Peter E. Abresch -- BookMarc #23

[Elderhostel Mysteries & Fiction Writing Techniques]

BookMarc © #23
Writing/rewriting - part 4 of 6

One of the hardest things for me to write is action scenes. Jefferson Bates said, "Write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood." This is especially true in writing action scenes where every word and every sentence should jump into the next. In other words, if we confuse them, we'll lose them.

I once read a book where, at the climatic moment, with a killer holding a gun on the protagonist, someone snuck up behind the guy, reached down with a lighter, and sets the killer's crotch on fire. Does that sound reasonable? Not likely. So the first thing we always need to do in writing action scenes is to make sure it's logical. If it's not, we may get our readers to finished the book, but will they journey with us again?

Something similar could be said about R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton. Normally, I like the Kinsey Millhone series, but in this one, Kinsey stupidly puts her life in jeopardy, not once, but three times. This didn't ring true to me because the character has always acted sharp and rational in previous novels. So the next thing in writing action is to keep it in character, or provide a reason for it to be out of character. A good reason.

And finally, as alluded to above, everything must be written clear enough so that is can not be misunderstood.

So what's the difference between spending so many words that we bore the reader, or so little that we confuse them? I'm still struggling with that. And when it comes to action, we also have to worry about pace. An act of violence, whether it's waves crashing onto a boat or someone throwing a punch, has to evoke a sense of speed and intensity, scooping up the reader and carrying them along in the moment.

So how do we do it?

How I do it is through a lot of grunt work. I spend more time rewriting critical action scenes than anything else.

The first thing is we need to visualize the action and get it absolutely clear in our own minds. A vague idea won't work. Walk through it if you have to. Following this, get it all down, everything, bloated into boredom, to make sure there's no disputing what we have on paper, and everything is clear. Now we eliminate everything that will not muddy the picture. Look for single words that can replace two or more:

A shaft of winter sun was momentarily reflected off...
The winter sun glinted off...

Glint saved us four words, and rearranging the sentence moved us from passive to active, giving more impact.

Next we look for ways to rearrange sentences to provide flow:

I opened the center drawer of one desk as the toilet flushed upstairs. Everything appeared neat and orderly, giving credence to my selectively ransacked theory

The toilet flushed upstairs as I opened the center drawer of one desk. Everything appeared neat and orderly, giving credence to my selectively ransacked theory.

This is probably not a good example, but the idea I wanted to point out is to move the incidental toilet action out from between opening the drawer and observing what's inside. In the first sentence the action is interrupted while the mind clicks on the flushing before taking up again with the contents of the drawer. In the second we get the flushing out of the way so the mind moves fluidly onto the drawer's contents. Why mention the flush at all? It has significance further on in the story, and in fact, this could be a subtle setup for a later payoff, something we'll talk about in the next BookMarc.

Next we look for action verbs to replace ho hummers: charged instead of run quickly; raced instead of hurry; slammed instead of hit hard; heaved instead of pull; battled instead of fought. Whatever conveys the action with the most impact. And get rid of all the adverbs.

We also need to look for repetition. Use a strong verb three times in the same paragraph and it not only causes the mind to stumble, but drains the strength from the verb. Forgive me for giving you a personal example:

In the climatic scene of Sheep in Wolf's Clothing, I needed to concentrate a lot of action in two pages. Fail here and I could lose my readers. Since the logic bordered on the iffy--something that probably happens in most of our climatic scenes--I wanted the reader to speed through it without having time to question what was happening. To keep them from stumbling, I extracted all the verbs, made them as strong as I could, made sure I had no duplicates, and plugged them back into the text. A lot of work? Yeah. Did I need to do it? Don' know. But it didn't hurt and all the feedback I got was positive. For me it was the difference between doing the best I could and trying to get by with only good enough. What's it worth to you?

We have three more things to consider before we wrap up action writing in BookMarc #24, setting it up, showing the action in POV, and pacing for speed.

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