LMB on story action

[jeriendhal]

The reader-response from the skiffy crowd so far has been exactly as my hypothesis predicted -- once the focus shifted back to the political in Book 3, they perked up and decided it was really a story after all. Except for the usual holdouts, who only process action as significant when it takes the form of "guys hitting each other", who are likely not the audience for these books in the first place. Although I am reminded of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's tart description of action scenes, roughly paraphrased: "The story is going along, but then stops while guys hit each other. Guys hit each other for three pages, then stop. The story starts again." (I've been watching a bit of shonen (that is, boys') anime lately, and I must say that describes those episodes to a T.)

Which might be more interesting if you are a guy, true. I'm reminded of all those nature specials showing mountain rams madly bashing heads, while the harems of ewes stand around in postures of unutterable boredom. They'll get the good genes regardless; they don't have to care. But I digress.
-Lois McMaster Bujold, 2008 Worldcon GoH speech

That explains better than I can why I hate writing fight scenes. There's violence, but in the end nothing actually happens in the character's story arc until the fight stops and they pick up the pieces.

Comments

[david-wisdom.livejournal.com]

While he's primarily talking about screenwriting, John Rogers has an excellent take on action scenes which he summarizes as:

"Don't write action scenes. Write suspense scenes that require action to resolve."

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

*follows links from links* You just caused me to acquire multiple *hours* of fun reading. Thank you.

[david-wisdom.livejournal.com]

I live but to serve.

Sadly, Rogers' output has slowed in the past few months, but as he's hard at work on his television series it's hard to fault him.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Sage advice. I need to follow it more often. Thanks for the link.

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

Clausewitz: War is politics carried on by other means.

If there's no drama in the fight, it's not a proper fight, it's just eye candy.

[chaypeta.livejournal.com]

Occassionally fight scenes are just fun all on there own. Any Jackie Chan movie for instance. (Watched the Forbidden Kingdom last night and loved it.)

Matthew Reilly has the knack of writing a book which is mostly one long action scene e.g. Ice Station.

I think writing an action scene is like any other aspect of the book, it takes skill and creativity to come up with something original to really suck the reader in. Weaving in suspense is a good start.