  Action/Adventure
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Life without action is static, and by necessity, it would therefore be dead. Action writing takes the normal and shares it for all to live vicriously.
Adventure is the spice: the exciting, adrenalin-pumping, thrill that makes one feel so alive. Everyone has an adventuresome spirit. Maybe dreams of excavating some long-lost treasure, visiting a new country, or trying a new flavour of potato chip.  Some of us prefer our adventures to come between the pages of a book, and many of us like to write that adventure.
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** Image ID #1092365 Unavailable **
** Increasing the Effect of Action **
Scene A
Jed had stared at the knife as it entered his chest, before falling to the floor, dead.
Scene B
Disbelief immobilised Jed as he stared at the hunting knife slicing through the tanned flesh toward his heart. It reminded him of Martha carving the family's Christmas turkey, and the smiles of the children as they anticipated the feast. The pain of abandoning Martha cut deeper than any knife could. Martha's gentle voice and the children's laughter echoed in his memory while he slumped to the cabin floor, and there life left him.
Above are two examples of the same scene.
'A' is an action scene. Short, simple, it tells the facts.
'B' is considerably longer. It is an action scene, and it tells the story.
Action/Adventure is a great genre, but it needs to utilise the skills of good story telling. So what are the differences in the two examples?
*** 1. Description
A - knife, chest, fell, floor, dead
B - type of knife, comparison between his flesh and a roast turkey, how he collasped, which floor
*** 2. Emotion
A - no feelings, a clinical relating of the events
B - character is leaving behind family, memories intensify his physical plight, the family is shown to mean more to him than his own life, the loss of his life carries greater meaning.
*** 3. Phrasing
A - 'had' - it is not necessary to show the past tense, and only serves to delay the action. 'before' has the effect of turning the sentence into a list. eg. This happened, then that, before he did something, and afterwards they...
B - avoids passive phrasing and tells the story in a natural progression of events, without a step-by-step introduction of that progression.
Do not cut the life of your action and adventure short by compromising on the reader's experience. Develop characters, show (not tell) the scene, and pay attention to the construction of narrative.
Thanks for reading,
Puditat
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I'm making a remake of a remake of the first story i wrote. And the mind
adventure in your letter is exactly what I'm struggling with! It's so difficult
to determine when the 'rut' should go away or how it should go away...
mind adventure is difficult to control. It's hard to know if my story is
getting boring.
Do you have any more advice on this stuff?
san
To a large extent, I would judge firstly by your own feelings about the story. Put the piece away for a bit, then read through it and try to view it as if you were reviewing someone else's work.
Is it becoming boring to write? If so - it may have gone on too long, or be too repetitious.
Does the whole strengthen the plot, or does it seem to go around in circles? Each bit of mind action should bring some deeper revelation on what the character has, or is, going through. If it is not relevant to the character's history or the climax of the story, it may not be needed.
Has that been said before, in the same way? Some details may need repeating to emphasise a plot point or deepen the issue's relevance, but avoid continually wording it the same way, and limit what details need to be repeated. Anything else probably should be reduced or eliminated.
Then, get some outside opinions. This is crucial. A fresh reader will see things you have not thought of, and they will also point out areas you haven't addressed because you're too familiar with the story/characters.
A good set of books that balences 'mind action' with phyisical action are the Bourne Identity books. Bourne has lost his memory and is trying to figure out his past, (the 'mind atcion') and at the same time people are trying to kill me, ( physical action). Though you'd want to know for the future...
kristay
Thank you for your feedback. I should have thought of this series, for though I have not read the books, I have seen the films a number of times. The 'mind action' is played out through flashbacks and sudden memory recalls.
Another great newsletter. I tend to think of action in the physical terms and forget that inner turmoil within a character can be just as thrilling.
Thank you for featuring my story this week.
cursorblock
You're so very welcome. 
I agree wholeheartedly. Action novels and/or films should be entertaining, not just filled with bloodshed and car crashes, etc.
SHERRI GIBSON 
Thank you! 
Interesting idea. Sounds maybe like what they call a 'psycological thriller'? Like Hitchcock... still very life and death, but not much physical action. I just revised "Invalid Item" that may be a similar idea. Here the danger is largely in the mind of the charcter. Any thoughts?
karabu
Oh yes ... how could I look past Hitchcock?  A good example.
Pudi,
Any adventure is an adventure of the mind because it is happening to the character you are writing about and you get to read what he is thinking or feeling about the whole thing. So in a sense, even what happens on the outside is directly related to what happens on the inside and vice versia 
billwilcox
A point well made, Bill. In fact your comments inspired the topic for this issue.
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Action/Adventure: June 07, 2006 Issue [#1080]
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