Writing Action (general)
I've had a few requests in the past asking me to do a writing post on how I write action (particularly the fight scenes). There's two types of actions -- regular and, well, fight scenes. I can't do one without the other, so this is the first part.
The best advice I've ever gotten when it comes to writing action is:
When you write action, don't.
That's it.
At first, I thought it was the worst advice in a universe of bad advice. How do you write action without writing action?
I thought about it. I read books. I listened to how people tell stories of events that happened. I watched the news. Then it dawned on me.
You write action by not writing action, but by giving the reader just enough information to imagine the action for themselves.
Why? Because apparently the human brain is awesome. It can view all the separate images from a flip-book and turn it into a mini-movie. It can see images in a mosaic. It can connect the dots.
It's no different when it comes to writing. An imagination is a powerful thing. You can see a face in a cloud, you can picture baby dragons romping through the tall reeds in the swamp, you can watch a car getting towed but not see the hitch and freak out because there's a fucking ghost driving the car.
Now try to do that with just a few words in your story.
Writing,
Tommy reached out with his left hand until he could touch the apple hanging from the tree branch. He stood up on his tip toes. When he finally got a grip on the apple, he wrapped his fingers around it. He had to twist and pull firmly before the stem broke from the branch. He lost his balance and fell on the ground.
isn't half as evocative as
Tommy couldn't quite reach the apple, even stretching himself out as much as he could. He balanced on his tip-toes and flailed off the edge of the wagon, falling with a yelp. When he landed on the soft grass, it was with a victorious apple in his hand.
As a writer, you don't need to connect the dots for the reader. You just need to paint a picture. You paint that picture using descriptives ("couldn't quite", "stretching himself out", "with a yelp", "victorious"), active verbs ("balanced", "flailed", "falling", "landed"), the precursor ("reach the apple") and aftermath of the action ("landed on the soft grass"), and the follow-through ("with an apple in his hand").
Most action scenes have a start, a beginning, a finish. The action can be in one sentence. It can be in a paragraph. It can be in five freaking pages. A scene is as long as you want it to be, should be relevant to what you're having the characters do, and it should have weight.
When Merlin gets a phone call that Arthur is in the hospital, he'll wake up from his daze, throw the covers back, sit up suddenly, swing his body out of bed, fumble blindly for his glasses, stand up and pull down his pyjama pants, pull on the still-clean boxers that he'd worn the day before, pulls on his socks before he puts on his jeans, that he wears the T-shirt that was still stained with spaghetti sauce from dinner with Arthur the night before, and leaves his room.
OMGWTFBBQ?!!?!!!ELEVENTYone!!!
We don't care! Arthur is in the hospital! Why is the writer wasting time describing what Merlin wears???
This is an urgent situation. Forcing the reader to go through a long passage describing how someone gets dressed doesn't express the urgency of the situation. Fuck that. If I read that I'd just skip the section entirely and skip to the next section. I don't want to lose my reader! If they're going to skip that section the odds are equally likely that they'll skip the entire story, too. What I'm going for here is urgency, and I want to get the reader from point A to point B as quickly as I can:
The mobile dropped out of Merlin's bed and thunked on the floor, but he'd already grabbed his shirt and pulled it on. He scrambled for his glasses, shoved his cell phone into the band of his pyjama pants, and ran out the door.
Alternatively, if Merlin's having a bad time -- say he just got an angry text from Arthur, maybe he will drag out getting dressed as long as he could. But I've got to make it entertaining for the reader, too, so I'll slow it down by having Merlin become a bit introspective:
Merlin couldn't face Arthur right now. He didn't know when he'd be able to. Maybe in a few days. Maybe in a thousand years. Fuck. He was so embarrassed. He didn't even know why he had texted back that he was coming over. It was only a ten minute walk away.
He stared down at the sock in his hand. He stretched it out and rolled it up. He brought it to his nose and gave it a sniff. He supposed it didn't smell too bad. If he were lucky, it might even distract Arthur.
In essence, writing action needs to reflect the mood and the situation. Let's say someone is frustrated. The typical signs of frustration, in body language terms, are:
There is no right or wrong way to write active frustration (or any other emotion) in fiction. There are better ways and there are worse ways. What should work is what should work for you as a writer. Any of these approaches are fine:
Direct telling:
Derek didn't need to look at Stiles to know what he was thinking. He could smell the frustration pouring off the kid like a waterfall.
(This is me taking blatant advantage of Derek's werewolf senses to get directly to the meat of the story.)
