How to Write Great Action Scenes
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Try for freeAction scenes are an important part of any book or movie, and you must write them correctly for the audience to enjoy them. This is where the character’s personality development comes into play. It’s not just about how much action there is, but why it matters and what it does for the story.
You can use action scenes as a bridge between two different parts of the plot, or they may serve as the climax of a scene.
This guide talks about how to write an action scene. You’ll get some tips and great advice on writing effective action scenes to keep your readers hooked.
- How to Write Action Scenes
- Example: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
- Elements of Action Scenes
- What are the Types of Fight Styles?
- Final Remarks
- FAQs
How to Write Action Scenes
No matter which type of fighting style (find more details below) and the fight scene you opt for, the write-up has to grab the readers’ attention. Depending on whether it is a book or a novel, the details will change. However, the writing style and tone remain the same.
Below are some essential tips for writing a good fight scene.
1. Research
It is important to do a lot of research before writing an action sequence. You can do this by looking at other books and movies that have excellent fight scenes. You can even consult with experts on the subject matter in question.
Researching will give you ideas for describing moves. For example, what it would feel like if the character punched someone in the stomach or how they might defend themselves from being choked.
It also gives you insight into various fighting styles so that your characters are not just throwing punches at each other. Rather they would be doing something more realistic while still keeping things entertaining for readers.
2. Think about Consequences
It is important to think about the consequences of what people are doing. For example, if someone throws a punch at another character, it will impact that person or character’s face and body. Moreover, it will also have an impact on their mental and emotional state.
Understanding how these things interact with one another can give you a better idea of your characters’ motivations as they go through various fighting sequences.
Characters should not just be throwing punches without consequence, words, or thought put into them for the sake of entertainment. This would mean that violence does not weigh on our society – something we cannot afford now more than ever.
Think carefully about what happens when two fighters engage each other. This way, you do not end up having any unintentional messages behind some scenes.
3. Show, Don’t Tell
Make a layout of the action scenes you want to write about. This could be a diagram showing the various positions of people in different fighting scenes. It could also be just some rough sketches if you are feeling more artistic.
You must know what your characters are doing and where they stand at any given moment. This will make it easier for us, as an audience, to understand how events unfold. Writers should avoid choreography at all costs. This is the time to show your writing skills and take the story forward.
You do not have to include every detail in the write-up; you just have to put enough to help the readers visualize. It is necessary to have a general idea of what you want to happen in the next scene and how it should be shown.
Use Squibler to include literal examples around your action scene. The Smart Writer will generate a relevant plot for you adding more depth and examples to intensify your scene. You can also generate a whole book with Squibler within 15 minutes. You just need to mention the title and the number of pages. You can also use a template to generate a book or screenplay.
4. Add Visuals
When painting the picture, do not leave out the important details. You need to help them paint a picture of the action and fight scene going on. Visualization is important when you write these actions and fight scenes. The reader should visualize the characters, where they are, and what is going on.
If you want your readers to feel like they are there while reading, you must put in all of these sensory details. People can picture themselves in whatever environment or situation they have created.
For example, “the man threw his sword at her. She dodged with a graceful move some might say was inhuman for a human being. He drew his blade back from the ground swiftly before lunging towards her again.”
There is no action without movement. When writing an action scene, make sure that verbs match up with nouns to create this sense of motion.
You can enhance your writing process with Squibler’s visualization tool. Highlight text and create an image or short video based on the text you highlight from your story. See your character’s development, settings, and plot elements in a whole new way.
The AI tool will work around the fight scene that you wrote to help the reader visualize the plot. Here’s an example of how it works:
5. Work on Character’s Reaction
When describing a physical scene, you need to keep the emotions alive. How are they feeling during the fight? What do they feel when they realize a loved one betrayed them?
Having reactions to the actions in an action scene will add more depth to your scenes. Action Scenes are a delicate balance between showing and telling the reader what is happening at a particular moment in time.
You must put in all of these details so people can picture themselves around whatever environment or situation you have created. The character’s reaction is essential to a good story and an established story structure.
Use Squibler to add more depth and emotions to your storyline. Just highlight the text and choose all the senses that you want to evoke. Squibler will help you describe your fight scene in terms of sight, smell, taste, sound, touch, or even using a poetic metaphor. In seconds, your content will grow richer and more detailed, resonating with your readers. This way the readers can understand what would the fight smell, appear, hear, and look like.
6. Add Realistic Emotions
Emotion does not go away in an action scene; it is quite enhanced. However, the use of emotions needs to be realistic. If a character is in a fight, they are feeling an adrenaline rush. They might be happy to hurt the other person or afraid of being harmed themselves.
You must keep these emotions in mind when writing your action scenes. It will make them more realistic for readers and help create believability with what is happening on the page.
There can always be an emotional response from characters during an action scene as well. This could manifest itself through anger, fear, relief, love, or any other reactions. This is because people don’t just turn off their feelings when things get rough.
There needs to be still something going inside their heads so that they feel connected with the world and the story.
