Category: Storytelling

Writing Action Scenes

Quan

A good action scene is almost like a miniature story unto itself. I particularly enjoy writing action (I like writing dialogue too), and I have a pretty simple approach to it. Action is conflict, and conflict is the crux of what drives a narrative forward. 

I use a rather simple formula when mapping out and choreographing my action sequences. It’s really just a matter of figuring out your character’s immediate goal, then asking yourself what could possibly go wrong within the parameters of the setting and situation your character is in, and making that scenario happen. After that, you have your character react to the situation,  and then your situation reacts to your character’s action. This is one of the few instances where Murphy’s Law is your friend. 

Whatever the worst thing that can happen to your character is in that moment, make it happen. Then you have to figure out how your character can overcome that problem, after your character has overcome that small setback, make something else go wrong. Rinse, wash, and repeat until your character either works his or her way towards accomplishing their goal, or it becomes clearly evident that there is no way they can possibly, logically complete their task. Then you go inside that character’s head and record his or her thoughts and feelings during this whole sequence. That way you get to relay how high the stakes are in that character’s mind.

Keep your sentences relatively short, because that speeds of the pace of the story. Also, writing with some uptempo, aggressive music in the background helps set the mood too. The goal is to have your reader constantly thinking “Wow he’s in a tight spot! how’s he gonna get out of this?”

Let’s break down each step of this process.

1. Your character’s immediate goal. 

This does not have to be some large or grandiose goal. You’re writing a scene, not a book. The goal can be as simple as getting from one end of a room to another. Just ask yourself what the character needs to right now, and how do they intend to accomplish that goal.

2. What could possibly go wrong?

The key here is putting an obstacle in front of your character that will not only inconvenience them, but prevent the goal from being accomplished altogether. Remember that you’re writing drama here, so trivial obstacles won’t be enough to keep the reader’s attention. Go Big.

3. Make the worst case scenario happen.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Take into account the setting and situation so that your obstacle happens organically. You don’t want a dude trying to go to the store, and then have some aliens come out of nowhere shooting lasers at him if you didn’t set up that possibility earlier in the story. The obstacle has to be logical, and you have to be fair about it: there has to at least appear to be a solution to the obstacle that the character can get to, even if they have to do some thinking and problem solving to get to it. The guys that write MacGyver always made sure that whenever MacGyver needed to cobble something to get out of a fix, the necessary ingredients to do so were within reach.

4. What does your character do about it? And what is going through their mind as they do it?

Writing your character’s response is the crucial element of moving the narrative forward. Be sure to stay true to your character’s personality and mode of operation. A character that is a planner reacts differently from one that is used to thinking on their feet. You want to make sure the actions are consistent and fluid within the setting. Make sure everything flows.
The thoughts and emotions going through your character’s mind is also crucial. The reader wants to see how that person’s mind is working their way through the dilemma. That will give a lot of insight into your character’s personality and thought process. It also lets the reader know what the stakes are and how important it is to the character to figure out how to solve the obstacle.

5. Now what?

Now that your character has made their move and overcome that obstacle, the environment and situation have changed. Every action has a reaction, so this changed environment now creates a new challenge blocking your character’s path. What is that new challenge? Perhaps your heroine escapes from bondage only to now have to find her way out of the building she is being held in without being noticed by her captors. After she finds her way out of the building, now she has to figure out where she is and get some transportation to safety. What dangers are posed by the method of transportation she finds? And so on. This process repeats until either the goal is complete, or there is absolutely no way the goal can be completed.

EXAMPLE TIME: One of the scenes in Godmode features Elijah trying to escape a room full of minotaur-like creatures. His first obstacle in the maze of cubicles he finds himself in. So he has to navigate through that to find the exit. But his curiosity takes him to one experiment chamber, where he is then confronted by his second obstacle, the minotaurs. So his immediate goal of getting out of that room is met with the biggest thing that could go wrong at that moment, which was these savage beastmen looking to slaughter him. So how does Elijah react? He runs, zigzagging through the room, trying to find an exit, some refuge, or a way to fight them off. He finds the latter in the form of a dead security guard with his gun still in the holster. Now the goal is get to the gun before the minotaurs get to him. He reaches the gun…but wait, he can’t get the holster to unclasp so he can get the gun out. And the minotaurs are still coming. So what does he do to react to that? He rips the gun out of its holster and shoots at the minotaurs….and misses every single shot. Now what?

Incorporating this method should bring you some clear, concise action sequences for you to build around. Give it a try and see how well it works.

Oh and if you want to see my example in realtime, grab a copy of Godmode here.

The Osh Moment

Quan

Here’s a little tidbit for all of you writers out there. This is something that I feel is essential to any good story, and something that you must be able to master for your stories to reach their full potential. I personally use it quite a bit.

I call it “The OSH moment.”

What is the OSH moment, you may ask?

