October Novel Prep Challenge

It depends on what feeling you're trying to get across. If there is no struggle at all, your villain may come across as weak. A gun fight isn't necessary, but showing the character's struggle might be important. Will this scene be a huge or important scene in your story? If so, you may want to go the battle route and ham it up.

Action scenes can be tricky and definitely aren't my personal favorite to write. Here are some links I found on writing action scenes:

http://hollylisle.com/pacing-dialogue-and-action-scenes-your-story-at-your-speed...

http://fictionwriting.about.com/od/crafttechnique/tp/actionscenes.htm

They both have good advice. I think the biggest points I usually keep in mind when writing action scenes are to use verbs purposefully (no weak state-of-being verbs) and to keep description to a minimum (which is hard for me; ugh, I can get wordy sometimes... ^^;). Short, snappy sentences will also work wonders. Dialogue should be reasonably sparse, too.

Sensory description is also vital! Smells and sights and sounds will place your reader right in the scene. And what better scene to be in the middle of than a lethal gunfight, right?