Action!
Writing Better Action Using Cinematic Techniques
Ian Thomas Healy
Copyright 2011 Ian Thomas Healy
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It's Hollywood's Fault, Or, Why Johnny Can't Write Action Scenes
PART 1: DEFINING THE ACTION SCENE
Who is Involved in Action Scenes?
Where do Action Scenes Take Place?
PART 2: BUILDING BLOCKS OF ACTION SCENES
PART 3: TYPES OF ACTION SCENES
PART 4: GRATUITOUS EXPLOSIONS AND OTHER ACTION DOWNFALLS
Action Without Reaction or Consequence
PART 5: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Sample Engagement 1: Detective James "Big Jim" Postlethwaite
Sample Engagement 2: Big Jim's Big Shootout
Sample Sequence: The Big Jim Bonanza
Excerpt from Pariah's Moon by Ian Thomas Healy, Copyright 2011
He heard a rustle and footsteps behind him and turned to see three men—two Elves and a Dwarf with an eye patch—had entered the store. One Elf and the Dwarf split up and headed toward different aisles. Giele's hackles raised; he knew a flanking maneuver when he saw it. The third man, tall and broad-shouldered, ducked to avoid a low-hanging collection of lanterns and smiled without humor at Cianid. He wore a hat with a shallow brim and a quail feather stuck in the band. His blond hair fell about his shoulders, framing a handsome face that spoke of good breeding. Over a blue silk shirt, his soft leather vest had been dyed black but for the decorative fringe work, which was the color of dried blood. He rolled a match back and forth in his teeth and walked with a bully's swagger.
In spite of the heat of the day, he sported a long, dark coat.
He wore a single pistol on a belt across his waist, riding high for what must have been a cross-body draw. The pistol's grip was well-polished and the edges of the holster were scuffed from use.
"Howdy, Cianid. You havin' trouble with this stranger?" He ducked to avoid a low-hanging collection of lanterns and smiled without a trace of humor. His drawl was much stronger than most of those Giele had heard so far in Verigo.
A muscle twitched in Cianid's jaw. She had history with this man, and not of a pleasant sort, from what Giele could infer. "He's just a customer, Rarik."
Rarik. So this was the man who'd been so free with his knife upon Shali. The slow burn of righteous fury started to spread outward from Giele's heart to the tips of his fingers and toes.
Rarik plucked an apple from a bin and polished it on the sleeve of his blue silk shirt. "And so am I. How much?" He jingled his purse as he took a bite.
The other Elf and Dwarf had moved into positions where they could attack Giele without being caught in each other's crossfire if they chose to do so. They all wore pistols, but Giele's was in one of his saddlebags, and his bow in its case outside with his horse. All he had on him was the knife given to him by the 136th. He winced at the irony. They often joked in the Army about the futility of bringing a sword to an archery battle, and here he had brought a knife to a gunfight.
"On the house, Rarik." Cianid's clenched jaw stood out in sharp relief.
His eyes widened in mock surprise. "Oh ho, so you're giving things away, are you?" He stepped toward her. "What else is free today?"
"Easy, Scarface." The Dwarf cocked his pistol and pointed it at Giele when he started to move. Giele never even saw him draw it. "This ain't none of your business."
Cianid stood her ground as Rarik circled her, looking her up and down in appreciation. His eyes lingered upon her like a hungry cat regarding a pigeon. "I've told you before and I'll tell you again. No."
"Come on, little filly. I ain't gonna hurt you. I just thought maybe we could get to know each other a little better is all." He took another bite of apple and wiped juice from his chin with the back of his hand.
"I'm not one of your whores." She put on a brave face but the quiver in her voice betrayed her fear of him. Giele shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet.
He stopped behind her. She stiffened as he leaned forward to speak into her ear. "Ah, but you should be, with a face and a body like yours. You could be one of my high-priced attractions. Don't you agree, boys? Wouldn't you pay real crowns for a piece of this ass?" He slapped her rear and she jumped away as if scalded by his touch.
The other two thugs murmured their agreement. Giele's fingers found the iron handle of the heavy cooking pan where it rested amid his pile of supplies—a poor weapon, but better than nothing. He hadn't moved his hand more than an inch since the men first entered the store. He moved it another inch.
"Get out of my store, Rarik. I want no part of your business."
"But I want part of yours." He leered at her and licked his lips. "And I always get what I want."
"The lady asked you to leave, friend," said Giele. "Perhaps it would be best if you did."
Rarik spun to face him and took another bite of apple. He chewed for a moment and then spat it back in Giele's face. "You're that feller everyone's raisin' a stink about. The marked man. I already done threw you out of my place today. I'd be doin' this town a favor if I shot you where you stand."