The OSH moment is, simply put, the moment where the feces hit the fan. This is the one moment where everything is either going wrong or is about to go wrong, and your protagonist is wondering “what the hell am I going to do now?”

If you look at basically any movie – let’s say a love story – you’ll see this principle in action. You have your boy meets girl moment, but there’s always some twist to the meeting, some secret or tidbit of information that the protagonist has that his or her love interest isn’t privy to. The two have their ups and downs throughout the movie, but everything seems to be progressing along. Then that little tidbit becomes public knowledge, and the truth comes out, and this moment puts the whole relationship in jeopardy. That is the OSH moment, the crossroads where things can go either way.

And it doesn’t just work in romance stories. You have it in your spy novels where the spy’s cover is blown, or in action movies where the hero meets the foe he can’t beat. All of those old “wanna get away?” airline commercials are based on the OSH moment.

You especially get this moment in real life. For instance, I was working at the plant many years back, and the machine I was working on was acting snarky. The maintenance guy comes around to try to fix the durned thing, but can’t quite figure out what’s wrong with it. So he goes out to get some more tools. I’m standing there waiting for him, and I don’t like standing around when I’m getting paid to work. So I pick up one f the components he was looking at, thinking “Well, maybe he missed something.” Yeah, like I’m going to find something a trained mechanic missed. Complete brainfart on my part, but I digress. Almost as soon as I pick the thing up, little bitty parts of the component fall out, bounce off of the machine, and roll over the floor. And when maintenance guy comes back, I just knew he was going to be livid that somebody messed with the part while he was gone.

In my book The Hand You’re Dealt, Tika was tasked by her roommate and best friend to watch over her prized pet goldfish while she was away on Spring break. Tika had stayed behind in the dorm to hang out on campus with her boyfriend. So on the day when her roomate was expected to return, Tika is hanging out with her man and their circle of friends, when she realizes she had forgotten entirely about those fish for the whole week. She rushes back to their dorm room, and finds her roommate there, standing over her dead fishies, with tears in her eyes. Those fish had extra special sentimental value to her roommate, and she trusted her best friend to take care of them. And now they were dead. This does not bode well for Tika.

This is the OSH moment; the moment where you’re most likely to yell

“O’SH…!”

Get it now?

As a writer, you want to have as many of these in your story as possible, especially at the end of chapters or acts or commercial breaks. It’s a crucial element to help ramp up the tension in your story. And you want to have at least one big OSH moment towards the end. Give it a try, and I guarantee your stories will be that much more fun to read.

By the way, there’s a song you should be listening to that illustrates my point perfectly. Check out “Oh Sh*t,” by the Pharcyde. It encompasses everything I just mentioned, and it’s even named after my new term. Check it out.

There Has To Be A Payoff

Quan

Like many others, I’ve always been fascinated by stories that have sad or dour endings. There always seemed to be something deeper, more profound or cathartic about the Protagonist NOT getting what they were striving for the whole story to get. But as a writer, you have to be very careful with how you handle sad endings. It can often be a cop-out because you wrote yourself into a corner and gave your protagonist a problem they can’t solve without some sort of deus ex machina interference. In that instance, you have to better plan your story in advance so your protagonist will have the skills and resources available before hand to find a way out of their ultimate predicament beforehand.

But even if you choose to have the bad ending, there still has to be a payoff of some sorts for the journey that the reader took with you for this whole story. There has to be some modicum of closure, even a small one. As a reader, when you follow a story, you are taking this immense journey through the ups and downs and trials and tribulations of the protagonist as they work to solve the big problem that set the story into motion. You are suffering along with them, experiencing their highs and lows with them, and investing a lot of your emotional and mental energy into their plight. To not get some form of payoff means you had essentially a wasted trip.

This does not mean every story has to have a happy ending. But it does mean that something the protagonist sets out to accomplish must be fulfilled for your reader to feel that the journey was worth the emotional and time investment. Even something minor.

Case in Point: The Empire Strikes Back. We all know that as the movie where the bad guys win. The Rebellion is sent reeling, Han is gone and Luke lost not only his hand but his innocence. But there is still some amount of closure in the film; Luke has enhanced his Jedi Training and faced his first real test. Leia and company were able to find and rescue Luke from Bespin and they gained a new ally in Lando. So it wasn’t a total loss: there was still hope that the good guys could come back and win in movie 3.

