Writingcraft: Anatomy of an Action Scene · 4:54am May 18th, 2013
So I’m gonna start making some writing advice/process blogs, since I’ve been requested to do so for a few things. I’m hardly an expert at writing; I’ve only been doing it with any regularity since last October, in which time I’ve written around 230,000 words. Now sure that sounds like a lot, but there’s an old saw that to become an expert at anything, you need to spend 10,000 hours practicing a craft to really know how to do it.
Now some of you might be aware that I don’t really sleep very much; I have bipolar-induced insomnia that keeps me from getting more than about six hours of sleep a night and I average much closer to three. I fill my spare time with writing for the most part, because it’s relaxing to me; it’s better than watching television, anyway.
So it could be argued that I’ve been writing ‘full time’ since October, which I think is probably an exaggeration, but would put me at around 1,000 hours of writing practice. So I’m maybe a tenth of the way through that adage at the most, and I have a long, long way to go before I could be considered an expert at anything.
So consider that your disclaimer. I don’t really know what I’m doing any more than anyone else approaching writing as a hobby. But, I’ve been complimented frequently on my writing and I think about writing a lot, both artistically and mechanically, so maybe there’s something rattling around in my head that others can find useful. If anything I say sounds like a good idea, take it and run with it. I’m not ‘keeper of the secrets,’ I’m just a dude that likes writing about lesbian ponies that smooch each other and if I can help others write stories about ponies (smoochy lesbians or no), then great. I like reading about ponies, too.
So let’s talk about action scenes. A lot of you might not know that I write action, since the only story that has it in any real capacity is Coming Back, and many of you followers might just be watching for my slice of life romances or my erotica. For the latter of you, there’s a lot of overlap between action and sensual scenes, so you might get something out of this if you’re looking to write some cloppy goodness. I’m planning on writing an advice blog about erotica too, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Action scenes need to accomplish a lot of stuff with a lot of restrictions. They need to be clear and easy to follow, they need to be exciting and immersive, and the need to move quickly. There’s a prevalence in Hollywood for shaky-cam action where you’re ‘in the action’ because you have no idea what the hell is going on. Just like a real fight!
Don’t do this in prose. I don’t like it in movies particularly (Quantum of Solace made me motion-sick. Why did there need to be jump cuts every five seconds exactly?), and in prose it’s an unreadable mess. Instead of feeling like you’re in the thick of the action you get a hazy cacophony of images that don’t track and you’re left going back over a paragraph over and over again to figure out how the hell Applejack got out from under that minotaur in order to kick the changeling in its face. And more often than not, there is no explanation.
Sometimes that doesn’t matter, especially if the battle is big enough that the action focuses on individual skirmishes while other stuff progresses in the background. But if you’re in an enclosed room with the mane six and a reader can’t follow the action because you want to be purposefully scattered, you’re not being immersive, you’re being frustrating.
The best action scenes in prose are easy to follow. You can see and feel the sweeps of a sword through a shield, smell the cordite and feel the kickback of a gun into your shoulder, and be able to re-enact the knock-out kick that took down the heavy. You’re not left wondering where everyone is or what’s going on; you know what’s going on and it’s thrilling. That should be the primary focus in writing action (and everything really) clarity of prose. Writing action that tracks is half the battle. Picture what happens in your mind’s eye and do your best to translate that to the page.
Now, when it comes to writing clearly, you can do so simply and to the point:
Applejack glared at the advancing changeling and charged. She turned on her forelegs and kicked it in the head, knocking it out.
That’s easy to follow, you know what happens, no one’s left questioning what exactly transpired. It’s also incredibly dull and boring.
Writing action is about choosing what to highlight that’s exciting and interesting. If your prose looks like stage directions for a movie, you’re going to bore your readers. Quick asides like this that aren’t in the heat of a big scene can work fine, especially if there’s a comedic element to it. Here, something with about as much detail that’s actually fitting:
“Now see here, Twi’,” Applejack growled, “If’n ya knew there’d be a party I’d sure appreciate—” Twilight’s eyes went wide and she gestured frantically behind Applejack. She snorted through her snout and stamped her forelegs down, bucking the quietly advancing changeling in the face. “—if ya invited me next time.”
But if you’re in the heart of a battle with hooves flying and bodies falling, describing what happens in a telling fashion like this looks like an instruction manual. Build your own fight in three easy steps! Not exciting.
So how do you make it exciting? Well, part of it was implied in that ‘tell’ comment. Show the action, rather than telling the reader what happened. A buck to the face can look like a lot of different things, take what you see in your head and describe it with some fun detail.