Giele made no move to wipe the fragments of apple from his face, but tightened his grip on the iron handle. "Seems rather like I could say the same thing about you." He kept his voice low.
"What was that? What did you say, you boar-rutting moon-faced son of a diseased whore?"
He took one more step toward Giele, and that was close enough.
#
We all know what's going to happen next; we've all seen this scene, or a variation of it, played in dozens of different movies. Most writers, though, get all skittish and twitchy at the idea of writing something as complicated as a fight in a general store. How many times have you found yourself facing an incipient action scene with trepidation? Maybe you wrote a couple lines, then quit. Or maybe you skipped ahead. Or maybe you just knocked your hero on the head so you wouldn't have to write it.
The fear of action scenes is all too common among writers today, and in this book, I'll give you the tools to overcome that fear. Instead of fearing your action scenes, you'll look forward to them with all the anticipation of a kid on Halloween afternoon. But first, let's look at how we got here in the first place—why action scenes are the bane of so many writers.
IT'S HOLLYWOOD'S FAULT, OR, WHY JOHNNY CAN'T WRITE ACTION SCENES
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume everyone reading this has seen a movie. If you've never seen a movie, well, you probably shouldn't be reading this book because you have a barn to raise and a beard to grow.
In the 19th Century and before, writers had far more leeway to write action than they do today. Outside of live performances, books were the only game in town when it came to entertaining people. Consequently, readers had to imagine whatever the writer described, sometimes without any frame of reference at all. Motion pictures changed all that. Suddenly, filmmakers could take their imagination and, through the use of carefully-planned stunts and special effects, film exactly what they were imagining. By committing those images to film, they shared their action scenes as they intended them to look with mass audiences. Instead of audiences having to imagine, they could sit passively and observe someone else's imagination.
For example: The two men, one garbed in shining black and the other in soft brown, battled across the floor with their laser swords. I'll bet most of you immediately pictured the Darth Vader-Obi-Wan Kenobi duel in Star Wars: A New Hope. Your memory of the scene as it was shot filled in the details without me describing them. If I'd written that sentence as part of a story that involved neither of those characters, you'd still think of the movie scene, because that's how motion pictures have affected the modern reader—by giving us a common frame of reference. For a century now, from the earliest silent films loaded with dangerous and creative stunts, to the shootouts of the Westerns, to the car chases of the ‘60s and ‘70s, through the martial arts movie craze of the ‘80s and the CGI era after that, action scenes have become indelibly imprinting upon our minds. We've become a visually-oriented culture instead of an imagination-oriented one.
So what's a modern writer to do to reach this jaded reading audience?
To effectively create an action scene that meets both the needs of the story and the needs of the reader, you must think more like a movie director. This means that you must consider not only the characters and their goals, but their motion through a given scene. Action scenes require characters to be in motion, and the effective description of that motion is what makes the difference between a good, cinematic-quality action scene and a merely adequate one. By making this transition from good to great, your action scenes will be exciting to read, memorable, and have a visceral quality that will have your readers turning the pages, desperate to keep up.
Blocking and staging are terms for the motions a character performs during the course of the scene and in what order. Example: Joe enters the room, spots his opponent, Bob, and charges to attack him at the room's center. Those are three simple stage directions one might find in a script, but they're just as effective to use when planning out an action scene in a novel.
Scripting is the dialogue of the characters uttered during an action scene. It's neither necessary nor welcome to place every single shout, grunt, or groan inside quotation marks. This is, after all, an action scene. But in movies, characters always seem to find enough time to carry on some kind of conversation during action scenes, whether taunting their opponents, arguing with them, calling for help, or uttering pithy zingers. Depending upon the tone you're trying to create, dialogue can be a good addition to any action scene that demands cinematic quality.
Choreographing is the planning of specific stunts performed by the characters in your scene. Choreographing is not the same thing as blocking. In the above example, the blocking of Joe is to enter the room and move to meet Bob. Once they're engaged in actual combat, choreographing takes the place of blocking. If Joe swings with a heavy left hook and follows it up with a knee to the nuts, that's choreographing. In other words, choreographing is the blow-by-blow breakdown of any given action scene, the interaction of characters.
Taking the example of Joe vs. Bob a little further, we can identify the characteristics of each part of the scene:
Joe flung open the door [Blocking]. Bob smirked at him from across the room, raised his hand, and beckoned to Joe [Blocking]. "Come get some," he said [Scripting].
With an inarticulate yell of rage, Joe charged across the floor as Bob dropped into a fighting stance [Blocking]. Joe launched a heavy left hook at Bob, but the man ducked underneath the blow [Choreographing]. Before Bob could respond, Joe drove his knee hard in between Bob's legs [Choreographing].
