Anyone have any advice, because I'm in desperate need for some.
CVG
Okay, I'll expand on that a little. Writing an action sequence depends on having at least some experience with actiony type stuff. It doesn't have to be real action, so long as you have at least enough life experience to get a baseline. You probably drive a car, right? Think back to a time when some jerk nearly got you killed. That's a data point. Write about that experience from your point of view. Maybe you play sports. Write about some amazing feat of physical prowess you displayed, something that totally surprised you. You are a human. That means that you've done stupid stuff. Write about something stupid you did.
Try and get your entire experience, everything you thought and felt, onto the page. Voila! You've written some action sequences. If they are all boring, then cut out the boring parts. If they are still boring, then I have nothing left. But I'm assuming that they will at least be a bit interesting to you.
And now you know how to write an action sequence. You know what things are interesting and which things are boring. You have written it in a POV.
Let's say we have two people that are going to swordfight. I get a couple pewter figurines that somewhat represent the characters. Then I set them up on a paper, on which I've drawn a rough overhead view of the area. Decide on a timing sequence and a basic set of questions to ask in each scene. I've found that 5 to 10 seconds per scene works well. Keeping in mind that I only have 5-10 seconds of thoughts and actions I then I ask questions and take notes. Who is moving? Why did they choose to move that way? Is this person scared? If not, what is this person thinking/feeling? How does this person react to that movement? Is this person skilled or are they surviving on random dumb luck?
Once I've asked as many questions as I can think of, I move on to the next scene until all is done. Then I take my notes to the computer and start typing. The hardest part is cutting out information that is not essential to the scene. Don't copy your notes into your story.
I know it probably won't work for most people but it really works for me Hope it at leasts helps and triggers some ideas for you!
-Pace, pace, pace. To speed it up, use quick sentences. To slow it down, add a little exposition. For effective action, you'll want to use a varying pattern. Where 1=fast and 2=slow, 1221122211121121111. (Get it? I don't.)
-Be descriptive but not overdescriptive. To keep your tight pace, use quick descriptions and comments.
-Clean, stylize. Remove any unnecessary material and stylize whatever action you can. Don't know what I mean by stylize? Use colloquial phrases (not too many) for certain actions, ones that most people will be familliar with.
-When dealing with combat, research actual terms/weapons/styles. Nothing will upset a well-informed reader more than leaving these details out. Know what kind of swords/guns/lightsabers that your characters are using, their strengths and weaknesses, and a little about how they are used differently than other weapons of their type. Make sure if you use specialized terms that you follow with common ones.
-Watch some action movies. For asian-style fighting, watch Legend of the Drunken Master. For more generic swordplay, the new Star Wars movies are great. For stylized action ideas, watch Kill Bill. Maybe throw in Big Trouble in Little China for kicks.
-Action scenes can use repeated references to a weapon or object. Be sure not to repeat the same word too many times. I.e. sword, sword, sword, his sword, my sword. Mix it up with the Proper name, katana; other pronouns, blade; and vague nouns, weapon.
-Write clearly and concisely. The reader can't question for one second who is doing what. Otherwise the illusion is broken.
-If it doesn't sound right, rewrite.
-Remember to use the environment.
-Lastly, vary up your action. Have a quickly twisting sub-plotline with rapidfire changes. Don't just swordfight, throw in dialogue. Don't just blow things up, get inventive. Be ingenious.
It's pretty impressive
CVG
PS--Thanks all, for your help.
As above, if Eric decides to chop with his head and Fred blocks with his knee...we'd need to be told that, because neither is what we'd expect.
If you do find that your usage of the sword/gun/katana/bazooka/brass knuckles/whatever is getting repetetive and annoying, try doing what Survivor suggested. Often, the whole tag can just be dropped once the reader knows what weapon the character is using.
quote:
but in an action scene. I think the worst scenes are when a writer tries to give a blow by blow account of a fight. Save it for film. Encapsulate it and give me some mental stuff as it happens.
I think it is important to emphasize the conflict and demonstrate the struggle involved, the shift in dominance during the battle ... but not blow by blow.
I think the reader will imagine up the blow by blow part for themselves if you give them the rest,
to me, "their blades cycloned together in a torrent of sparks," is much more interesting and illuminating than, "he threw the rapier in a desperate parry leftward, the colliding steel shook as he rebounded backwards, readying for his opponents next lunge..."
The reason why blow by blow commentary doesn't work in literature, according to me, is simple: Action is interesting because its fast, the more detail you give the fight the slower the passage flows ... slow action just isn't good action. I mean, when was the last slow motion car chase that was truly exhilirating? My advise: Be concise.
[This message has been edited by Alias (edited April 14, 2004).]
If you use more description, the result is a kind of freeze-frame surrealism. If you pair it down too much, the result is confusion. It all depends on the state of mind you want to lead the reader into.
~James
I didn't run, I regrouped
Don't bother to describe things that are "obvious", like the feel of a successful parry or the sounds that weapons ordinarily make in combat. Reserve description for the pivotal elements, those tiny fulcrums in time on which hang the outcome of the battle. The moment that something goes terribly wrong, or an unexpected opening becomes apparent.
