Action

[Bowie20049]

I need help describing action. When I say action I mean things like physical fighting (not verbal).

Things like 1. Sword fighting. 2. Fist fighting. 3. Firearms and whatnot. 4. Fighting with magic.

[Andy]

1. Use all five senses. Use them to describe your characters, their surroundings, etc.

2. Give us your character(s)' thoughts during the fight. Do they feel confident? Worried? How are they measuring up their foes?

3. Don't focus on unimportant things. If it's a firefight, don't spend a paragraph describing a gun. What your readers and characters care more about is whether that gun is about to hurt someone.

That should be fine, for starters. :)

[Jack]

Use actions to describe the surroundings instead of taking a long period of time describing them separately. For instance: I scaled the rocky, moss ridden cliff faced and dodged falling debris with ease (That sorta thing, obviously put more into it than that, that was a poorly thought out example.)

Fist fighting and sword fighting is harder because when every single action is described word for word, it tends to bore the reader. I usually minimize long dragged out fighting scenes in my own work and rather focus on the emotion behind the fight and the characters surroundings instead of every individual move.

Fighting with magic is easier because it is open to so much interpretation that it rarely becomes boring. Describe the magic and it's effects in detail and you can't go wrong. Just be sure that once you have described how a certain type of magic works, you don't go into detail about it again; that can be boring. Of course, it depends on your depiction of magic.

Hope that helps :)

[listophergreene]

Another problem that can happen when constructing fight scenes is leaving traces of your effort. You want the story to transition in and out of the battle, without the onset of the battle being obvious. It should be woven into the scene, not stuck to it.

Somewhere in Brisingr I noticed a fight scene 'beginning'. It was very obvious that the author had begun to write in action prose, rather than use his regular voice. Even if you add action, don't let it sound like it's formulated, continue to use your own voice, just with more intensity.

[Shaun]

A note on Andy's advice: I recommend not trying to use all five every time there is a battle. Sometimes giving preference to certain senses can add to the tension, particularly if what is going on prevents the character from using certain senses. Just thought I'd say that.

Senses are good, but don't overload your action with loads and loads of sensory detail. Action is about...the action.

[thecollector]

Describing those things would be easier to an extent if you were specific. For example, the one Clive Cussler novel involves sword fighting and it uses specific names for each stance. I guess all my advice here is, is just to research it if you haven't already.

[jcsk88]

I like to think that in order to describe an action/fight sequence well, you first need to visualise the entire scene in your mind, making mental notes of every move that your character makes in response to his or her opponent's assault. Next is to convey these actions to the reader in an exciting manner, and I believe this takes an equal amount of good vocabulary, attention to details as well as sensory inputs. How much weightage should be attributed to each of these aspects depends, in my opinion, on your personal style of writing. For me, when I want to describe an action sequence with hard and fast movements, I tend to shorten my sentences and vary my verbs with "blow", "strike", "swipe", "slash" and whatnot, with little bombastic vocabulary or sensory descriptions in between. To me, the short sentences give the reader a sense of urgency, while the lack of sensory descriptions just adds to the flavor of instinctual, spontaneous reactions of a well-trained fighter. Hope this helps. :)

[shadowsmith]

I have the same problem. I was writing a good short story then it got to the sword fighting ,and then it all went down hill.