Action scenes are not like you and me
Mar. 14th, 2007 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonI've come across a number of s/f/f books lately that have gotten generally good reviews and are generally good books—well imagined, inventive, lovely prose, doing fairly well with the genre cognoscenti—and yet the writers can't write action scenes worth beans.
This is not just a matter of taste, I don't think, but a general misperception of how action scenes should be written. Action requires a language all its own, a pacing all its own, and if a writer tries to approach it with the same literary style in which they describe, for instance, the shimmering dance of light on water, then they are going to wind up with passive and lifeless scenes.
Action requires shorter, punchier sentences, activist verbs that carry a wallop. It needs jazz--flexible and improvisational jazz--not a classical quartet. Make the characters jump, don't go stringing them through the air like clouds on a windless day. Make them move and twist, don't go all minuet and lyrical. Above all, make them feel, let 'em hurt and sweat and pull some muscles. Give them room to move and flex and range across the page. Don't skim over it and hope no one notices. Because somebody will notice. Maybe even feel cheated.
Me, I blame Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and its clones. Maybe some graphic novels, too. Don't get me wrong: I like both of these things, but they make action look balletic, lyrical, elegant. They make blood just another interesting color choice—a clash, a harmony, a bright flare on the screen or graphic page.
But it doesn't work that way with the printed word. I think it's possible to write an elegant action scene; I think it's possible to write an action scene that comes off the page and sets the reader's mind on fire; I think sometimes it's possible to do both at the same time. But not if you use passive verbs, and not if you try to rush through it because action just isn't your thing. Learn to write action scenes, learn their hidden language and separate magic. Action and sex are two sides of the same coin: the only way to carry them off is to face them directly and go into the experience. Skirting the edges, or confusing them with the luminous gold of daffodils reflected in a dark window, will only lead to cheating the reader and making your action and sex scenes not much more than a hill of beans.
Or, at least, that's the way I see at it.
Random quote of the day:
"I am not superstitious, but my scepticism wanes at night and returns with daylight."
—John Maddox Roberts, SPQR V: Saturnalia
This is not just a matter of taste, I don't think, but a general misperception of how action scenes should be written. Action requires a language all its own, a pacing all its own, and if a writer tries to approach it with the same literary style in which they describe, for instance, the shimmering dance of light on water, then they are going to wind up with passive and lifeless scenes.
Action requires shorter, punchier sentences, activist verbs that carry a wallop. It needs jazz--flexible and improvisational jazz--not a classical quartet. Make the characters jump, don't go stringing them through the air like clouds on a windless day. Make them move and twist, don't go all minuet and lyrical. Above all, make them feel, let 'em hurt and sweat and pull some muscles. Give them room to move and flex and range across the page. Don't skim over it and hope no one notices. Because somebody will notice. Maybe even feel cheated.
Me, I blame Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and its clones. Maybe some graphic novels, too. Don't get me wrong: I like both of these things, but they make action look balletic, lyrical, elegant. They make blood just another interesting color choice—a clash, a harmony, a bright flare on the screen or graphic page.
But it doesn't work that way with the printed word. I think it's possible to write an elegant action scene; I think it's possible to write an action scene that comes off the page and sets the reader's mind on fire; I think sometimes it's possible to do both at the same time. But not if you use passive verbs, and not if you try to rush through it because action just isn't your thing. Learn to write action scenes, learn their hidden language and separate magic. Action and sex are two sides of the same coin: the only way to carry them off is to face them directly and go into the experience. Skirting the edges, or confusing them with the luminous gold of daffodils reflected in a dark window, will only lead to cheating the reader and making your action and sex scenes not much more than a hill of beans.
Or, at least, that's the way I see at it.
Random quote of the day:
"I am not superstitious, but my scepticism wanes at night and returns with daylight."
—John Maddox Roberts, SPQR V: Saturnalia