You can expand, describe, and rewrite your text with Squibler to add more intensity to the emotional plots. Let the AI do all the hard work of adding emotions and details and you can spend more time finishing the plot.
7. Become a Little Unreal
Action scenes are difficult to write because they need to be fast-paced and full of action. This is where we can get “unreal” as the writer, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in fiction writing. There need to be little escapes from the real life. However, what makes you a better writer is understanding that thin line between real and unreal.
The reader needs to feel like they’re on air during an action scene to become more exciting for them. They should read through these sections quickly while still paying attention and engaging with what’s happening between the two characters involved.
It might take the writer some trial and error before finding out how much detail your readers want from this type of scene. It also requires research if any specific details make everything worse (i.e., gore).
Example: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
In The Silver Chair, there’s a scene where Eustace is running from the Green Lady. He falls, and she grabs him by his hair and drags him across the ground before he finally gets away. This scene was very effective in showing how helpless Eustace felt at the time.
It also showed the Green Lady’s strength as an antagonist. This made it even more frightening for readers to think of what might happen next. Such a kind of action-making is particularly strong when we’re dealing with a different type of situation.
The writer can’t solve these situations just through dialogue or analyzing them from afar on paper which you should do too! Ergo, fight scenes need to have a lot going on. You should be able to put your reader in the character’s shoes!
Elements of Action Scenes
Before we start talking about the right way to write fight scenes and action sequences, let us understand the basic difference between the two elements of writing an action scene.
Fight Scene
These are the scenes where two characters fight each other and have a series of actions. They build up in intensity throughout the entire fight scene until one character finally defeats another (or vice versa).
Action Sequence
This is when there’s a long, intricate sequence that doesn’t focus on any main character or development. Instead, it focuses on an epic battle or event happening over time. It can include anything from sword fights to car chases.
A good action scene contains small and good fight scenes that build up to an action sequence.
What are the Types of Fight Styles?
When you start writing an action scene, you need to know which types of fights you want to include. Below are five major types of fight styles.
1. Hand-to-Hand Fights
This is a fight where both the characters use fists and other body parts to hit each other. It is used when the good and bad guys get into a brawl or fistfight.
A good example of the best fight scenes is the martial arts fights commonly done by Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee. It could also be boxing matches like the one in Raging Bull.
2. Weapon Fights
This is when one or both characters use weapons such as swords, daggers, or guns. Sometimes, one of the characters might even be bare-handed.
One example of this could be from The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Here, Wesley fights with Inigo Montoya, a hero who has a sword. Most battle scenes fall under this category.
3. Sci-Fi Fights
This is what you traditionally see in science fantasy setting or fiction films like Star Wars. It’s typically an alien creature fighting against a man of the earth. But sometimes, it can also be a conflict between two people who have different powers from outer space.
When you think about sci-fi fights, the first example that comes to mind is Star Wars. Here, Darth Vader is fighting Obi-Wan Kenobi, which is a real fight that contains the use of supernatural elements.
One great example here is from Star Wars Episode IV – Return of the Jedi by George Lucas when Luke Skywalker fights with Darth Vader on Death Star II/Star Destroyer II after he was rescued from Jabba.
4. Active Fights
These are fights that happen on the run. It means that the characters would go through multiple locations in the fight. This is perhaps one of the most thrilling fighting styles. To write a fight scene, you will often see a chase scene along with the character’s motivations.
An example of active fights would be the chapter Fight Club from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. This book is about people who practice fighting as a form of release and entertainment in their dystopian society. Here books are outlawed, so all they did was watch TV.
The fighting scenes take place when a character challenges another to a duel at his apartment on the fifth floor. They run through each room of his house while climbing up the stairway to get higher ground. They then jump out onto the balcony for more space before going back inside again. This is until he reaches the top floor and jumps off the roof into the alley below.
Final Remarks
Action Scenes should be intense and full of detail. They should be like a scene from an episode of Game of Thrones or Harry Potter. When writing action, it is important not just for the character but also for readers to feel what the character is feeling.
Make sure that enough is going on, so people don’t get bored while reading. Just an exchange of dialogue between two people is not enough. There need to be tons happening around them, too, if you want your audience engaged!
FAQs
Here is a list of questions that authors ask about writing action scenes:
What is the average length of an action scene?
It depends on the genre and what type of action you’re writing. If it’s a movie fight scene, then there can be longer sentences and sometimes might be as short as 30 seconds long.
On the other hand, if it’s an epic fantasy novel with sword fighting, then those scenes can take up large chunks of time and pages in your story.
Length doesn’t seem to matter too much because readers will get sucked into wanting to know what happens next!
How do you write an action scene for a screenplay?
There are a lot of different ways to write fighting scenes for movies. If you’re writing an action scene in the script, there will be short moments where the characters talk and interact. The screenwriter makes them interact before launching into these big confrontations.
The camera moves around as they move so that we can feel like we’re right in the middle of it all! Hollywood directors do this often and have great success doing so. This is because it’s not easy to sustain viewer interest without showing some development happening on screen.
These small snippets make them more real and alive. They don’t just stand or sit still while talking. Instead, they walk about and shake their hands out after punching someone.
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