Posts in the "Action Scenes" Category

• Action, Jackson.

  Action Scenes

  This week we’re celebrating Stina‘s new book Of Blood and Honey, released this week. Congratulations, Stina! As we did with Kameron’s book God’s War, we’re giving anyone who comments on posts this week a chance to win a free copy. Just comment on one of our posts this week and tell us the name of a book with great action scenes, and you’ll be eligible. You can also purchase a copy at the Night Shade Books site, or get it at your local bookstore. Now let’s talk action scenes.

  When I say the words “action scenes,” most people I talk to tend to think I mean combat. In fact, I discovered something when writing my novel The Panama Laugh; action, for me, is what drives a narrative.

  Now, I tend to think of long narratives as having three flavors of sequence: dialogue, exposition, and action. This is a strictly internal process; I don’t write it down, but I just think of things that way. Most writers think about it in entirely different terms, so do what works for you. There are really no rules to this game. (more…)

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• *biff* *bam* *POW!* and some stats on bestsellers.

  Action Scenes

  Congrats to Stina on Blood and Honey releasing this week! Make sure you comment on one of the posts this week to be eligible to wine a free copy!

  When I first ‘action sequences’ I immediately thought ‘fight scenes,’ but obviously an action sequence is any point in the story where things are happening rapidly and tension is high. If you work it right, the whole book is one long action scene. Currently, I’m on this huge present-tense active-voice kick in my writing. I am totally in love with it and rewriting my current book to be as much present-tense, active voice as I can. The following is tangentially about action sequences, but mostly about some armchair research I did on bestsellers.

  Earlier this week, I read an article from Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw which said that 98% of all bestsellers came from 10 big publishing houses and I thought, “I bet he just made that up.” So I looked it up, primarily because I was bored. Publishers Weekly very helpfully lists the Top 10 bestsellers every year. I pulled the Top 10 adult fiction novels for the last 10 years. Now, this isn’t exactly a rigorous statistical analysis. I was watching Shaun the Sheep with the kids while I did it so it’s very probable that I made mistakes. What defines a good book is a very nebulous thing, but I figure looking at the books that a whole lot of people liked enough to buy is a good place to start. (more…)

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• Close Your Eyes

  Action Scenes

  Congrats to Stina on the release of her book Of Blood and Honey! That’s gotta feel good.

  Okay, writing action scenes.

  Hmm. This post gives me a headache.

  First off, you’ve got to have a character, see? And this character has to be flawed and wonderful and sad and hilarious enough to command the reader’s attention. You have to do the work up front and get the reader caring about the character you’re about to put in jeopardy, otherwise…what’s the point?

  You gotta write, oh, let’s say fifty pages of story before you can even start thinking about action. Maybe. Give or take 50 pages. (more…)

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• Action? Write spare to get the most

  Action Scenes

  First of all, YUUUUUGE congrats to Stina on the release of Of Blood and Honey! We’re all bursting with excitement around here. And as a bonus (as if you didn’t already know): comment on this post about your favorite action scenes in fiction to have a chance at a FREE copy of her book!

  Ok, on to the main event. Action scenes.

  When I first started writing (and I suspect a lot of new authors fall into this trap) I would lade my action with all kinds of extra description, internal thoughts, and sometimes back-and-forth between the characters. It was certainly faster paced than the other parts of my writing — I knew even then that things had to be more short and clipped than the setting of a scene, for example — but I still had too much there for the reader to sift through.

  (more…)

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• Gone in 60 Seconds

  Action Scenes

  Successful writing is really about the Reader, if you ask me. It’s about giving the Reader an experience. So with that in mind, what makes a great action scene for a Reader? Excitement. Intensity. Fear. Adrenaline. Without that, it might as well be a dance routine. Action scenes are mechanically complicated. They require a bit of charting things out. That’s the challenge — keeping all the bits in order while maintaining the immediacy. It’s tougher than it sounds.* 

  Writers can’t give Readers an experience without material to draw from. I’ve trained in multiple styles of fencing, including Kendo (Japanese fencing), foil, saber, epeé, rapier and dagger. I’ve fired guns, stood a little too close to large fireworks explosions (by accident), ridden horses, and participated in Rally Racing on a real race track. During high adrenaline moments the brain is overwhelmed with Very Important Information —  too much to keep track of on a conscious level. So, some details slip. Anything that isn’t about keeping you alive drops out, which is my theory as to why pain seems to take a back burner.** 

  But I drew from other things too. (more…)

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• Put Your Action Scenes To Work

  Action Scenes

  
  I’ll start with a huge WOO HOO for Stina, whose novel Of Blood and Honey officially releases this week!  I can’t wait to read it – I’ve always been interested in Irish mythology, and to mix that in with the gut-wrenching realities of the Troubles sounds like a recipe for a really intense read – my favorite kind.  If you want to win a free copy, don’t forget to comment on this post and tell me your favorite book with great action scenes.

  So, let’s talk action scenes.  No doubt you’ve heard all the usual advice for writing fast-paced action.  Stuff like:  (more…)

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• Fighting the Good Fight

  Action Scenes

  
  My first drafts for the bel dame books: God’s War, Infidel, and the third book, Babylon – which I’m working on now – are mainly just dialogue and fight scenes interspersed with copious amounts of whiskey drinking. My characters swill whiskey with the same frequency and fervor as other writers’ creations swill coffee.

  Oh yes, I go back and add actual plot and worldbuilding and huge, glorious, bug-drenched descriptions later on, but that first draft is a slim jab-jab-cross-drink! exercise that serves to get the whole wild ride rolling.

  But where, exactly, do all these fight scenes come from? Some of the most memorable scenes, and the ones that folks ask the most about, are the ones that take place in a boxing ring. Boxing is a favorite sport among magicians in the world of God’s War, and that’s not by accident. (more…)

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