Eyes narrowed and venomous, Applejack lowered her head and pawed the ground. The changeling stepped forward, its chitinous hooves clicking against the stone floor. Applejack matched its step, her teeth grit and hackles raised. The changeling shrieked, its voice a grinding cacophony of clicks and hisses, and rushed forward with its wings buzzing. Applejack turned sharply, throwing her weight backwards, and pistoned her legs out. Her hooves sunk deep into the beast’s chest, the crackling snap of its carapace shattering echoing through the cavern. It tumbled across the ground and its shriek transformed to bubbly gurgles. The smell of rotting meat emanating from its broken chest rose bile in the back of Applejack’s throat and she spat thickly.
Show what’s happening. Let a reader build a full image in their head of the action: what’s happening, how it happens, and what the consequences are. If you notice in reading that example, I don’t actually say that Applejack kicked the changeling. It’s clear from the context that she did, but the description went into the set-up for the kick and the consequences after the kick. That’s because the kick isn’t interesting.
What’s interesting is what happens to the changeling. Is the villain knocked down for the count? Does it shrug off the blow like it was a fly? That’s what makes the action flow, not the individual blows themselves. If Twilight hefts a bunch of rocks in her magic and swings them around herself as a battering shield, where those blows land and in what order they land isn’t interesting, it’s how the foes are blown back by the rocks in a heap of broken shoulders, bleeding muzzles, and shattered ribs that’s interesting.
You’ll also notice that I didn’t confine the description to visual. The more senses you engage in a reader, the more immersive the scene is. Make a reader taste the rotting smell of changeling insides on the back of their throat, hear their keening shriek, feel the thud of impact in their legs when Applejack bucks one in the chest. Give it atmosphere; talk about the bad lighting conditions, the condensation on the walls making footing slick, the heavy rain muting sounds. Get a reader into it and the action is that much better.
Now, take everything I said and get ready to ignore a lot of it. Because if you spend every blow of a fight describing the tastes, sounds, smells, sensations, and atmosphere, you’re going to slow your pacing down to a crawl. Action happens fast. Brutal skirmishes can be over in a matter of seconds and a reaser should feel that speed and urgency. If every single missed swing and connecting blow is given a full paragraph of prose description, that twelve second battle is going to take forty-five minutes to read and is going to be about as speedy as a game of Monopoly. You need to pick and choose where to highlight action, give it some color where it’s appropriate, and keep the connective tissue punchy.
The Applejack kick is fine on its own, but if it’s going to have that much detail, that better be the end of the fight, or at least a major turning point. Maybe up until that point the characters had been running through dark caverns and got cornered. Maybe the changeling bit Fluttershy and Applejack got royally pissed. Whatever the cause leading to that paragraph, that paragraph is florid and better serve as a turning point in the flow of the scene. It could start the battle royale, it could end it, or it could be a point where before everyone was using non-lethal attacks. Whatever the decision based on the flow, it needs to be something worthy of being highlighted.
So what do you do with the connective tissue? Tell. Tell in a showy way. Simple way to do it: pick a sense, and use that sense to describe a flurry of activity.
Sharp cracks echoed off the cavern walls in a staccato beat as Applejack rained blow after blow on the changeling horde.
There. One sentence to cover a flurry of action. Have a quick aside about the horde turning their attention onto AJ after she killed the one, go with that, and suddenly the fight is advanced several paces. In two more sentences the majority of the changelings could be down for the count and you can have another more detailed paragraph of Applejack finishing off the last hold-out. Then you have an action scene that’s less than a page long, covers a small skirmish, and keeps a reader invested in what’s happening.
Now, these examples I’m giving aren’t perfect. Action scenes are tailored to the narrative they’re a part of and trying to write something separate and whole-cloth with no prior investment is challenging. What leads up to the action should be suspenseful and dramatic, so when you fall into the action scenes readers are already on the edge of their seats just from the narrative. It’s easy to continue that sense of urgency through moody and fast-paced action, but you have to earn it. It’s like describing the blow itself; having Applejack just beat a changeling to death without context isn’t enthralling. It’s the lead-up that makes it interesting. If this comes after the mane six have been separated, hounded, chased, frightened, and at the ends of their ropes, suddenly Applejack’s desperate and lethal barrage has meaning.
And that right there is the key, single most important part of choosing to write action scenes. Does the action serve a purpose? It should. In prose, all scenes should serve a purpose. That purpose doesn’t have to be climactically significant, mind you. Maybe the purpose of an action scene is to introduce a new threat. Maybe it’s to show what sort of fighting chops the characters have. Maybe it’s to show an emotional growth. Or, of course, maybe it’s a fight that’s predestined by the plot structure, in which case you shouldn’t have to be hunting for a reason to have the fight.