Clinical observation:
Derek was sitting spine-rigid and shoulders-back in one of the stiff chairs of the interrogation room. His hands were loose on the table, and he was staring straight ahead, betraying nothing. A less experienced man wouldn't be able to tell, but the Sheriff had spotted the slight twitch of Derek's fingers, the clench of his jaw, the thinning of his mouth, the faint tic of an eye. He knew he'd gotten under Derek's skin.
(The Sheriff' is badass. Enough said.)
Making a list:
Stiles rubbed the back of his neck. He ran his fingers through his hair. He pulled at what little that had grown out over the summer. He dropped his arms. His knee bounced like a Mexican jumping bean. His hand crept up to the desk and sorted through the pens and pencils lined there. He picked them up one by one. He drummed them on the table. He held his breath, letting it out in a huff.
Scott decided that now was probably not a good time to ask Stiles' advice on how to get himself back into Allison's good graces.
(For what it's worth, Scott's known Stiles nearly his entire life. He might be a bit clueless and self-absorbed sometimes, but even he should be able to figure out when it's a bad time to be a jerk when his friend's frustrated.)
Acting on it:
Derek yanked the door off the hinges; the rusted metal whined, the wood groaned. He stalked through the dismembered remnants of his house and stopped dead in what had once been the family room. His body shook. He struggled to hold it all in but it was too much. He threw his head back and roared.
The building crumbled a little bit more all around him.
(Poor Derek. Always frustrated by Stiles. *nods*)
There's plenty of other ways to go about writing action. Like I keep saying, I'm not an expert. I don't even know the technical terms. I just write what feels right.
Beyond that number one rule about writing action, I'm gonna throw in a few tips that have served me well, even if I don't always use them:
And, finally, the most important tip of all: just write it the way you would do it.
(Next up: How I write action scenes)
The best advice I've ever gotten when it comes to writing action is:
When you write action, don't.
That's it.
At first, I thought it was the worst advice in a universe of bad advice. How do you write action without writing action?
I thought about it. I read books. I listened to how people tell stories of events that happened. I watched the news. Then it dawned on me.
You write action by not writing action, but by giving the reader just enough information to imagine the action for themselves.
Why? Because apparently the human brain is awesome. It can view all the separate images from a flip-book and turn it into a mini-movie. It can see images in a mosaic. It can connect the dots.
It's no different when it comes to writing. An imagination is a powerful thing. You can see a face in a cloud, you can picture baby dragons romping through the tall reeds in the swamp, you can watch a car getting towed but not see the hitch and freak out because there's a fucking ghost driving the car.
Now try to do that with just a few words in your story.
Writing,
Tommy reached out with his left hand until he could touch the apple hanging from the tree branch. He stood up on his tip toes. When he finally got a grip on the apple, he wrapped his fingers around it. He had to twist and pull firmly before the stem broke from the branch. He lost his balance and fell on the ground.
isn't half as evocative as
Tommy couldn't quite reach the apple, even stretching himself out as much as he could. He balanced on his tip-toes and flailed off the edge of the wagon, falling with a yelp. When he landed on the soft grass, it was with a victorious apple in his hand.
As a writer, you don't need to connect the dots for the reader. You just need to paint a picture. You paint that picture using descriptives ("couldn't quite", "stretching himself out", "with a yelp", "victorious"), active verbs ("balanced", "flailed", "falling", "landed"), the precursor ("reach the apple") and aftermath of the action ("landed on the soft grass"), and the follow-through ("with an apple in his hand").
Most action scenes have a start, a beginning, a finish. The action can be in one sentence. It can be in a paragraph. It can be in five freaking pages. A scene is as long as you want it to be, should be relevant to what you're having the characters do, and it should have weight.
When Merlin gets a phone call that Arthur is in the hospital, he'll wake up from his daze, throw the covers back, sit up suddenly, swing his body out of bed, fumble blindly for his glasses, stand up and pull down his pyjama pants, pull on the still-clean boxers that he'd worn the day before, pulls on his socks before he puts on his jeans, that he wears the T-shirt that was still stained with spaghetti sauce from dinner with Arthur the night before, and leaves his room.
OMGWTFBBQ?!!?!!!ELEVENTYone!!!
We don't care! Arthur is in the hospital! Why is the writer wasting time describing what Merlin wears???
This is an urgent situation. Forcing the reader to go through a long passage describing how someone gets dressed doesn't express the urgency of the situation. Fuck that. If I read that I'd just skip the section entirely and skip to the next section. I don't want to lose my reader! If they're going to skip that section the odds are equally likely that they'll skip the entire story, too. What I'm going for here is urgency, and I want to get the reader from point A to point B as quickly as I can:
The mobile dropped out of Merlin's bed and thunked on the floor, but he'd already grabbed his shirt and pulled it on. He scrambled for his glasses, shoved his cell phone into the band of his pyjama pants, and ran out the door.