This is the advice Dave Barnett, Publisher of Necro Publications and author of “Dead Souls,” Gave me in one of my early drafts of Godmode. This led me to completely overhaul the ending of the book:

“I feel there is absolutely no payoff for the reader. There was no
climax and therefore no denouement. You establish the villain and he just gets away, no real tension or battle. I realize you’re trying to set this up to be a series, but there needs to be some sort of emotional payoff for the reader at the end. You basically have a book with no ending.
I know writers are told to write something that can be a series because it’s easier to sell. This can be a series, obviously, because of what you set up with the cityscape in ruins, but does it need to be? You could have just wrapped it up nicely in this book by at least killing the secretary then there’s a struggle and he almost kills the main villain or does, gets his wife and kid back, THEN is faced with having to survive in this destroyed city or world? Then the rest of the series is trying to get somewhere safe while finding out there’s something even bigger and more sinister at work. So you have something, but to repeat myself, you just to deliver more of a payoff, then set it up for the next book.”

I am currently writing a story where the heroes get their asses kicked at the end of the book. But there is an important side mission they manage to be successful at in the process of said ass-kicking, this is the feelgood moment so the reader doesn’t feel like the story is a total loss.

So next time you think of writing a story (especially a novel or screenplay) with a bad ending, consider giving the reader at least a little something to smile about amidst all the dourness.

Starting Off With A Bang

Quan

The old cliche says you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  I’m quite sure many writing gurus have told you that especially applies to novels. Well, I happen to agree. The first sentence, the first few paragraphs,  the first few pages, and the first chapter all set the tone for the rest of the book, and it is critical for you as a writer to nail them. I for one know I’ve put away a few critically acclaimed books because the first few pages didn’t capture my interest. Your story has a very limited time frame to grab and keep the readers attention. Slow builds are fine, but there still has to be something there to make the reader want to turn the next page.

Once, I had critiqued a friend’s manuscript after Beta reading it. My critique was that the story started too pedestrian. The protagonist spent the first few pages going through the motions of her daily life, and there was nothing particularly engaging about what was happening or who it was happening to. I was not compelled in any way to read any further. If your story suffers from that, then you will have a hard time attracting an agent, publisher or new reader.

So now the question becomes “how can I tailor my beginning to grab the reader’s attention?” There are a few different approaches you can take, and they all work well, depending on the context of your story. Here are a few.

1. Start With Some Action.

If your story has heavy action in it, you can’t go wrong with starting the story with some insane high octane action scenes. The James Bond franchise had practicality made this an art form. You start the story by getting the adrenaline flowing and injecting that sense of excitement and danger right at the outset. This is a great option for Thrillers.

2. Start At A Crucial Moment.

For this one, you need to find one of the most pivotal moments of your story, where everything is hanging in the balance, and start your story right at that predicament. That way the stakes are established right off the bat, the reader is thrown right into the story, and there is even a little mystery added as to how the characters got to that situation. A High Fantasy story I’m working on actually starts at the “Final Battle” between the main hero and his nemesis.

3. Establish The Character

If you are looking to have a slow build for the core situations presented in your book, or your story is more character-driven, then you need to establish who the characters are immediately, and why a reader should care what happens to them. That means giving them an opportunity right off the bat to showcase their personalities, their quirks and their lifestyles. I did this for the first chapter of The Hand You’re Dealt. The story was more about Jay and Tika’s growth as characters than any major plot, so I started the story by introducing Jay (and a bit later Tika), allowing them to talk and interact with people and adjust to their new surroundings. You get a good sense of who they are as people and the charisma they possess, so you are compelled to follow them around and see what happens to them.

4. State The Problem

Another good way to start the story is to dive right into the problem at hand. Every story is really a chronicle of someone trying to solve a problem. So why not just cut to the chase and let the reader know right at the outset what the problem is? I did this for both The Leopard Man and for Double Entry. The Leopard Man started with Ashlynn’s dream about meeting a dangerous man, and Double Entry started with Dana’s ex-boyfriend and baby-father hiring her at his firm. Now the reader is automatically asking themselves where this story is going, and maybe even how did your protags get to this point.

5. Build The World

If you have a compelling, unique, vibrant or quirky setting, you have the option of starting with a description of that world. This one can be a bit tricky to pull off, because you are trying to make your reader care about your setting and that world before they even meet the principal characters. But with this approach, the key is to really highlight what makes your setting different. And you could also immerse your reader into the world, letting them experience all of the sights and sounds and other aspects of life in that setting so they really feel like they are there. This is what I did in Godmode, where the first few scenes were spent with Elijah exploring his bizarre new surroundings. There wasn’t a lot of character exploration at that time, because he was already disoriented by his new surroundings, and a lot of time was spent just reacting to the things he saw, heard or smelled as he made his way through that first floor.

6. Play With Time

This is an expansion of starting at a crucial moment. A trope of storytelling is to start the story near or at the end, and then once the reader/viewer is hooked, rewind the story back to it’s true beginning and go from there, explaining how the protag got to the point where the story started.

Try implementing one or more of these at the start of your story, and you should be able to put together an engaging sequence to grip the reader’s attention and keep them turning the pages. One thing is certain, though: by the end of the first chapter the reader should know what the central problem is, and have a good idea of what the stakes are.