Bob turned the same color as the floor, grabbed himself, and collapsed [Blocking].
Poor Bob. If only he knew the fundamentals of action scenes, he might have given a better accounting of himself. Let's see if we can teach him.
Part 1: Defining the Action Scene
At its most basic level, an action scene is an expression of plot or character development through violence.
Wait, violence? Is that really necessary?
In a word, yes. We're still essentially the same cantankerous hominids we were a hundred thousand years ago. Ever since the first proto-human got angry about something done by one of his neighbors and picked up a rock to bash the other fellow's head in, we've been solving our disagreements through violent acts. And over the millenia, we've gotten very, very good at it.
We may use the trappings of civilization to try to curb our instinctive violent cores, but in the long run, virtually anyone is capable of committing violence at some level. Because of that, action scenes in media play to our low brains. Perhaps it's some kind of Jungian racial memory, but when we observe others in action, it gives us a kind of catharsis we haven't been able to obtain socially for thousands of years. That's why an action scene has to be every bit as important and planned out as a dramatic conversation, an erotic encounter, or a beautiful description. Readers crave that kind of feeling, and it's up to you to provide it.
Can an action scene be nonviolent?
Sorry, pacifists. No, it cannot. Because action scenes are defined by some level of violence, you cannot have a nonviolent action scene. Scenes without violence are driven forward by other impetuses, such as dialogue or emotional content. Sooner or later, though, a character will choose to take action which is counter to the goals of another character, and that will beget violence.
Your best bet is to make sure it's a good scene.
WHO IS INVOLVED IN ACTION SCENES?
I've already hinted at this above. At its most basic level, an action scene involves two characters: the Hero (the narrator or focal character of the narrative) and the Opponent. The Hero is, of course, who your story is about. The Hero has a goal of some kind, and the Opponent has a goal which opposes it. That opposition creates the conflict which is the root of all action scenes (and indeed, all fiction). Without an Opponent, there can't be any conflict except the Hero's internal conflict, and that type of conflict cannot be resolved through action scenes.
When I say Opponent, I don't necessarily mean it has to be another character. If your Hero has to defeat a series of mechanical traps that will try to kill him before he reaches the Golden Cup of Valhalla (or whatever), those traps are Opponents; their goal is to kill him, while the Hero's goal is to survive. Opposite goals equals conflict equals action.
The problem with using non-character Opponents is that their goals can't change in response to the actions of the Hero. In the example above, if the Hero decides to forgo the traps and the Golden Cup to go party with Heidi the Valkyrie instead, the traps can't get angry and come after him. If you want real excitement and drama in your action scenes, Opponents should be characters. Let's look at the four essential types of conflict in literature and why three of them don't really work as a basis for action scenes.
Character vs. Self
This type of conflict stems from a character having a problem with him- or herself. This makes for compelling drama and loads of introspection. Unfortunately, what it doesn't lend itself to is action. Unless you're going to have your character beating himself to a pulp in a bathroom, internal conflicts just aren't resolved by the external means of action scenes. Let's let our poor, conflicted characters figure themselves out and move onward to the next kind.
Character vs. Society
At first glance, this might seem to work well for the basis of an action scene. Your character is fighting against something about his society. Doesn't that make him a rebel, prone to action? Well, no, not really. In this type of narrative conflict, the characters' issues are with social norms, mores, and other cultural factors. You can't really write a character having a fistfight with racism, for example. That's not the same as battling agents of society, but that's a different type of conflict.
Character vs. Nature
Now we're getting somewhere. How many movies have this as their basis? It can be very exciting, watching characters as they flee molten lava, tornadoes, earthquakes, meteors, etc. There's room for lots of spectacle and insane action as Nature pushes on its merciless course. The main issue with this type of conflict when it comes to action scenes is the fact that Nature is not only merciless, but has no antipathy toward the characters. It may seem like the avalanche is trying to kill the characters, but the fact is that forces of Nature happen whether the characters are in the way or not. Yes, it can create action, but an essential element of a true action scene is missing: the goal of the Opponent. Nature has no goals; Nature only exists. While this kind of conflict can sustain a story for awhile, eventually the reader will want to see a clear Opponent for the Hero—one whose goals work against the Hero. Overcoming Nature is possible but nowhere near as rewarding as overcoming an active Opponent.
Character vs. Other
This is the meat and potatoes of the action scene. When a character or group of characters enters into some kind of direct conflict with another character or group of characters (or machines, or zombies, or genius biker punks—you get the picture!), it becomes the catalyst for action scenes. In fact, all the other types of narrative conflict can make a story better if you can make the ultimate conflict personal: Hero versus Opponent.