Alternatively, if Merlin's having a bad time -- say he just got an angry text from Arthur, maybe he will drag out getting dressed as long as he could. But I've got to make it entertaining for the reader, too, so I'll slow it down by having Merlin become a bit introspective:
Merlin couldn't face Arthur right now. He didn't know when he'd be able to. Maybe in a few days. Maybe in a thousand years. Fuck. He was so embarrassed. He didn't even know why he had texted back that he was coming over. It was only a ten minute walk away.
He stared down at the sock in his hand. He stretched it out and rolled it up. He brought it to his nose and gave it a sniff. He supposed it didn't smell too bad. If he were lucky, it might even distract Arthur.
In essence, writing action needs to reflect the mood and the situation. Let's say someone is frustrated. The typical signs of frustration, in body language terms, are:
- Scratching or rubbing hands, face or body parts
- Rubbing the back of the head and pulling at the hair
- Grimacing, jutting of the jaw, clenching of the teeth
- Fidgeting, pacing, aborted attempts at speaking
- Tapping fingertips on a surface or playing with an object
- (etc)
There is no right or wrong way to write active frustration (or any other emotion) in fiction. There are better ways and there are worse ways. What should work is what should work for you as a writer. Any of these approaches are fine:
Direct telling:
Derek didn't need to look at Stiles to know what he was thinking. He could smell the frustration pouring off the kid like a waterfall.
(This is me taking blatant advantage of Derek's werewolf senses to get directly to the meat of the story.)
Clinical observation:
Derek was sitting spine-rigid and shoulders-back in one of the stiff chairs of the interrogation room. His hands were loose on the table, and he was staring straight ahead, betraying nothing. A less experienced man wouldn't be able to tell, but the Sheriff had spotted the slight twitch of Derek's fingers, the clench of his jaw, the thinning of his mouth, the faint tic of an eye. He knew he'd gotten under Derek's skin.
(The Sheriff' is badass. Enough said.)
Making a list:
Stiles rubbed the back of his neck. He ran his fingers through his hair. He pulled at what little that had grown out over the summer. He dropped his arms. His knee bounced like a Mexican jumping bean. His hand crept up to the desk and sorted through the pens and pencils lined there. He picked them up one by one. He drummed them on the table. He held his breath, letting it out in a huff.
Scott decided that now was probably not a good time to ask Stiles' advice on how to get himself back into Allison's good graces.
(For what it's worth, Scott's known Stiles nearly his entire life. He might be a bit clueless and self-absorbed sometimes, but even he should be able to figure out when it's a bad time to be a jerk when his friend's frustrated.)
Acting on it:
Derek yanked the door off the hinges; the rusted metal whined, the wood groaned. He stalked through the dismembered remnants of his house and stopped dead in what had once been the family room. His body shook. He struggled to hold it all in but it was too much. He threw his head back and roared.
The building crumbled a little bit more all around him.
(Poor Derek. Always frustrated by Stiles. *nods*)
There's plenty of other ways to go about writing action. Like I keep saying, I'm not an expert. I don't even know the technical terms. I just write what feels right.
Beyond that number one rule about writing action, I'm gonna throw in a few tips that have served me well, even if I don't always use them:
- Where possible, avoid the verb was, even in conjunction with an action. Instead, use active verbs -- He fell, not he was falling; he shot, not he was shooting. Getting right to the action gives the impression of imminent transition and urgency.
- Keep the action from one character's POV, and pick out the action that the character would most likely do or observe. Even if everyone is dancing the Macarena all around them, Arthur might pick out that Merlin's the only one who keeps defaulting to the Chicken Dance.
- Guide the reader through the action. It's not a Do It Yourself Manual that you're writing (or, God forbid, an Ikea "how to put your cabinets together" schematic. That's just scary. And there's no getting those right anyway). There's no need to detail every step. Give the reader the highlights to get to the end result themselves.
- Don't be afraid to emphasize the result of an action. If Derek is pacing back and forth, he's pacing back and forth until he wears a damn track in the ground. Gwaine's going to shoot every bullet in his magazine until he drew out a stick figure in the paper target. Arthur is going to drag Merlin somewhere dark and quiet where they can snog in peace and quiet until Merlin forgets what they were arguing about.
- On a flipside, don't be afraid to make your action choppy. The more direct you are, the more immediate the action. Merlin kissed Arthur. Stiles took off running. Gwaine stole Merlin's brownies again. Hunith threw a spoon at Gwaine.
And, finally, the most important tip of all: just write it the way you would do it.
(Next up: How I write action scenes)