Secrets of Writing: Action

Action and conflict are two separate things. Action is the result of conflict. Conflict is the reason for most action.

Many writers think they are the same thing. So they put fights and explosions in their stories as a substitute for meaningful conflict. Audiences walk away from these stories feeling empty. In their heart of hearts they know what they just saw was fireworks, nothing more. There was nothing to remember or care about except for some flashing lights.

When action is used as a substitute for conflict, you have a meaningless story Oscar Wilde said it best: “The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.” Action does serve a purpose, but it should never be used as a device just to keep the story moving along. The true source of momentum isn’t action scenes. Don’t forget that.

When you set out to write action scenes, you need to create a sense of causality. We either need to see what lead up to this action, or we need to understand why it’s happening if we’re thrown in the middle of it. As we discussed before, we need to know who to root for. We need to have a sense of why we should care about any of this. It can’t be just a bunch of flying bullets and crashing cars. Everyone has seen that a million times. What they really want are good reasons for it all.

Action scenes also need to flow in a realistic manner. Too often comic creators do fight scenes that have little or no motivation and don’t make any sense when you follow them. Character A punches character B through a wall. In the next panel, character B kicks character A in the head. How did they get from flying backwards into a wall to flying forward and kicking someone? Whatever happened to physics?

There’s a real lack of sense in many comics today when it comes to action. And just because some of these bad comics sell is no excuse to imitate them. They aren’t selling like they used to and they never sold because they were good stories. They sold because they appealed to a certain market of people who were more interested in making a quick buck than reading them. Or they sold to people who loved the art. 

Good comics require some thought. Action scenes, in order to be effective, need to have an emotional impact as well as a physical one. There must be some kind of repercussions, There must be stakes for the hero and the villain. When you create an action scene, think through all the possible combinations of outcomes. Write them down. Then pick the ideas that are the most original and surprising. We need to move beyond the same old Biff! Pow! Bam!

Also remember that action needs to define the characters, because the choices they make in these actions scenes illustrate the way their mind works under pressure.

Medias Res

This means “In the Middle of things”. It’s a term used mainly for a technique of starting a story in the middle the action. A lot of super-hero comics like to begin media res. It allows the creators to show the different characters in action, so we can see what their powers and abilities are. The secret to making such scenes work is to define who the protagonists are right away. You need to establish this by having them demonstrate their alignment.
It’s far too common these days to read stories where 50 characters are all in a big battle, shouting each others names out loud so we know who is who. But never are we given any insight into the characters themselves. The most we get to know is their powers and goofy costumes. Even little kids want more than that. Audiences need characters they can root for.

Since action in comics is basically a series of still shots of things happening, you need to make it really clear what is happening in each panel and you have to keep it simple. The more detail, the more the reader will be distracted. The more distracted, the longer it takes for them to read the panel. The more time it takes, the slower the scene feels.

Action scenes need to be exciting. So they must have a high emotional charge and they must play fast and loose. Too much dialog and we start to lose steam. The goal should be to build steam. Because the action scene should work toward it’s own climax.

So, when jumping into a scene, Medias Res, remember that you start with momentum, and you need to build toward a pay off. That pay off is the climax of the scene. And the pay off will work a lot better if we get some set up first. We need to know who is who, what is what and why the hell is all this going on.

There will be some instances where you want mystery in the scene, but we still need to know who to root for, even if it turns out to be the wrong person later. If we’re given no reasons to care, we won’t. And you don’t want the Audience to start off the story feeling indifferent.

REMEMBER: Action needs meaning. Conflict is the meaning behind all action

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