How to write Action scenes?

[TDRay1612]

Unable to write action sequeces in my new story. Help anyone?

 

[BattlingSoul]

Unable to write action sequeces in my new story. Help anyone?

Write what you feel...

He looked across the room and realized what it must have felt like when King David gazed upon Bathsheba the first time....

 

[TDRay1612]

Want it to be bloody and grity

Thats my problem. I want it to be bloody and want to make my readers actualy visualize whats happening. But when i try to put it into words, either it doesnt come out properly or is too blunt

 

[BattlingSoul]

Thats my problem. I want it to be bloody and want to make my readers actualy visualize whats happening. But when i try to put it into words, either it doesnt come out properly or is too blunt

I misread ACTION as ATTRACTION...sorry.


Again, describe every detail you see...

Describe the blood, the eyes twitching, the heavy breathing, heart pounding, the smell of gun powder, fire. The pain that is felt...

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Well, what happens/is supposed to happen?

Tell us, please, so that we all can have a think about.

 

[SusanJillParker]

Thats my problem. I want it to be bloody and want to make my readers actualy visualize whats happening. But when i try to put it into words, either it doesnt come out properly or is too blunt

You're writing it backwards. Forget about the scene and concentrate on the characters. Do you see them? What do they look like? What are they wearing? What are they doing? What are they saying.

If you write that, the scene will come to you naturally. Develop your characters. It's all about the characters and as much about the scene until later.

If you don't care about your characters enough to develop them, the reader will not only care about your scene but also about your story.

"Did you like that scene?"

"What scene? I don't remember it?"

"It was the one with the nameless and faceless characters."

 

[TDRay1612]

Help

The main character in my story has sort of two minds. A mostly sarcastic and to the point personality forms his normal self and an other side(you can call it his demonic side).when the other part takes over, it is total carnage. He doesnt recognise foe or friend. He just considers killing anyone who stands in his. The part i am writing write now shows my character completedy loose his mind (sort of submits to his demonic side) on seeing his dear one get hurt. Then he starts killing every one. How to describe this scene?

 

[SusanJillParker]

The main character in my story has sort of two minds. A mostly sarcastic and to the point personality forms his normal self and an other side(you can call it his demonic side).when the other part takes over, it is total carnage. He doesnt recognise foe or friend. He just considers killing anyone who stands in his. The part i am writing write now shows my character completedy loose his mind (sort of submits to his demonic side) on seeing his dear one get hurt. Then he starts killing every one. How to describe this scene?

No one can possibly give you what you're looking for with the limited information you have given us. It's as if you want us to write the scene for you without knowing anything about your story or your characters.

Once again, if you take the time to describe your characters so that he and/or she moves from the page to stand behind your chair to whisper what next to write in your ear, your characters will write their own scenes. Trust me. I know. I've written a couple of stories here already (lol).

When that happens, when your character comes alive is when you can hand your keyboard over to him or her and have them write their own damn story.

I'm one of the few writers who routinely writes in nearly every category and I can do that without personally experiencing everything sexually by developing my characters.

Perhaps, you should start by giving him a name (lol).

 

[TDRay1612]

Thanks for your valuable comments.

What i was trying to say was that as my character (name-ray) looses his mind and starts kiling everyone around him, how will i describe his action. Should i try to show his actions from another person's eyes or from his own eyes. I am not sure which path to follow.I want to know which path would you would prefer i take. Help please.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

What i was trying to say was that as my character (name-ray) looses his mind and starts kiling everyone around him, how will i describe his action. Should i try to show his actions from another person's eyes or from his own eyes. I am not sure which path to follow.I want to know which path would you would prefer i take. Help please.

No one can answer this for you, except to say: write the damned thing. Make a choice, and go with it. If you don't like the result, rewrite it—keeping in mind that you can always change that initial choice. But staring at the blank screen (a common beginner's writing strategy) won't be very helpful.

You learn to write by writing.

 

[SimonDoom]

What i was trying to say was that as my character (name-ray) looses his mind and starts kiling everyone around him, how will i describe his action. Should i try to show his actions from another person's eyes or from his own eyes. I am not sure which path to follow.I want to know which path would you would prefer i take. Help please.

I think what SJP and CM told you is dead on.

How you write the action scene depends on your character(s) and your chosen point of view. Figure those things out first. That will go a long way toward helping you figure out how to write the action scene. There's no one right way, and no one can tell you how to do it.

And CM's advice probably is best of all -- just go ahead and make yourself write it, and then look at afterward, see if you like it, and revise it if you don't. That's a better course of action than trying to take your cue from what anyone here tells you.

