Action sequences and fight scenes are a necessary element of many genres of stories, but they are also tricky to write. In fact, some published authors write terrible action sequences.

Mistakes

Let’s begin by examining a passage from Eldest.

The monsters had the advantage of surprise and quickly cut down four men, forcing the rest of the warriors, men and dwarves alike, to cluster around Ajihad in an attempt to protect him. Swords and axes clashed as the groups pressed together. Light flashed from one of the Twins, and an Urgal fell, clutching the stump of his severed arm.

For a minute, it seemed the defenders would be able to resist the Urgals, but then a swirl of motion disturbed the air, like a faint band of mist wrapping itself around the combatants. When it cleared, only four warriors were standing: Ajihad, the Twins, and Murtagh. The Urgals converged on them, blocking Eragon’s view as he stared with rising horror and fear. (p. 10)

So, as you might have guessed, this is a poor action sequence. I could make a long list of why this is so, so I will.

Lack of detail.

“The monsters had the advantage of surprise and quickly cut down four men.” How? How were the men cut down? How many Urgals cut down four men? Did they cut down four men in an organized thrust of halberds? Did a bunch of them just run in with machetes? The point of a fight scene to convey the movement of the fight to the reader. My mental image of this line, as it is written is, “Four Urgals step up together, raise their swords, and behead four men.” Real exciting.

“Swords and axes clashed as the groups pressed together.”

“but then a swirl of motion disturbed the air, like a faint band of mist wrapping itself around the combatants. When it cleared, only four warriors were standing” Have you ever watched one of those really old animated cartoons, like Tom and Jerry? Often when the characters got in a fight, you would see that cheesy dust cloud and an occasional limb, instead of the actual fight. This was for two reasons. Animating an actual fight is a lot of work, and animation was hard back then. And also because the animators thought some of the fighting was inappropriate for adults. It’s almost like this book was written in a really lazy way, and portraying actual combat would be too much work, or this book desperately wants to be a young adults novel, which I guess it is.

Sentence Length

In a fight scene sentences should be kept short. More on this later.

Bad Writing for Plot Convenience

Bad tactics. For battle trained warriors, these people demonstrate a stunning lack of tactics. Since it should be obvious that the urgal’s are trying to kill Ajihad his men shouldn’t be clustering around him. The Urgals start behind the men. So if Ajihad’s men really want to save him, they should form a line to block the Urgals, allowing Ajihad to run ahead and back to safety. But since Ajihad’s death was a plot device, it doesn’t matter.

Spacial inconsistency. “The Urgals converged on them, blocking Eragon’s view.” As I recall, Ajihad was already surrounded by tons of men, dwarves, and Urgals. Why is it that only now Eragon’s view is bad? Because him not seeing Murtagh and the twins escape is another plot device.

Now, let’s address some of these points, and see how we might be able to fix them.

Detail

A fight scene is all about conveying detail, but a different kind of detail than normal description.

Consider:

“Jaecyn avoided the sword. The sword was pure steel, wrought in steamforges before the plague, and it was decorated with gold leaf and emeralds. Jaecyn attacked.”

Versus:

“Jaecyn avoided the sword. Jaecyn attacked.”

Which do we prefer? The first conveys more information, but at a high cost. The flow of the fight is ruined by the description. In a longer description of a fight, where the tempo is established, this would stop the action dead. This actually applies to more than just action sequences. Generally long blocks of description disrupt the story.

Now consider:

“Jaecyn avoided the sword. Jaecyn attacked.”

And then:

“Jaecyn shifted his torso right to avoid the stab, and cut at Lord Strent’s extended arm.”

Again, we prefer the second choice. Instead of using the vague terms “avoid”,“attack” some of the actual movement is shown. This is the kind of detail that we need. However, this still isn’t where we want it.

Actors vs. Actions

When writing these scenes, verbs need to be attributed to the actors.

This has half of it:

“Jaecyn shifted his torso right to avoid the stab, and cut at Lord Strent’s extended arm.”

This is better:

“Lord Strent thrust his sword arm forward to stab. Jaecyn shifted his torso right to avoid the stab, and cut at Lord Strent’s extended arm.”

Now the action is actually attributed to someone, and it isn’t just mysteriously there. Now we have a problem, the sentences are long and clunky.

Even better:

“Lord Strent thrust his sword forward to stab. Jaecyn shifted his torso right to avoid the stab, and cut at the extended arm.”

For the purposes of imagining this scene, we only need to know Jaecyn shifted right, and not something slightly different and more specific. This cuts down on clunky-ness in the sentence. Further, now that the action is clearer, we don’t have to signal that an action is made to “attack” or “Evade” or such nonsense.

“Lord Strent thrust his sword forward. Jaecyn shifted right, and cut at the extended arm.”

This still isn’t perfect, but we will stop here for the moment. We will further refine this in part two of the article.

Part two will include timing, sentence length, keeping track of the environment, and the larger picture.

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Comment

  1. Kitty on 15 September 2008, 19:45 said:

    Yay he posted it!

    Great as usual. Action scenes are pretty foreign to me so I’ll have to stay tuned :B

  2. Spanman on 16 September 2008, 17:21 said:

    Part two please! :D

  3. Corsair on 20 September 2008, 05:37 said:

    Good advice, Sly. I don’t have all that much trouble writing action scenes, but I think you hit the nail on the head, at any rate.

  4. SlyShy on 20 September 2008, 23:07 said:

    Yeah, I’ve seen your RP writing. Your action scenes are good. :)

  5. Rebecca on 16 June 2009, 22:29 said:

    Oh this is wonderful! Action scenes are very difficult for me. This is some of the best advice I’ve found in a long time.
    Thank you so much, Sly!
    I must parrot Spanman: Part two (pretty) please! :D

  6. jbaker475 on 23 June 2009, 15:55 said:

    I have to echo Rebecca’s statement. It’s easy for me to visualize a action scene, but always insanely difficult for me to put it into words that other people will be able to understand, and give the necessary details. Another fantastic article on writing, from an always fantastic website! :)

  7. The Tiler on 13 August 2009, 06:54 said:

    I would say that Brent Weeks does a fairly decent job of doing action scenes. Let me pull out an example with a bit of an intro:
    Money? What did Logan know about money? He’d had money every day of his life.One of his worn-out gloves could be sold to feed a guild rat for months. Kylar let hot rage wash through his blood. Logan didn’t know anything- and yet he couldn’t be more right.
    Kylar leapt forward at the exact moment the horn blew, not that he cared whether he was following the rules. Logan began to draw his sword, but Kylar didn’t bother. He launched himself forward with a lunging kick at Logan’s sword hand.
    The kick connected before Logan had the sword half-way out of the sheath. It smacked the hilt…[Fast forward]
    Kylar slashed viciously across Logan’s left kidney and then his right. The sword was warded, so it didn’t cut of course, but it was still like getting smacked with a cudgel.

    That’s just a tidbit, and there’s plenty more in the Night Angel Trilogy.

    OHOHOHOH
    Take a look at Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn!