Create Tension in Your Novel’s Action Scenes, a Post by R. Clint Peters
- R. Clint Peters, Author
- Nov 4, 2014
- 2 min read
I recently discovered an article posted in Write It Sideways (writeitsideways.com) entitled:
It certainly came at the right time, as I am editing Michigan Connection, a Ryce Dalton novel and will be editing The Alberta Connection and The Montana Connection soon.
I plan to paraphase the tips, with my own comments. If you want to read the complete article, click on the title above. Here are the tips, as I viewed them:
1) Keep your prose as minimalist as possible as you approach the action scenes. Where you might have been usung fifteen to twenty word sentences (the maximum suggested sentence length is twenty) in the pages leading to the action scene, cut the word length down drastically. If you can use five words rather than ten, use them. The short sentences work like the short steps a sprinter uses to start the 100 yard dash.
2) Use action verbs and avoid passive voice like the plague. If you have to use “to be” verbs, be very selective. “To be” verbs will weaken the action you’re trying establish.
3) If you include the characters feelings and emotions, make those feelings and emotions as tight and compact as the prose, and only use internal dialog that compliments the actions. Don’t allow internal dialog to distrupt the action sequences.
4) Keep the action scene sentences short, but toss in a longer sentence from time to time. However, keep the longer sentences short. A sentence with ten or twelve words doesn’t slow down the action scene, while a sentence of twenty words would.
5) Keep your dialog short. Your hero isn’t thinking about a soliloqoy as he pursues the heroine across the deserts of north Africa. To be or not to be. That is not the question.
6) Always remember the first rule of writing: SHOW, DON’T TELL. One suggestion I discovered many months ago was the easy way to SHOW is to use dialog. You don’t tell the story, but your characters do.
7) Throw out your attempts to create long and expansive prose. You’re not growing a field of roses, so keep the flowers out of your pages.
In another article I read several months ago, the author suggested action scenes be charted before they are written. This allows each scene to be planned in detail, replanned, and re-replanned. The second or third time through the planning sessions, a new detail might emerge or a detail that shouldn’t be included can be removed.
Does your novel grab the reader? Is your reader staying up until midnight to see how your hero gets out of his latest problem? Is your reader sneaking a peek two or three pages ahead of the bookmark?
If you’d like to read the complete article, you can click here http://writeitsideways.com/7-tension-building-tips-for-writing-action-scenes/
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