[This message has been edited by Alias (edited April 16, 2004).]
I'm going to go practice it some.
Alayna stood before Stix, two daggers in her hands, two wooden daggers in his own. Tobias stopped to watch.
Alayna jumped with a high lunging kick which Stix ducked and shoulder-rolled away from her, effectively causing the two of them to trade positions. Alayna did a short split, kicking low with her left foot before jumping to her right hand and side kicking with both feet at his chest. Stix swept her feet aside with both hands before bringing the daggers down at her like incisors. She rolled to the left, then to the right and sprang to her feet, kicking him backwards. The doll stood and the two charged, sweeping high, sweeping low, stabbing, twisting, slashing, moving faster and more fluidly than Tobias could ever imagine anyone doing. Any time he had ever seen anyone fight, fighting had always been a rigid, tightly controlled thing. Alayna, and Stix by extension, fought uncontrolled, loose, unpredictable, flowing from move to move. Like water, they flowed and drifted before crashing down powerfully, drawing back, and striking again. Tobias was drawn in, hypnotized, and it was incredible.
Stix kicked high, Alayna grabbed his foot in mid-air. He rolled forward and slammed his foot after him, bringing Alayna along with it. She let go in mid-swing, twisting her posture, coming to her feet and sliding for a moment in the dirt before catching Stix's dagger in mid-air with her own, kicking his foot out of her center, and both of them came to rest with their daggers at each other's throats.
arcanist, this might be a personal taste thing, but I didn't even dare read your snippet. Why? To me, big long paragraphs sink action's battleship. Since, in action, things move fast and change fast, it makes sense that new paragraphs would keep cropping up. I want my eye to be jumping to new paragraphs as action jumps around, not getting lost in the middle of a huge chunk.
The other thing is that when my eye wandered over, it spotted tons of "ing" verbs. You have to vary the style. Keep doing one grammatic thing over and over, and it gets laborious. The reader will start remembering they're reading a book.
Edited for unnecessary adverbs.
[This message has been edited by sojoyful (edited December 08, 2005).]
It's a major blow-by-blow, and that's more than tiresome. "twisting her posture"?? That's a level of detail we don't need. Everybody changes their posture several times a minute. So much so, that it has become invisible to us in real life. Stuff like that should also be invisible to us when we're reading it. Unless it's significant, don't tell us.
[This message has been edited by sojoyful (edited December 08, 2005).]
I may have missed it.
quote:
We ask that writers post no more than the first thirteen lines (in manuscript format using 12-point courier font) of any story here on the Hatrack website for very good reasons.
Kathleen has this posted in the "Please Read Here First" forum, under the title "Why 13 lines?"
The rationale behind the 13 line limit applies, no matter which forum you post in.
For instance, in Arcanist's scene, I got bored after the first line of play-by-play. The character's internal thoughts on the fight were interesting, but much of the detail could be trimmed (or at least moved and seeded throughout the POV thoughts). Focus on the characters, on thoughts and emotions. (I give this as an example of my point, not as feedback to Arcanist, since this isn't F&F.)
I prefer to only use specific move descriptions in very short fights or when that move is important to the story, like if a character's life-long foe has one move he can never counter. In that case, it's good to describe the move, as well as the eventual counter.
Speaking of which, I need to go look at the fight scene in my WIP now.
Sowrds, daggers and other weapons are little to no difficulty for me as I'm trained with the katana and broadsword as well. Yes, I was a bored teen so I learned something I believe is useful.
"You -" She grabbed him by the collar, even more infuriated because she had to reach up to get hold, intending to yank him down to her eye level; Tarpan, still laughing, moved forward to interfere, the spacer kicked her in the knee, she lost her balance and staggered backwards, pulling the spacer with her, and then there was a low buzz of noise and the soft thunk of something hitting the wall behind where she'd been standing and she turned the stagger into a lunge, toppling to the ground with him on top of her, and then she was rolling and Tarpan was yelling and the wall exploded.
(Yes, that's one sentence. Ten lines in my word processor, so with luck I'm not in trouble.)
This is obviously followed up by a sorting-out period where the characters figure out what the hell just happened. The point is, though, that real-life action tends to happen very very fast, and I try to reflect this. It's also short to read, which is good, because blow-by-blow action is dead boring.
There are many other tricks like this, all of which are doing the same "focus on emotions, not on actions" thing. One I particularly remember is from the Gregory Keyes novel Briar King, in which the foppish fencer character realizes he's completely screwed; it goes completely against my "short" rule and involves a several-paragraph flashback that helps explain why the fencer is so screwed (You do not fence with knights. You run away from them, or you stand on a wall and drop heavy objects on them - from memory, apologies if it's off) and yet it's very effective, far more so than if Keyes had just described his character getting pulped.
The real problem with action scenes is that they are, as frequently written, a big block of the same kind of text. Do you write huge chunks of description? No. Talking heads? No. So don't write pure action scenes. Break 'em up however you have to, and you should be okay.
[This message has been edited by KatFeete (edited December 09, 2005).]