action scenes

7374538448_ec1f26f140_k — Flickr Photo by Jonathan Kos-Read

Please welcome Jessi Rita Hoffman as our guest today. Jessi is a developmental editor and story coach who helps authors clarify and elevate their material. She is a former publishing house editor in chief and an optioned screenwriter. Her clients have produced manuscripts that have garnered agents, book deals, literary awards, and bestseller status.

Clunking action scenes are one of the most common problems I come across as a book editor–whether the author is writing a thriller or trying to pull off an exciting scene in some other genre. In this article, I explain what causes the difficulties and how to tone up a limping action scene.”

Connect with Jessi on her website or blog and on Twitter.

How to Write a Thrilling Action Scene

Whether you write YA, romance, fantasy, or actual thrillers, there are times in any novel where an action scene is called for. These scenes can be among the hardest to write. What runs like an exciting movie in your imagination can end up clunking along on the page, causing even your own eyes to glaze over. And we all know dull action scenes are the kiss of death for any story.

So what goes wrong in action-scene writing? What can you do to avoid the pitfalls, and how do you tone up a limping action scene ?

In this article, I’ll share the common errors I’ve observed writers make in my work as a book editor and writing coach. Surprisingly, it’s usually not what is missing in an action scene that’s the problem—it’s what is there that needs to be removed.

Why? Because an action scene needs to pop. It cannot tolerate clutter of any kind. Other sorts of scenes are more forgiving, but action scenes must speed across the page with the pace of the action they describe. For that, there can’t be interference. Even a few minor flaws are enough to weigh down the writing and spoil the tension. Typically, the problem with action scenes is not lack of imagination. It’s lack of translation—translation of the writer’s vision to the page.

Here’s the awkward first draft of an action scene written by one of my clients, an aspiring novelist:

[Read more…]

CG Blake is a writer with thirty years of writing and editing experience. He published his first novel, Small Change, in 2012, and his second novel, A Prayer for Maura, is due out in January of 2016. His interest in family dynamics has led CG to choose family sagas as his main genre. Among his favorite authors are Anne Tyler, Alice McDermott, Alice Munro, Michael Chabon, and Richard Ford. CG lives outside of Hartford, Connecticut. A former newspaper reporter, he is employed as an association management executive in the higher education sector.

As a writer, I’ve noted the similarities between fiction writing and the performing arts. I remember my Speech & Drama teacher in high school taught us how to block scenes on the stage and the physical placement of actors during a scene. These lessons apply to how we set up scenes in a novel.

Connect with CG on Twitter and on his blog.

Stage Directions in Fiction: Where is the MC?

You’re reading a novel and a character appears out of nowhere and joins a conversation. Or, a character sitting in the living room in the scene is suddenly standing by the door. Have you ever felt disoriented by characters who jump on or off the page with no reference to how they got there? Has a beta reader or an editor ever flagged you on the mysterious movements of characters in your scenes?

[pullquote]A member of my writer’s group submitted a piece in which the point-of-view character looked over the shoulder of his wife, who was seated in the corner of a room with a wall behind her. He was looking at something, but the only thing behind his wife was the wall. What was he looking at? I was confused. [/pullquote]

A member of my writer’s group submitted a piece in which the point-of-view character looked over the shoulder of his wife, who was seated in the corner of a room with a wall behind her. He was looking at something, but the only thing behind his wife was the wall. What was he looking at? I was confused. The reference to the character looking over his wife’s shoulder at a wall took me right out of the story.

In my own work-in-progress, I must have read the opening scene a dozen times before I discovered the main character at one point was standing in the kitchen of her family home, putting an English muffin in the toaster. Seconds later, she was seated at the kitchen table, and I had not described how she had gotten there.

What we’re talking about here is an often overlooked aspect of fiction writing—stage direction. [Read more…]