two giant armies battling each other the style changes slightly.

            For example let’s say in a one on one fight the main character spins out of the way of a jab by the enemy and leads through with a right hook. Okay how do you write that with twenty thousand characters all at once? You can’t, or at least, not in the same way. For example a dodge for one man, would convert to a retreating or splitting of ranks in a giant army. The return attack would be the split sides moving in, or a small legion cutting into the opposing lines.

            In many ways a massive army is described as one large unit. You don’t single out every person; you personify them into one being. However it is also important to break it up sometimes. For example let’s say the pike men are first in line, followed far behind by the archers. Suddenly the pike men are personified as the shield and when one falls you don’t say, john fell, you say the shield or defense was breached allowing the opposing army to flood behind their lines.

            If you want to single out a deadly blow it is good to use a small legion like horsemen, using them to deal blows to the other army like the one man would do with a weapon. Saying things like; the dark figures were crushed below the hoof beats of the horsemen as they charged into the heart of the army, crippling its defenses. Much like saying the sword cut into the enemy’s side. It may seem daunting to describe an epic battle, but really if you have already written one on one battles it really isn’t that difficult.

            For example The mass of brown and grey moved like a bee hive, each tiny entity going about its own business, but all contributing to the same writhing form. The red legion knew they could not destroy such a force no matter how unorganized it appeared, their only choice was to cripple its defenses and destroy the heart.

            The captain signaled to his horsemen, drawing them to his side until they formed a half circle aimed directly at the impending army.

            “Charge!” He bellowed.

            All at once the legion plunged into the wall of grey, cutting through the front lines like warm butter. Countless beasts feel before the thundering hooves but before the legion could reach the center, the opposing swordsmen found their bearings and were soon upon them, slashing down their horses and ripping men from their mounts.

            It is also possible to say what happened to one man while still keeping it part of an army. For example if you are seeing through the eyes of a captain, you can describe several different deaths that he sees, but is not identified with any character he knows. Or if you really want drama, then make it a character the reader knows.

Low Speed Connection

            Okay now let’s switch over to the suspense action again. Before I focused on someone running away which would tie heavily in with a car chase and other sorts of running; it’s fast paced with high flying action. However how do you make a scene suspenseful when your character is just sitting there?

            A good example of this is in a spy genre where lets say your agents are working frantically to download a file from the enemy’s computer in a specified amount of time. In this instance suspense will rely heavily on what is bearing down on the hero. Instead of having the hero running from it, you have the hero sitting in wait while the download runs. For example:

            Agent X flattened himself against the metal wall as the sound of a hundred rubber boots smacking against the ground reached his ears. His hand gripped tightly around the data uplink almost as if he could squeeze the information out of it.

            “I saw him go in here!” A voice shouted from outside.

            The door handle near his head began to turn, squeaking loudly with each rotation.

            In one quick motion, Agent X lurched up and slammed the lock into place. The door shook violently as the men pushed to enter.

            “HE’S IN HERE!” Came the shout from the other side of the door.

            “Move damn you move!” Agent X cursed as he watched the tiny black bar crawl sluggishly across the LCD.

            Again the pounding came to the door; the tiny golden lock shuddering with the impact.

            78% and counting.

            BOOM! The door shook again.

            82% and counting.

            BOOM!

            90%

            The door exploded in a mass of splinters, sending the tiny metal lock ricocheting of the opposing wall.

            “MOVE MOVE MOVE!” The soldiers flooded into the room, their semi automatics at the ready.

            The commander quickly broke through the ranks, surveying the room. His eyes fell to an empty computer terminal; devoid of life.

            Okay sorry, I went a little long there, but I wanted to know how it ended. If you think that is cheesy then you aren’t a writer.

            Anyway I find that noise increments are a good way to build suspense. For example in a monster story, it is good to give that monster a signature noise like CLICK or WOOO. Well those aren’t good examples but it is something to identify that danger is coming, which is how I used BOOM above. It is something that becomes progressively larger until so much tension is built in the main character and the reader that they are ready to explode.

Vehicular Battle

            Okay so your character outran the monster, beat up the bad guy, defeated an army and downloaded some illegal music, now he has to fly or drive to a safe place so the baddies don’t find him.

            When using a vehicle in action sequences it does help if you know the vehicle pretty well, however it isn’t a requirement. For example if you have driven a car you can at least write a believable car chase.

            But again we work with the idea of personification. Instead of saying the man flexed a muscle, say the car revved its engine. Instead of saying the man jumped out of the way of a strike, say the car squealed through traffic. For example:

            Sarah shook as she struggled to get the keys into the ignition. It seemed such a simple task in everyday life and yet when it mattered most it was the most impossible.

            Finally the key slid inward and she immediately twisted until the engine roared to life.

            Her bloodied hand clutched onto the stick and in a second the car shot out of the parking garage and onto the dark city streets.

            Bright green and red lights blazed past her as she shifted the gears ever higher. The road was slick with slush but it didn’t matter; nothing mattered anymore.

            A blaze of white filled her rear mirror, temporarily blinding her.

            In a quick moment she flicked the mirror down and slammed on the gas.

            The engine revved up and flattened her against the seat as the wheels kicked up slush.

            The first car she encountered was on her right and she quickly swerved into oncoming traffic to avoid it, only to meet the headlights of a city bus. Without time to react logically, she cranked the steering wheel back into the opposing lane, but the wheels lost grip of the road and spun powerfully in place as it slid ever close to the mass of metal and rubber.

            You can probably fake knowledge of a vehicle by stating generic things like, jammed the lever forward, pushed on the gas, twisted the wheel/flight stick. The point of these sequences are to keep the reader interested just like with all the action sequences, and to put in overly descriptive technical jargon will only help to confuse your reader and kill the speed of the scene.

            Okay that is all for this trouble spot; I went a little long on this one, but I hope that some of this helped. I know that my writing isn’t exactly prize winning stuff here, but my wish is that the areas you might struggle with as a writer are a little less of a struggle after reading these articles.