How to Write Great Action in Your Book, Part 1

Today I’m going to be talking about what makes great action scenes. (If you’d like to view this post in video format, click here. It’s part of our “Advice from an Editor” series on YouTube.)

In any great action scene, your number-one duty as a writer is simply to keep your reader engaged—both in that particular scene and in anticipation for future action scenes. There are four elements that I want to discuss to do with achieving this. They are: stakes, variety, twists, and consequences.

​1) Stakes
 
I’m not going to talk at too great a length about stakes, because I have a dedicated video/posts on the topic. But there are two specific elements of stakes that I did want to discuss, and they are: clarity and layers. Let’s start with layers.
 
By “layers” here, I mean that it’s not just physical stakes. You will, of course, have physical stakes in almost any action scene, but the really great action scenes also have an emotional component. For example, Kenshin. In Kenshin, our protagonist used to be an assassin, but he’s given up those evil ways and he swears that he will never kill another person. He will fight, but only using the blunt side of his sword. But then an old enemy comes to town, and so our stakes are: 1) Can Kenshin actually defeat his old enemy using only the blunt side of the sword, and 2) More importantly, can he do this, can he beat him without reverting to the sort of person he used to be?
 
The other important element of stakes is clarity. This has to do with both knowing what you’re getting into going in and clarity during the action scene.
 
Knowing what you’re getting into going in is basically having stakes for the reader to care about during the action scene. This is why it’s so incredibly difficult and risky to start the book in the middle of an action scene, especially if it’s the first book and not a later book in the series.
 
I will talk about that topic more in the future video/post on hooks, but what I want to focus on here is clarity inside an action scene. The place I usually see difficulty with this is actually in the biggest, most climactic, final action scene of the book—the one you want to be the clearest. It’s like, say you’re an enormous football fan and your favorite team is about to play against their biggest nemesis, and so you sit down in front of your TV and turn it on and . . . whoever’s filming the game has a blurred filter on, or shaky cam. You know why you care, but you don’t know when to cheer; there’s movement, but it’s all a big blur. Please don’t do that to your reader—it’s frustrating and it’s bad writing. Make sure that your reader is able to follow along with what’s going on in the action scene and with who’s winning or losing, and continuing what the stakes are, especially if they are changing throughout the action scene because of variety or twists.
 
2) Variety
 
By “variety,” I’m referring to both variety between action scenes and variety within a particular action scene. For variety between action scenes, you don’t want, for example, an action scene where Inigo is fighting against the Man in Black, and then the next action scene it’s Inigo fighting against the Man in Black but they’re ten feet away from where they were before, and then in the next action scene it’s the same. . . . No, what you want is a scene with the Man in Black against a sword-fighter, and then the Man in Black against a giant in physical combat, and then the Man in Black against a poisoner in a game of wits, and then against a forest full of Rodents of Unusual Size and pit holes, and so on and so forth.
 
In fact, the only time that you should have two action scenes for which the setup is essentially identical is when you’re providing a purposeful parallel. Usually this is done where you want to show growth in your character or it’s bookends. So: at the very beginning, the bully is picking on your protagonist and is beating him up and your protagonist can’t do anything to fight back; but at the end, after your protagonist has learned how to fight and gone through all these struggles, either A) they beat up the bully, or B) they are now such a big person that the bully looks small and they’re just not going to engage and they’re emotionally okay with that. Either way, it’s a purposeful parallel to show change by using both the similarities and the differences—specifically, by using the similarities to highlight the differences.
 
But beyond that, vary up your action sequences: have one be sword-to-sword combat, have one be a chase sequence where your protagonist is being chased, and then in the next one your protagonist can be doing the chasing, or maybe have a twist—a reversal within the action scene in which the hunter becomes the hunted.
 
One of the best tools for providing variety within an action scene is setting. Now, you can use character development to promote interest within an action scene and for variety, and you can use twists, which we’ll discuss next, but setting is a big one, because setting changes a lot and it also brings a feeling of realism into the scene. Because if you do have two people sword-fighting, they’re not going to just swish their swords back and forth. You can also provide some variety by giving actual techniques. Consulting experts is good—do your homework. But . . . back to setting.
 
Jim Butcher does this very well in his Dresden Files series. He has action scenes that are more than 50 pages long that never repeat themselves and never lose the reader’s interest. But when it comes to film, the simplest place to look is Jackie Chan. When Jackie Chan is fighting someone in a room, and there’s a table and a chair and a broom . . . that table, that chair, and that broom will be used. They might be used as obstacles or as weapons, or to change the relative heights of the fighters, or to vault off of, but in some way they will be used. And if you run out of tools to use within one room, change your setting—leave the room and go somewhere else.
 
I’ve used this technique myself; it’s so useful. If you just have two people punching each other and you’re thinking, “How do I make this interesting?” . . . Close your eyes and visualize what else would realistically be in this room, and how it could realistically impact people. If you have a sword and you’re fighting in close quarters, is that going to cause problems? Depends on how good your sword-fighter is, but probably. So make sure you do your homework with that too.
 
I’m going to stop here for today; next time, we’ll discuss twists and consequences, so stay tuned.
 
Do you have any other advice, comments, or questions about writing great action scenes? Leave them in the comments!

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Deborah J. Natelson

Deborah lives with a fluffy member of fauna named Flora and two pretty black kitties. She is the author of Bargaining Power, a smart, twisty fantasy thriller; and various other books. Her author website is www.deborahjnatelson.com.