Readers love action-adventure novels. It doesn’t take much brainpower to read, and they’re a great way to pass the time while sitting on a long, boring flight somewhere. Writers like Clive Cussler have a very lucrative business writing action-adventure novels: there are nearly 100 million copies of Cussler’s books in print.
Here are five tips to give you something to think about when you’re writing your own action scenes.
Action sequences should be fast-paced
Good action sequences are never slow. They grab the reader by the throat and force him to hold on white-knuckled until you decide to loosen up. The best way to accomplish this is to use short sentences and often short paragraphs, using as many action words as you can think of. Words like “zipped”, “snapped”, “whizzed”, and “punched” are great choices. In a fight scene, your hero shouldn’t have time to think and any dialogue should be short, sharp and punchy, usually just a few words that can be shouted across the room.
The only exception to this would be if you’re trying to do a John Woo-style slow motion sequence for a short part of the scene. Here it can take much longer to describe the action in detail, such as the way the bullet casing forms an arc, twisting from one end to the other as it passes through the cloud of smoke. But don’t overdo it and get back into rapid fire action as fast as you can.
Take the characters to the limit
Characters need to be tested in your action scenes. There’s no point in writing something that’s easy for them to get over, because it won’t create the right level of tension in your story. Instead, your heroes need to be pushed into situations where there’s a real chance they won’t make it out unscathed. In fact, it’s better if they don’t do it often because it means the stakes they’re playing for are real and not just jokes.
Don’t be afraid to hit or shoot your characters. Matthew Reilly, the Australian action author, believes that if a character slows down the action too much, he has to die. While that might be a bit extreme for your story, killing off a character or two might well show your reader that you’re serious about the stakes.
Make the most of the environment
What’s more exciting: a kung fu fight in an empty apartment or one in a crowded china shop? If you’re like me, you’d rather watch the action tearing up the stage as fists and feet go flying. When you’re creating your action scenes, try to set things up in an environment where you can add to the excitement of the scene, where one wrong move could make things that much harder for your heroes.
So it’s better to have a fight on the roof of a skyscraper, or in the heat of an iron foundry, than in an empty warehouse, or in the desert. The more you can stock your scene with usable props for your heroes to use, the more interesting your scenes will be.
Make action scenes relevant to the story.
The action sequences should not stop the development of the plot. Instead, they should be an integral part of driving your story forward. If you find that you’re adding an action sequence just to liven things up again, then you’ll need to re-examine the stakes in the scene and find another way to help you tie the scene in with the ones that precede and follow. it’s. The reason for having an action sequence in your story should make sense in terms of the flow of the story; if not, you need to rewrite it or delete it altogether.
Write your action sequences as cliffhangers
The suspense in a scene is vital if you want your reader to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next. Your action sequence should raise a lot of questions for the hero, instead of just being a description of what’s going on. John Rogers, in his monkey kung fu blog – said, “Don’t write action scenes. Write cliffhangers that require action to resolve.” When working on the main question of your scene, don’t ask “Will the hero beat the bad guy?” Instead, find a question that brings into play a problem your hero has that is important for him to learn. If he learns it, he can win the scene, otherwise he should lose. In this way, the reader can see how the action sequence makes the character grow and change, instead of being just another free fight.
If you keep these points in mind when you’re writing your action scenes, then your hero will have a great thrill ride and your readers will turn the pages as fast as they can to see what happens next.
And that is precisely what you want to happen.