Prose isn’t like a Hollywood movie or a video game. You don’t get anything out of having a character grind through low-level mooks just because they’re in a new room and having a James Bond en media res opening should be to show off something important, not because it ‘looks cool.’ Sure, make it look cool, but have it mean something. If it doesn’t mean anything to the story or the characters, it’s not going to mean anything to a reader. It’s just gonna be brainless action for the sake of action. Which is fine, and often can be played for comedy, but if you’re going for gritty, in your face, no holds barred, action? Your readers aren’t going to care without substance. And if your readers don’t care, then you’ve failed.
I encourage comments to address anything I might have been vague about that could be expanded, as well as any requests for specific subjects for me to cover. I’ve been asked before about writing in-character dialogue, which I’ll do if I can figure out how the hell to write such a blog. I’ll also probably write one about writing erotica, since I’m apparently quite good at writing sex scenes. If there are other subjects you’d like me to tackle, let me know and I’ll be happy to oblige.
Thanks for reading, and happy writing.
Hmm. This blog has made me question the quality of my first story. I'm unsure of how I did in the action scenes, so now I'm going to go back and see what else I can do with it.
Pehaps you could do one on Setting/Location Description. I tend to have a bit of trouble with that.
Maybe you could talk about that delicate balance between Action Description and Dialogue. I'd love to see your take on it. :3
<3 DarqFox
While I may not be an active writer as of now, I find your writing lessons incredibly interesting. Hopefully I'll have at least a little time for writing this Summer; I've got a long RiL list.
Two things I would like to see:
How to write a character's train of thought.
How to write such good erotica. I know I probably won't ever write clop, but I'm still quite curious as to how you make it so smooth, realistic, and good.
[EDIT] I also agree with DarqFox. How to set the scene was always a little tricky for me.
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I can maybe work with a 'description' advice blog, talking about word choice and when to go into detail describing settings and creatures and whatnot. I should have probably focused a bit on word choice here in this advice blog now that I think about it...
ADDENDUM TO MAIN BLOG
Choosing appropriate words for action is important, too. When you're getting into the descriptive parts of an action scene, you're going to go a little purple in your language usage to paint a compelling picture, but be careful to not go flowery. Action is about viscera and impact, not landscape painting. Use words that match that feeling. Things crunch, crack, explode, shatter, clatter, ricochet, smack, reverberate, etc. Use harsh and aggessive words and whatever you do, keep things active voice. Passive voice has its place and the demonization it's received in some 'writing guides' is unearned and should be taken with a grain of salt. But in action scenes, keep things active constantly.
Do:
Applejack bucked the dragon repeatedly in the face.
Don't:
Applejack was bucking the dragon repeatedly in the face.
It doesn't look like much of a difference, but passive voice used a lot really adds a sense of ambivalence to the narrative voice. It sounds like the speaker is questioning the validity of what they're saying. Applejack may, or may not, have been bucking the dragon repeatedly in the face, who's to say? Go full active, use harsh words, and describe things starkly and harshly. Save the soft words for emotional parts.
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If I can figure out how to write an in-character dialogue blog, I'll cover thoughts and balancing dialogue to description in a paragraph at the same time. I'm still unsure how to write that blog, since writing in character is rather specific to the, you know, character. Advice I can give on writing Applejack is going to be fundamentally different than advice on Fluttershy. I don't know if I can go broad enough for something that applies to all the characters beyond my general advice for writing any sort of dialogue, which is this:
Imagine the character saying the line in their own voice. If it sounds weird in your head, fix it. Then actually say the line out loud to yourself. If you stumble saying it, fix it.
That's not much of a blog.
1088997 I'll be looking out for more of these posts, I really need the help
I'd only add that there are natural pauses to (most) fight scenes. Both sides take a step back, chests heaving with exertion, before rejoining in combat. One character suffers a particularly devastating blow and as they sail through the air, throbbing in pain from the strike, their eyes catch a single star in the night sky, or a falling leaf dancing in the light afternoon breeze. For some awkward reason, even though they're sailing through the air, ribs shattered, they stare with confusion at some seemingly inconsequential detail of their surroundings.
And then they slam violently into the earth, dispelling the illusion and bringing them back to the harsh reality of their present situation.
Done poorly, these slight pauses can be jarring and take the reader out of this situation. Done well, these pauses can add an air of depth, of poignancy, to an otherwise simple brawl. Regardless, when writing an extended action scene, non-stop, visceral prose runs the risk of all blending together, ultimately reducing the impact of what your characters are going through. Slight shifts in the pace of the scene give your readers' brains time to breath and refocus.