 

[Areala-chan]

What i was trying to say was that as my character (name-ray) looses his mind and starts kiling everyone around him, how will i describe his action. Should i try to show his actions from another person's eyes or from his own eyes. I am not sure which path to follow.I want to know which path would you would prefer i take. Help please.

This is probably best answered by the way you're writing the rest of the story. If you've been writing in first-person perspective up until now, writing the scene in first-person is probably the way to go. Likewise, if you've been using third-person, stick with that. It is possible to pull off a tense switch in the middle of a story, but I wouldn't recommend trying it. Stick with what you've been using, and you'll be just fine.

 

[Eroticalover1968]

Deleted: post repeats information and opinions already present

 

[Hypoxia]

Visualize the action sequence, blog it as it happens, then flesh it out and tighten it up.

 

[OmnislashXX]

His mind went into a blank hazed state, a voice openly speaking to him from within. "Hurt. Bleed. Kill!"

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Action scenes are simple.

The first bit of business is to bestow frames of mind for the actors. Deer caught in headlights? Hair on fire? Monkey mind? If theyre hurt all their senses may be gone. Most likely all the actors are captured by internal chatter and unprepared for the event. But maybe one actor has a clue and hauls ass or attacks or shits and dies where he stands. The best prepared don't think, they act. And something or nothing happens. Sex, fist fights, whatever, all unfold alike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL7XS_8qgXM
BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

 

[NotWise]

What i was trying to say was that as my character (name-ray) looses his mind and starts kiling everyone around him, how will i describe his action. Should i try to show his actions from another person's eyes or from his own eyes. I am not sure which path to follow.I want to know which path would you would prefer i take. Help please.

If you don't have experience with that behavior, or at least some martial arts training, then it seems to me like it would be difficult to write.

If you're writing in first person and the narrator goes berserk, then the action scene would be incoherent, and that might be an effective way of writing it -- with just flashes of the event, not detailed narrative. That's probably what I would do, and it would get around the need for believable realism.

On the other hand, if you want it to make sense, as Areala-chan already said, it should probably be in third person and then you have the experience problem.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Action scenes are simple.

The first bit of business is to bestow frames of mind for the actors. Deer caught in headlights? Hair on fire? Monkey mind? If theyre hurt all their senses may be gone. Most likely all the actors are captured by internal chatter and unprepared for the event. But maybe one actor has a clue and hauls ass or attacks or shits and dies where he stands. The best prepared don't think, they act. And something or nothing happens. Sex, fist fights, whatever, all unfold alike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL7XS_8qgXM
BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

Choreograph the fight. Who. What happens move by move. Physical harm. bodies. Blood. Mayhem. Who does what to who. Weapons. Or hand to hand. Outline reactions. Any dialog. That outline is the skeleton of your fight scene that u can then start building out.

 

[Weird Harold]

Unable to write action sequeces in my new story. Help anyone?

Read up on active and passive voice. Use a LOT of active voice and no passive voice to give your prose a sense of immediacy and action.

A shift to present tense for the battle scene might also work. That would have to be done very carefully to avoid complaints about shifting tense in the middle of the story.

If you maintain the first person narrative, the disjointed flashes of the battle from the main character's POV is probably the best option.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Find some good examples. John Ringo does some good ones in his Paladin of Shadows series. Robert E Howard. Laurell Hamilton in her Anita Blake series. See how best selling authors do them.

 

[CeasarBoobage]

If your character Ray is normally a fun sarcastic guy, laughing while on a walk with his GF/Wife Mary, and you write about their stroll along the river bank, its a pleasant scene. Once the mugger appears, Ray's dark side appears, switch to his evil side. It's not jarring to the reader, and the intensity could make them appreciate the mindset better.

"I love to be with you, Ray." Mary sighed.
"I love to be in you." Ray growled with a smile.

"Hey, can I bum a smoke?" Mugger asks.
Ray shakes his head warily, stepping around him. "Sorry, we don't smoke."
"Make it your wallet and phone then." Mugger hissed, stepping behind Mary and wrapping his arm around her throat.

"Hey, you don't have to do that," Ray's voice wavered as he reached into his pocket. "Here, take my phone."

He dropped it on the ground, and Mugger punched the side of Mary's head and knocked her to the ground. "Hurry up you idiot, I don't have all day."

Mugger pulled a sharpened screwdriver from his jacket and knelt down by Mary, holding it to her throat.

Ray smiled and dropped his phone again. He watched the man's eyes follow it, and Ray giggled to himself as he launched his body forward, kicking the mugger under his chin. Time slowed down for Ray as he watched a tooth leave the man's head, and a beautiful spray of red mist covered his face. Before the other man's body hit the ground, Ray had picked up the sharp tool, stabbing downwards as he landed on his knee next to the mugger.

