“Feeling is believing,” [the head trauma surgeon] tells a glassy-eyed intern as he fishes around in a knife wound in the back of a man’s knee, trying to augur whether its damage to the vein or the artery.  Watching [the doctor] operate shatters the illusions of TV medicine….

For [one thing], when he operates it is not the stuff of daintiness accompanied by the subdued pings of the EKG machine. He is often elbows deep inside the victim’s cavity, tugging and rooting around as if he’s lost a set of keys. And then there is his bedside manner, which is not so much sympathetic clucking, but rather a combination of pugilism and cold-water truth that has an odd but soothing effect on the patient….

And in the pursuit of saving lives, [the doctor] has donated his life. At 46, he has consistently worked 100 hours per week for more than two decades, which would make him 70 years old in working years. He plays no golf, reads no novels, has few friends and spends more time at the hospital than with his wife and three children.

1.  Does the character try to plan for the superpowers and capabilities of their opponents? On Heroes, allegedly competent and well-equipped organizations routinely stumbled into slaughterfests because they used SWAT-style raids to try to overrun targets with crazy powers.  Let me lay this out right now: any plan that involves close-range combat with somebody that can outrun a fighter jet or stop time is idiotic!  As soon as the target sees anything, (s)he turns on his/her superpower and everybody else dies.  A better plan would be something like killing the target by long-range, perhaps by sniper rifle or bombing the house while the target is asleep.   Alternately, you could interfere with the character’s ability to use his powers.  (On Heroes, it is amazing how rarely the Company uses the power-nullifying Haitian).

Here’s how The Losers dealt with a hotel room that was vulnerable to planted microphones.

2. What do the characters do when things go wrong?  Do they characters have any fallback plans if a mission goes to hell?  Any contingency plans?  Regroup points?  One thing I really like about The Losers is that they build safeties into their plans, like putting a sniper on standby in case security gets wise.  (It always does).   In terms of storytelling, I find that an effective way to put the characters in seemingly insurmountable danger and have them escape without using a deus ex machina (a contrived miracle).

3. What do the characters do about what they don’t know? For example, if there’s a new supervillain around, do the heroes try to figure out what powers he has before engaging him or do they just stumble into combat and hope for the best? In one episode of Heroes, Noah believes that his wife is actually a power-stealing serial killer that learned how to shapeshift.  He asks a question that only she and he would know.  When she gives the correct answer, he realizes that the serial killer might have learned how to read minds as well.  So then he asks a question only his wife and daughter would know, and then calls his daughter for the answer.  That’s slick as hell.

4.  If the characters have time to prepare, what do they do with it? Their options are understandably limited if somebody is knocking over a bank right now, but if there is time, hopefully they do something.  Maybe doing cursory reconnaissance to learn what they’re up against.  Maybe studying old fight footage.  Maybe planning some escape routes.  Maybe preparing some gadgets or tools that will be well-suited to the situation.  Heck, even kiddie villains like Team Rocket sometimes use lightning-proof stuff to capture Pikachu.  If your heroes and/or villains are less competent than villains that routinely get beaten by a middle school dropout and his magical rat, maybe they should look for a different line of work.

5.  Some exceptions to the above.

• The heroes are not particularly well-trained/experienced/competent.  It makes sense if somebody like Peter Parker or another student-turned-superhero isn’t quite as professional about his work as somebody like ex-commando Frank Castle.
• The hero is impulsive.  If so, please have him pay for it in-story.  Maybe he blunders into something or is caught off-guard by a better prepared opponent at some point.  If the character is impulsive but nothing ever comes of it, his opponents are probably idiots.
• Maybe a hero prepares against something but gets nailed by something else.  For example, in the Kickass movie, Big Daddy takes down the security cameras at a mob building but still gets caught on film by a camera planted by a third party.  At least he tried.

1. Eliminate unnecessary description. In particular, scenery and atmospherics tend to slow down a scene.

2. Focus on shorter, simpler sentences. Long, flowing sentences with many clauses will probably tranquilize your readers.

3. Cut back on adjectives and adverbs.

4. Stick to what is actually happening. Not what happened ten minutes ago, not what the character thinks is going to happen, etc. Also, please avoid describing the hero’s plan in the scene that he actually carries it out. If you want him to reveal his plan ahead of time, have him do that ahead of time, during a less intense scene.

5. I recommend making your narrator disappear. Narratorial intrusions tend to slow down the story.

6. Keep the conversations as short and tense as possible. This is definitely not the time for chatting. Also, try to avoid using dialog tags like “Gary said.”

