4. Action

For the purposes of this seminar, "action" means people doing things. It doesn't have to be dramatic—as far as I'm concerned, someone getting out of bed and making coffee is just as much "action" as a fist fight.

When you narrate action, make sure readers have time to absorb important events. This generally means giving more word-space to what's important, and minimizing the word-space given to things that are less important. Here's a simple swords-and-sorcery example:

After lunch, Jonric went to the training yard for some long-delayed fencing practice. He stabbed and slashed the mannequins a few hundred times, sparred with two cocky juniors who weren't as good as they thought, had a much more interesting session with a grizzled seventy-year-old who turned out to be a retired sergeant-of-the-guard, and was listening to the sergeant describe the weaknesses of Elanthian saber techniques when Lord Tookamun entered the yard.

The sergeant stopped speaking mid-sentence. The juniors broke off their noisy mock battle and vanished through a side door. Jonric looked at the rapier in his hand and wished it didn't have that big button on the tip to prevent it from doing real damage.

Notice how much word-space is devoted to various actions. Lunch is mentioned, but not described because it's not important to the story. Jonric's workout (which might have taken an hour or two) is described in a single sentence—it's a long sentence listing several ways Jonric practiced, but it doesn't go into detail on anything. We get the impression that Jonric is pretty good with a sword, but we don't get any specifics.

Then Lord Tookamun arrives, and immediately we recognize this is going to be important. Why? Because the passage devotes a lot of word-space to his arrival. The first paragraph covers a couple hours of workout; the second paragraph covers no more than five seconds. Proportionately, we've given Tookamun a lot more space. Readers know he's going to be important.

You’ve probably heard the expression “Show, don’t tell.” The passage about Jonric and Tookamun illustrates this point. It never directly states that Tookamun is a scary dude; instead, it shows a number of people reacting fearfully at his arrival. Concrete evidence like that is far more convincing than saying, “Tookamun was the most terrifying man in all the kingdom.”

You'll notice the passage hasn't yet described Tookamun; it only shows what other people do in response to his arrival. In movies, these would be called reaction shots: pictures of people reacting to what has just happened. Movies use reaction shots because of the same principle we've been discussing—to give more screen time to important events, so the audience can absorb that they're important.

Consider, for example, a character getting hit with a bullet. In reality, this only takes a fraction of a second; in movies and books, the event requires a lot more time so it can sink in with the audience. Movies often use the trick of having the character fall in slow motion. They also cut to the faces of people watching, showing their shock and horror. (Sometimes the watchers move in slow motion too.) You might see blood splashing against nice clean walls, or the character who's been shot might say something incoherent before passing out, or the camera might zoom in for a close-up of the body lying on the floor...in other words, Hollywood will do just about anything, no matter how cheesy, to prolong the moment. It's necessary to give the audience time to appreciate the importance of what's just happened.

The same applies to writing. You must give word-space to important events. Word-space tells readers which events are important.

Some moments need to be prolonged any way you can. Does this mean shamelessly padding with filler? Well, yes...sort of. You don't want the filler to be worthless—you want it to heighten the mood, clarify what's just happened, reveal aspects of your characters' personalities—but if you can't think of anything good, you still need to put in that filler when the timing of the situation demands it.

Go back to the example of Jonric and Lord Tookamun. The second paragraph is filler, designed to pad out the moment...but it also sets the mood and tells us something about the relationship between Jonric and Tookamun. Therefore the paragraph develops the story and helps it progress, even though the action of the story is temporarily put into a freeze frame.

Prolonging important moments is necessary in many situations. Consider, for example, a fight scene. Real fights seldom last more than a few seconds—whoever lands the first solid hit usually wins, whether you're using fists, swords, guns, or phasers. But unless you're trying to make a point about the briefness of genuine fights ("I hit him. He fell. End of story."), you want the fight to have enough breadth to make an impression on the reader.

Roger Zelazny once recommended that fight scenes should have at least two sentences of filler for every sentence of genuine action. Otherwise, the fight moves too quickly for readers to "get into" what's happening. Again, this doesn't mean useless filler—it means various kinds of reaction shots and other material that contribute to mood or characterization without actually proceeding to the next tangible action in the fight. Here's an example:

Without saying a word, Lord Tookamun stabbed at Jonric's throat. Tookamun's sword was some kind of Vardic weapon, like a katana except that its blade was blood red. Most of those damned things were enchanted—they were lighter than normal, faster to maneuver, and able to slice mere steel like candlewax. Jonric barely got his own sword up in time, a slanted parry that managed to deflect Tookamun's blow without directly clashing Jonric's blunt rapier against the sharp Vardic blade-edge. Even so, the katana shaved a thin sliver of steel off the rapier as it slid up the practice sword's length. Jonric knew if he wanted to survive the next five seconds, he'd better come up with a way to even the odds.

As you can see, this paragraph has two actions: Tookamun attacks and Jonric parries. The pattern of the paragraph is

    Action sentence
    Filler sentence
    Filler sentence
    Action sentence
    Filler sentence
    Filler sentence

However, the filler sentences are not wasted space. The first two filler sentences provide background information about Tookamun's weapon. They heighten the suspense by showing that Jonric (with his pitiful practice sword) is in big trouble. The next filler sentence confirms that Tookamun's blade is really bad news—it actually carves a piece off Jonric's rapier. The final filler sentence is a reaction shot, telling how Jonric feels about all this and presumably leading to a new paragraph where Jonric will try some clever tactic to save himself.

What I've just described isn't a formula that must be slavishly obeyed. Variety is essential—if you just keep going action-filler-filler, action-filler-filler, the scene gets boringly repetitive. You should vary the pattern, vary the sentence lengths, throw in interruptions, break for brief verbal exchanges ("Why are you doing this?"), etc., etc. That's where writing becomes an art rather than a cookbook.

But you should understand the purpose that filler sentences serve in establishing a good pace for the action. Once you've developed a feeling for pace, you can come up with your own original techniques for controlling the action's speed in the reader's perception.

Once again, I want to note that I've been using extreme examples in this section—fights, overt hostility, etc. I'm only doing that because the issues stand out more clearly at a high level of action. The same principles apply to subtle actions: quiet walks, lingering glances, the whole Merchant-Ivory repertoire.

Important moments should be prolonged in comparison to less important moments. That means using more word-space so the important moments linger longer with the reader.

An Exception: Sometimes you don't want the reader to realize something is important. If you're writing a murder mystery, for example, you might downplay vital clues by only mentioning them briefly in the midst of other action that seems far more important.

There's a fine art to this—the best writers know how to bring up a clue just long enough that readers will remember it when the mystery is finally solved, but not so long that readers will recognize it as a big red flag.

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