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Over-Describing

When it comes to action, it helps to remind yourself that readers like to inject action with a hint of their own imagination. They can fill in the blanks very easily with written action scenes, because unless otherwise stated, a reader will assume that the characters are moving quickly with a lot of precision and a lot of energy. Try to comb through all of your action scenes and ask what your reader can and can’t infer. By all means, hint at the highlights and intensify focus on important details or symbolic moments, but the action is not why they’re here. They’re here for the progression the action creates. 

Superhuman Pain Tolerance

As it turns out, getting hurts is painful. Getting hit or kicked or stabbed or shot is painful, and unless the injury was very light or minor, it’s gonna hurt for a while. Even if your character is the type to repress their own feelings and ignore their pain, some inability due to pain or injury is unavoidable, especially if your character is simply human. 

No Internal Events

Action scenes are about more than what the characters are doing with their body. It’s mentally taxing, and incredibly revealing how an action scene plays out. Use this to your advantage. Use body language, pacing, emphasis, and expression to show how your character is feeling, what they’re thinking, and portray the larger implication of the scene overall. 

No Stakes

Every action scene needs stakes. It’s a simple truth, but one that is often ignored or excused away. Even if the action scene is for “entertainment”, it needs to play a role in pushing the story forward somehow. Create a smaller conflict that the characters attempt to solve, resulting in the fight scene, and then revealing a larger truth about the overall plot or developing the characters themselves. Someone needs to have something to lose or something to gain. 

Scene Accomplishing Nothing

I touched on this in the last point, but any scene whose sole purpose is “entertainment” will probably be cut in the final draft because out of all moments to make up the final product, a meaningless action scene is the quickest to cheapen it, at least to an audience. There must always be an immediate purpose, and an overarching place in the story. 

Thoughtless Character Actions

What your characters do is revealing. Body language is the hardest to manipulate to suit one’s own agenda, so the way your character fights can do an incredible and efficient job of developing them. Be intentional in your choreography of action scenes. Question why your character would choose to lunge at that moment and shy away in another. Why does this character avoid the physical confrontation versus another character who actively seeks it out as the ultimate solution to the problem?

Destroying The Suspension Of Disbelief

Your reader can let a lot of improbabilities slide, but not everything. There has to be some logic in the way action scenes play out. Where did that helicopter come from and who sent it? How are they all communicating with each other despite being miles apart? Where is this endless hoard of enemy soldiers materializing from? 

Editing Too Kindly

Cut out what doesn’t develop the story or the characters. World building can be an iffy task during an action scene, but occasionally those moments are valuable. Action scenes should never occupy too much space, because there’s only so many words a reader can read in one sitting in which characters attack each other. 

Muddy Descriptions

Be succinct and precise in your description. Avoid filler and excessive context, and please don’t spend paragraphs describing the city center before the upcoming action scene results in it being destroyed. 

Be Intentional With The Tone

Tone is everything. Where the tone begins and where it evolves to is so, so telling about your story and the characters within it. If your action scene starts with a funny moment that is interrupted by an abrupt and unexpected attack, follow through with an appropriate tone like smug victory. If it starts with a devastating loss, the ending should be equally impactful.

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So you have information you want to plant into your story, and you would like to do that through dialogue. Naturally, you'd want to make the dialogue look natural, so that it doesn't scream -> This Piece Of Information <- Will Be Relevant To The Plot Later!!! I never saw any writing advice about this subject, so I thought I’d write up a post about it.

Say, for example, you want to plant the information that Barney is afraid of fridges. Fridges? Jup. That's weird. Jup. Which makes it all the more difficult to bring up in a scene. And what makes it even more difficult, you decided you want this dialogue to take place before the Thing With The Fridge Happens later on, so you're in a pickle. How do you bring up a fear of fridges, when there are no fridges around?

First, I'm going to show you how shoehorning the information in a dialogue would look like.

Don't do this:

Annie and Barney are in a scene that has nothing to do with fridges.

Annie: "By the way," she asked casually, "have I ever asked you what your worst fear is? Since we’re on this quest together, we should know these things about each other."

Barney: "Fridges. They scare the bejeebers out of me."

Annie: "Fridges?" She laughed incredulously. "How come?"

