Top tips on writing action sequences
By Paul Finch
I’m honoured that my crime novels have won praise from reviewers for their action sequences. Flattering terms like ‘vivid’, ‘gut-thumping’ and ‘bone-crunching’ have all been used in recent times, so I can only assume that I’m doing something reasonably right.
It may
surprise people to hear this, but one of the tricks to writing good action is
to be subtle.
For real?,
I hear you ask. ‘Gut-thumping’? ‘Bone-crunching’? What’s subtle about that?
What I mean
is that action is most effective when used sparingly. Otherwise you risk your
novel turning into a cartoon. Now, that may be what some authors are looking to achieve. But
personally, I like to keep things just this side of believable. So I don’t
include a fist fight or a car chase on every other page. Likewise, I try to do
those other things that are important in novel-writing: evoke some mood, some
atmosphere, develop plot and character, examine relationships, etc. And that’s
not some attempt to be literary, it’s an attempt to create a more rounded and
satisfying experience for the readers, and to prevent them becoming bored,
because you can just as easily get bored with too much action as you can with
too much kissing, too much chatter, etc.
Another
problem with overusing action is that you consistently have to raise the
stakes, always needing to produce a bigger, louder sequence than the one
before. You won’t need me to tell you that it isn’t long before this gets
preposterous. You could finish up with the situation you had in the Bond movie,
DIE ANOTHER DAY, which included an invisible car, a giant beam of concentrated
solar energy fired from a satellite and destroying Earth’s armies, and Bond wind-surfing a tidal wave.
Even trying
to keep things grounded sometimes isn’t enough.
You only need to look back at
some of the 1980s action extravaganzas, the Schwarzenegger and Stallone movie,
which were often blizzards of gunfire from beginning to end, with soaring
body-counts and heroes who were completely invincible. And that’s another
thing. Unless you’re setting out to write about superheroes, remember that the
more vulnerable your lead character is going to be, the more effective he/she is.
To have weaknesses is human – it’s a recognisable and even likeable trait in
fiction. So if you
portray them walking through storms of bullets without getting hurt, or despatching every opponent with
ridiculous ease … why would anything else your reader sees them encounter be
deemed a threat? How will he/she empathise with them? All tension and suspense
is lost.
These are
the most important tips I can offer with regard to action sequences. Don’t
overuse them and don’t overcook them. Less is always more, and remember that in
the real world violence has consequences. Even if your heroes emerge from the
battle unscathed, they are not going to be unshaken. There may also be legal
ramifications, especially if your hero is a cop. Okay, it’s a built-in given with
police thriller fiction that the central character tends to be on the side of
right and therefore, almost whatever he/she does will end up being approved.
But I once read a very interesting quote from a senior San Francisco police
officer, who, after it was draw to his attention that in the five Dirty Harry
movies, Callahan’s kill-count was somewhere in the 40s or 50s, commented that
no serving officer with such a record could expect to keep his job or even his
liberty.
Obviously,
we’re often dealing with ‘do or die’ situations in our novels, but the legal
structure of the free world is important, so we at least have to pay a degree
of lip-service towards that.
All that
said, if you use them judiciously, your action sequences can still be among the
highlights of your book. For this reason, I myself find them the most demanding
scenes to write, because they need to be bang-on.
One case in
point was a car-chase across South London in my fifth Heckenburg novel, HUNTED.
It was described by one reviewer as ‘the mother of all car-chases’, which made
me happy, because though it only occupied two pages of the novel, it had taken
me two whole weeks to construct it. First of all, I’d wanted to get it correct
geographically. This involved plotting it on a map and taking advice from
London traffic officers. I also drove the route to see if such a chase was
technically possible. And while the actual writing might have been done in a
day, it then needed to be very tightly edited. It isn’t a rule of law, but I
always find it gives you a quicker read if you use shorter, punchier sentences.
So whatever you do, don’t meander – get to the point of each sentence
immediately. This will energise the entire passage.
Also,
remember that the quality of an action sequence is not just a piece of
narrative. It works much better when it’s an assault on the senses. Any kind of
pursuit or combat situation can be overwhelming for those involved. You’ve got
to think how it looks to be in the midst of this terrible danger, how it
sounds, how it smells: a chaos of flickering ‘jumping jack’ images, the mingled
stenches of sweat, blood, oil, the crump of splintering metal, the explosion of
shattering glass, the deafening bangs as speeding cars rebound from one
another, etc.
All of this
can make it a vivid experience for your audience, who I try to involve as much
as I possibly can. If you can make your reader feel that he/she is the one
being put through the mangle, not your hero, then that is one sure way to make
them flip through those pages in a blur of speed.
About Paul Finch
Paul Finch
is a screenwriter, novelist, short story writer and journalist, whose published
and broadcast work covers a wide spectrum of genres, including horror, fantasy,
science fiction, thrillers and crime.
Find out more about Paul Finch on his website and also on Twitter - @paulfinchauthor
Strangers
By Paul Finch
Published by Avon (22 September 2016)
ISBN: 978-0007551316
Publisher's description
Unknown,
alone, and fearing for your life.
As PC Lucy
Clayburn is about to find out, going undercover is the most dangerous work
there is.
But, on the
trail of a prolific female serial killer, there's no other option – and these
murders are as brutal as they come.
Lucy must
step into the line of fire – a stranger in a criminal underworld that butchers
anyone who crosses the line.
And,
unknown to Lucy, she's already treading it…
My verdict
Strangers is original, fast-paced and terrifying at times, as PC Lucy Clayburn goes undercover to investigate a series of brutal murders. Unusually, the book features a female serial killer - not often found in crime fiction.
I have enjoyed Paul Finch's Heck series so far (although I still have another book to read) and found Strangers to be equally as enjoyable and compelling, with a new female police officer in the primary role, rather than a detective. The book is dark and brutal at times, delving into the criminal underworld and prostitution. It's also highly descriptive, mixing police investigation with page-turning action and entertaining storytelling.
I really liked PC Lucy Clayburn's character - and she certainly felt very real by the end of the book. I'm hoping she will feature in more Paul Finch books in the future.
I received an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.
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