He smiled darkly to see the dent appear in the man's stomach before his force won out, and the round steel shaft turned pink as it bored into the helpless abdomen. Unable to see anything else outside of his tunnel vision, Ray started to laugh as he plunged the tool into the body of the man, but he couldn't hear his screams, although the look of pain on his face was glorious. Seven, twelve, nineteen times that screwdriver entered the man who had hurt his Mary, and he was only interrupted when he felt a blow to his side, falling across the bloody man.

"Another one?" Ray screamed, his bloodshot eyes only seeing a shape. He lunged at it, driving the tool deep into the other shape's thigh to stop it, then reached up to press his thumb into the eye socket, feeling like he was stabbing a grape with his nail. The body stopped moving, and Ray shot up and bit down on the exposed neck, gurgling as the hot metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He growled in rage, biting harder and pulling away, feeling the flesh ripping between his teeth.

Dropping the body, he yelled in triumph. Everything was a dark pink color, and he could feel a wet warmth covering his face. His body shook as he tried to calm down, and his ragged breathing was barely audible over the sound of his pounding heart.

He didn't fee the twin barbs of steel enter his back, but the jolt of electricity shook away every other feeling. Screaming in pain, he fell to the ground, unconscious before he landed.

---

"Where am I?" Ray asked the officer. "Is this really jail?"

"What do you expect? You killed a well-known mugger, then your wife, then an officer who tried to stop you from killing your wife. You are scum."

"Mary is dead?"

"We saw you do it, and you're on CCTV killing the other two as well."

"My Mary." Ray's other side hissed. "You will pay."

With a yell, Ray ran across the cell, lowering his head just before he impacted the locking plate. He fell to the floor, staring at the pool of red. Only one eye worked, and as his vision faded, he saw a pink curl of brain tissue float by. He cheered himself for avenging Mary, the. All went dark.


-------

OP - is something like that what you're after?

 

[Handley_Page]

To my mind a bit of research might be of use.
You will need something to record a fight or two from Youtube or similar, and something to play the recording back - with some form of 'slow-down' playback.
I use Youtube Downloader and VLC player.

Play it back in slow-mo and watch where the fists / swords / weapons went.

Good Luck

 

[jomar]

Write what you feel...

He looked across the room and realized what it must have felt like when King David gazed upon Bathsheba the first time....

Have you been listening to some Leonard Cohen?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Choreograph the fight. Who. What happens move by move. Physical harm. bodies. Blood. Mayhem. Who does what to who. Weapons. Or hand to hand. Outline reactions. Any dialog. That outline is the skeleton of your fight scene that u can then start building out.

I think this depends on the viewpoint you want to present. If I'm writing from the perspective of a trained fencer, they may be able to describe every move of the fight, as if they were recording a chess game.

But for an inexperienced fighter, a fight might be a confusing blur: "he came at me, there was a BANG, and then I was lying on the floor with my ears ringing. I could feel blood and I thought he'd stabbed me. Then I noticed he wasn't moving, and my wrist hurt with the feeling of recoil. I couldn't even remember pulling the trigger."

 

[CyranoJ]

Unable to write action sequeces in my new story. Help anyone?

I'm sure there is already plenty of good advice in the thread. I'll just share the best advice I ever got about action scenes: make sure they're about the characters first.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful about visualizing the action, making sure the spatial relationships and choreography make sense and so on. Depending on how "realistic" you want to make it, there's lots of commentary on line from people who've advised on films et cetera about how, say, a firefight really works or how a brawl really feels, if you have no direct reference.

But the advice to keep character first always sticks with me. The example this particular writer had in mind, and it's a great example, is the chase scene at the beginning of the Bond film Casino Royale. (The Daniel Craig version.) The action isn't just thrilling: it illustrates, in the most basic and literal way, the characters involved.

Bond's target, a terrorist bomber, is an evader: agile, quick on his feet, a parkour master who slides across the landscape like quicksilver. Bond, on the other hand, is doggedly persistent and bloody-minded: he hammers through walls his target finessed around, solves problems with brute force and a swung wrench and simply guts and lucks his way through as his targets flits and flips and races to escape him. The contrast between them as characters is vividly drawn by the action.

That's what makes a good action scene, for me. Action that's just there for its own sake usually gets boring. (The same is kinda true for sex scenes, in a way. Sex scenes where character and conflict, internal and external, are at play are usually more compelling than just sequences of positions.)

I would also keep in mind that fights tend to come in one of two flavours: one, they're extremely quick and over in one or two moves (think quickdraw competitions or samurai face-offs), which is what will usually happen when all the participants are good at violence; two, they're evenly matched and draw out into a battle of attrition that ends in exhaustion or indecision.