Barney: "Well, one time my brother locked me into a fridge, and I've been afraid ever since."

Annie: “That makes sense, Barney. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Try to avoid using things like “by the way” or “suddenly” in this part of the dialogue, because that’s a shoehorn red flag.

Instead, you want the conversation to flow from something inconspicuous to the information you want to plant and then into at least one other topic.

Do this:

Annie and Barney are in a scene that has nothing to do with fridges, for example they are thrown into a snake pit during their quest.

Barney deals with venomous snakes without a second thought.

Annie, in the corner, trying to get a hold of herself: "I can't believe you're not afraid of those snakes."

Barney: "You just got to know how to handle them."

Annie, in awe: "You're fearless."

Barney, laughs: "Trust me, I'm not. You should see me around fridges."

Annie: "Fridges...?"

Barney: "My brother locked me into one when we were little. I almost suffocated. Never trusted them ever since. Nor my brother, obviously."

The conversation continues about his relationship with his brother, making it seem like that's the important bit. You sneaked the information about Barney's fear for fridges into the dialogue about snakes and his brother.

Let’s break that down, shall we?

This conversation has three topics: snakes, fridges, and Barney’s brother. The snakes and Barney’s brother don’t really matter. They could just as well be completely different topics. (I'll show you later.) Their only function is to ease into the conversation about Barney’s fridge fear and ease out of it without drawing the reader’s attention to its importance.

Topic 1: Something present in this scene that has a thing in common with topic 2

Discussing the snakes feels organic and natural, because they are kind of hard to ignore in this scene. Make the first topic something related to what the characters see, feel, experience in that particular scene… Write a piece of dialogue about topic one.

Topic 2: The information you want to plant

Then transition into the topic switch. How? The topic of fridges and the topic of snakes have one thing in common: fear. Specifically, Annie is afraid of snakes and Barney isn’t, but he is afraid of fridges. Bringing this interesting bit into the conversation changes the topic again, because how can you not go into a sentence like this?

Topic 3: Anything related to topic 2 you can latch onto

The topic is changed yet again after the information you planned to plant. Just let this part of the dialogue run its course. It doesn’t matter much what you do with it, as long as you don’t stop the dialogue right after the moment you delivered the line you needed to deliver. The trick is to make the conversation flow to and from your chosen topic.

Let’s look at another example, something more realistic. You still want to convey the fact that Barney is afraid of fridges, but this time, Annie and Barney are not on a quest, they are in a romance novel.

Barney and Annie are looking out over the ocean. She brought a bottle of wine, a light breeze cools their skin, in the distance, a cargo boat slowly glides along the horizon. It seems like a perfect moment.

Barney raises his glass and compliments Annie: “You pick great wine.” (topic 1)

Annie: “Thanks. I did a wine course last year in my local community center, a series in which we learned all about the different kinds of wine and what to pair it with.”

Barney: “Sounds like fun. You should teach me sometime. Did you get to taste everything?”

Annie: “Yeah, of course. That was the main reason I joined. What about you? Which wine do you prefer?”

Barney: “Oh, I’m not a connaisseur. I like anything but white wines.” (change of topic)

Annie: “Why not?”

Barney, embarrassed: “Red wines are usually kept at room temperature, and white wines go in the fridge.”

Annie, after a second: “I can’t see the problem there.”

Barney, embarrassed: “Ah. Well. I don’t like fridges. Like, not at all. My brother once locked me into one, and – well, let’s say it was a hugely traumatic experience.” (boom, there it is: topic 2)

Annie, confused: “But – How do you keep your food fresh?” (change of topic) (doesn't necessarily have to happen so soon after The Line)

Barney, still embarrassed: “I go to the supermarket every other day.” (topic 3)

The conversation continues about going to the supermarket every other day and foods that Barney can't eat because they spoil too fast outside of the fridge. Annie is surprised to hear how many things can be kept at room temperature for a day or two. (topic 3,5)

That's it, folks :)

I hope this was helpful. Don’t hesitate to ask me any questions, and happy writing! This post was inspired by a question from @therska.

Follow me for more writing advice, or check out my other writing tips here. New topics to write advice about are also always appreciated.

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