This is true of any hectic scene, not necessarily just fight scenes. In one chapter I wrote, Luna starts playing around with some alien weaponry out of curiosity. This results in the catastrophic evaporation of her wing of Canterlot castle. I didn't write, "And then a mighty fireball of misplaced intentions shot into the sky, instantly turning the Lunar wing of the castle into an airborne cloud of ash and meteoric debris." I built up to the moment before the weapon discharged...and then I switched to the perspective of a random pony out shopping in a Canterlot marketplace. The poor thing was just trying to feed her foals, and was arguing with a shopkeeper over the insane price gouging of his goods. Begrudgingly, she reached into her saddlebag for the requisite bits to complete the transaction. And then she was blown off her hooves, sending her precious bits flying across the ground as her ears rang and the shopkeep dragged her into cover to shield her from the raining debris. She looks up, crying for her two foals in muddled confusion, before noticing that a section of the castle was subsumed with flames, a shrieking pillar of light firing off into the evening sky where the Lunar tower once stood for as long as she could remember.
The readers knew this was coming. This poor pony, out on a shopping trip so she could feed her two colts, did not. An action sequence should never confuse your readers. Unless they happen to be particularly well-versed in violence, it should always confuse your characters.
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Very good points. I didn't really cover laying out the flow of an action scene. Maybe I'll cover that in a general pacing blog? Because breaking up action with quiet moments is a very important part of general pacing.
1089873 A generalized pacing tutorial would go a long way in helping my dumb ass to craft a coherent narrative, to say the least. I have to wonder, though, whether "pacing" is even a concept that lends itself to a tutorial, outside of the barest ministrations one can hear from accomplished writers that, yes, 'pacing' is important.
Consider a story by Neil Gaiman; most of the ones I've read have been replete with side-tangents and seemingly innocuous facts that still end up corralling a reader's attention to where they eventually need to be, even if he takes a very roundabout route to get them there. Contrast this with Stephen King's style; he's similarly descriptive, if not moreso, and yet all his description seems to just paint the backdrop for when his narrative really begins to move, and hammer its horrifying points home in the minds of the readers. When reading Gaiman, a reader understands they'll be sifting through a great deal of text that first appears innocuous until the author ties all his extraneous verbiage together and things seem to click; when reading King, the reader lazily, enjoyably peruses passages of searingly beautiful, terrible imagery, until he brings us back to the harrowing issues the characters must resolve. By the time they reach the end of the chapter, they've forgotten just how long King spent describing the fall forest that surrounded, say, Salem's Lot's iconoclastic mansion, or the forest through which Roland of Gilead once tread with his several companions. They've forgotten the lengths to which King went to describe his world, because he manages to do so effortlessly, and in a manner that suggests his descriptions serve an immediate relevancy. And, sometimes, these descriptive tangents really do. More often than not, King's tangents just serve to build up the setting, and beautifully, distractedly so, before he hastily surprises the reader with the horror of the protagonist's situation.
The point being that King and Gaiman are both accomplished authors, and both have crafted stories that have entranced their readers without fail. And, in spite of their fondness for descriptive side-tangents, they've both done so in a schismatic manner, each relishing the words they hurl at paper even as they aim towards different ends. They both violate the oft-repeated writing idiom of "efficiency of words as the plot necessitates above all else". And yet they do so in different ways, and still do not fail to craft interesting stories.
The problem with a generalized tutorial on pacing is that what works, works, and what doesn't, does not. What works, and what does not work, seems to be entirely up to the whim and the brilliance of the author behind the keyboard. Every story has an ebb and flow. I'm not sure there's a good enough tutorial for that.
(Editor's note: Drunk, proselytizing, sorry about that, etc. Also, you've only been writing since October? Holy Hell, you take to this like a moth to the flame.)
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Therein lies both the benefit and the hindrance of me being an amateur who doesn't really know what he's doing. I can't speak for pacing among the greats, or the prolifics, or the pros, but I can speak for pacing in terms of my approach to planning pacing, checking pacing, laying out the structure of scenes, determining how long a specific series of actions should 'take' to read, and that sort of thing. Rules for writing creatively are tricky, in that there are no rules, none at all. The only thing important in writing fiction is: can a reader enjoy what you've written? If the answer is yes, congrats, you won.
But in saying that, there are good approaches to take, especially when starting out, that can help with general story comprehensibility and reader enjoyment. Part of a pacing blog would be me quoting writers I respect that have offered their personal advice on pacing before. I'd give the pacing 'rules' that I try to follow and explain how I go about following them.
It would be a post that requires its own disclaimer making it clear that what I'm illustrating isn't the right way to do something, just my way to do something. And that's honestly what this blog is. It's not the right way to write action, it's just my way of writing action.
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And October is when I started writing with any sort of seriousness. I've been writing creatively in some capacity for two decades. But what I was doing up until October could be confined to the word count of October through mid-December easily.