7. I recommend limiting the conversations to two (maybe three) characters. Using a smaller cast will help keep the conversation tight. A smaller cast will also reduce the amount of words you use to choreograph the scene. (If there are five characters in a scene, you’ll probably have to use a dialog tag after every line).

8. Please don’t have the POV character start monologuing. What the character is thinking is much less interesting and immediate than what he is doing.

9. Holly Lisle recommends that you pull your camera in close. When you use description and details, try to focus on something microcosmic rather than about the atmosphere or scene as a whole.

Some writers, particularly novice male authors like myself, tend to write fiction as a series of actions. That is generally a mistake. Although action can be used to engage readers, it can distract you from developing the characters, scenery and dialogue that make a story work.

A piece with too much action frequently reads like a movie script. The author provides little except for what is absolutely necessary to understand the action. Most pieces that begin with an action scene suffer from that problem. The author shows us a character, but frequently doesn’t take the time to establish why we should care about him or his plight.

Likewise, action movies often start with an unintroduced character doing something dramatic and usually dangerous. That does not translate well to novels because movie actors can use their presence to communicate who they are and why the audience should care. Furthermore, movies are inherently more visceral and less cerebral. A novel reader has to create a character from the group up with only the clues you provide.

Many novelists write in an action-dominated way because they fear that an audience will get bored of a character if “nothing happens”. Usually these authors are males and, if asked for examples of stories where “nothing happens,” will almost invariably give works written by females. I think guys are afraid that focusing on details like character and scenery early will make their work into chick lit. I’m only one guy, but I think that I absolutely have a problem with a surplus of action/character-growth vs. exposition and scene-setting.

I think that most action-dominated novelists tend to misunderstand the problem they’re trying to avoid. Pieces that are heavy on exposition/scenery tend to fail for the same reason as action-dominated pieces: the characters are not engrossing. Strong characters are a prerequisite to compelling action. Let me demonstrate this with a quick writing exercise for you: please take five minutes to write a quick fight scene between two guys. Let’s keep it short, at most 250 words.

I’ll give you some time to finish…

Finished?

I’ll be blunt with you. I am at least 95% sure that your action scene sucks. That prompt made it virtually impossible to write a scene that readers would care about. Re-read your fight scene.

WHY ARE THE CHARACTERS FIGHTING?

Your sample probably glossed over this, but it is the main question of any fight scene. Why. Why should we care who wins? Why does this fight matter? Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that you created a scene with a Protagonist punching the hell out of a Villain(s).  Fight scenes with faceless combatants are dreadfully boring.

Fellow Superhero Nation contributor Cadet Davis offers this rebuttal: “characters matter, obviously. However, I still think that my action scene is compelling even though we don’t know why the characters are fighting. In general, I would say that strong language and sentence craft can make a fight interesting even though the characters might be dull.”

I respect Cadet’s opinion, but he is absolutely wrong. You probably have a favorite fight scene. Did you enjoy the fight because the fight itself was memorable and the punches were described in great, vivid detail? Or did you enjoy it because the fight was a fitting climax to a conflict between two great characters? Let me put it another way. Have you ever enjoyed a literary fight between two mediocre characters? I would argue that it’s actually impossible to write a strong fight scene if the characters are disappointing.

Many fantasy authors seem to agree with Davis. Christopher Paolini, the author of Eragon, is a prime offender. Eragon’s climax is a siege similar to the Battle of Helm’s Deep (from Tolkein).

I thought that Paolini’s use of language was uncharacteristically strong in this scene. I found his descriptions of the dragon’s actions vivid, almost exciting. Regardless, the scene failed for several related reasons.

1. The battle was a climax to a banal conflict between an Evil emperor and his oppressed, Good subjects (led by Eragon). By the time Paolini’s battle started, it never could have been anything but an “epic” brawl between mobs of faceless Evil enemies against The Good Guys.
2. It failed to answer this question that had been bothering me since page 1 of Eragon: why is Eragon the hero of this book? There isn’t anything special about Eragon, anything that screams that this story and this world are unquestionably about him. The selection of him as the main character seems completely arbitrary. By contrast, the audience connection with Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader was so strong—even though these characters were themselves archetypical!—that their fights felt intense and climactic even though the fights were technically middling.
3. The scene was like a rolling LOTR homage.

To recap, compelling action requires strong characters. Focusing too heavily on action is a problem because 1) we probably won’t care about whether the character lives and 2) we aren’t invested in his mission. It’s important to spend enough time on character, mood, scenery and world-building to immerse in the story, particularly the story’s conflicts. If we care about the conflict, it’s hard to write a bad fight scene.

I wish you the best in your writing endeavours. If you need beta-review assistance, please e-mail us at superheronation-at-gmail-dot-com. Good luck!