Action in Your Stories · 6:22pm Oct 4th, 2013
Action will often cover at least half of your story if not more. So, I think it's only appropriate that it gets a blog post.
So, what makes an action? Simple. It's a character choosing to do something. Basically every bit of dialogue is an action, because the character chooses to say something. Every step towards a goal that a character makes is an action. Actions, for the most part, are natural things that stem from characters. When you understand what the character's goals are, the character will automatically take the action that leads them toward their goals and thus move the story along. (Sometimes there are actions that have nothing to do with the characters too, but they are generally used to make the character react afterward).
Examples: Choosing to run from or to fight an assailant, arguing with another pony, which tunnel to go down when the path forks, or an earthquake hits and an injured pony has to cope with being trapped in a crumbling building (how the pony reacts to that situation is what is important).
Alright, action is easy to understand. We see it in our everyday lives. We commute to work because we want to make money to pay the bills, or go to school to pursue an eventual job... yada yada... But that's hardly riveting. How do you make an action scene that draws readers in? What do readers want out of action scenes?
The reader wants to learn more about the characters through the actions taken. They want to see actions where multiple motivations of one or more characters conflict with each other. For example: Imagine a character on one side of a war. This character joined the military to save lives and push the war away from their homeland and with every enemy that falls, they feel the hypocrisy of their own actions mounting. At some point the goals of saving lives and saving their homeland would come into conflict. The character has to struggle and make a choice: Stop fighting or keep on fighting. Defining a character through their actions and choices is what makes for riveting action.
Of course that's not all there is to action. What I described is character action (important moments that define a character and change them from who they were). Now I'm going to touch on Action Sequences.
After you know what your characters are aiming to do and why they are doing what they are doing, all the reader needs to see is the physical actions come together into an action sequence. Usually these scenes are fight scenes, athletic struggles, verbal sparring between characters with conflicting agendas. There can be winners, losers, stalemates and any combination to such an action sequence.
Often these sequences are fast-paced with tons of stuff happening at the same time. To write out a well-paced action sequence there are a few things to keep in mind:
1. What's going to happen. You need to know what every character is doing and why.
2. Focus. Once you know everything that's happening, only show the important bits you want to emphasize. Pick out the bits that only your protagonist notices. Maybe a dozen of that character's allies were hit and killed by a fireball, but if that character was too busy dodging a flurry of sword thrusts and didn't see it, then you don't need to mention it beyond maybe the sound of an explosion from behind that nearly pulled the character's focus away from the task at-hoof.
3. Word choice. The speed of your scene is entirely based on your word choice and sentence choice. Use small, quick words to make actions fast. Use elaborate or more intricate descriptions for drawn-out lengthy actions.
4. Coherency. Make sure that the reader isn't confused about who is doing what or what is happening. (unless the character is also confused about what is happening). So generally I'd recommend avoiding the heavier bits of prose when you are writing an action sequence.
Of course this is advice coming from someone who will admit that those action sequences are not my forte. But at least this is my view on action. I'm sure there are many others that do a better job at explaining it.
In any case, I think I'll go do some writing for AhoC now. I aim to get that chapter finished today (hopefully). And then I should be editing it tomorrow and tossing it to my editors/proofers. So I guess expect it late Saturday (at the earliest), though more likely late Sunday.
Thanks for reading,
~SilentBelle
nice. action is my fav genre and my new fic is a heavy action and adventure story. thanks for the tips. i love your blogs.
Another great blog. this one was useful for me because I don't have as much experience with fight scenes as I'd like, nor do I have experience with verbal jousting. Both of which I'll need if I'd like my stories to be the best they can be.
Another good round of solid advice. I have two comments: 1) Coherency is really, really hard. Prereader are very useful here. 2) Your advice on focus assumes limited 3rd. You might have other options in other modes:
1398882 Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I did indeed just assume 3rd person limited. Though the advice still holds in general for PoV, one just needs to interpret it to fit the other PoV. An author would still want the reader to know what the protagonist did or did not see, but to do so one has to approach it in a slightly different manner.
Thanks for pointing that out though, I kind of assumed 3rd limited, simply because that's what I write in. I'll keep that in mind for future blogs.