 Action/Adventure: May 19, 2010 Issue [#3752] |
  Action/Adventure
This week: Second By Second Edited by: NanoWriMo2018 Into the Earth  
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| Great Action/Adventure contains great detail. |
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At the heart of all great Action/Adventure is, well action. In order to create action scene, you might want to try slicing it up. Think about it this way, It's like putting increasing the shutter speed on your camera so you can shoot 5 pictures a second but then look at them frame by frame.
Here is an action scene pieced together in Stephenie Myer's New Moon
I took the little package, rolling my eyes at Edward while I stuck my finger under the edge of the paper and jerked it under the tape.
"Shoot," I muttered when the paper sliced my finger; i pulled it out to examine the damage. A single drop of blood oozed from the tiny cut.
For those of you not familiar with New Moon, it's a vampire story. A romance story. A story filled with action and adventure.
As a reader, I KNOW the narrator is a human. I know she's in a house full of vampires. One tiny drop of blood from a paper cut isn't a big deal. However, Meyer slows down the action frame by frame, so the reader has a clearer idea of what's going on. The scenc continues:
It all happened very quickly then.
"No!" Edward roared
He threw himself at me, flinging me back across the table. It fell, as I did, scattering the cake and the presents, the flowers and the plates. I landed in the mess of shattered crystal.
Jasper slammed into Edward, and the sound was like the crash of boulders in a rock slide.
Notice how she added a bit of description to the sound of the two vampires colliding. As readers, we are aware of how one human might sound when he slams into another, but she wants to emphasis the scene by making us realize these are not humans.
Her addition makes us "stare" at the frame for a split second longer.
The entire scene takes up approximately eight paragraphs. She could have just said, "I cut myself, one vampire tried to protect me from one who wanted to attack me. I fell on the piano and then slipped into the broken glass on the floor. But she doesn't. She wants the reader to live the scene.
If you want to create action scene try slicing them up and then piecing them together, one frame at a time.
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| |  | High Stakes (13+)
Marcus knew who had it. He also knew how to get it back. (EDITOR'S PICK ACT. NL)
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I enjoyed your comments on the writing of the epic poem and action/adventure. Wordsworth's The ballad of Simon Lee comes to mind when you mention epic poem...not that the transcendentalists were all that exciting but there you are. One thing I found in common about these epic poems is that they seem to plot along a curve rather than a straight line...that is their journey no matter how long no matter how many obstacles must return to the starting point. There is no rising action/no climax but rather a steady stream of cyclical action. You have done a great job with this. I look forward to your next issue.
Robert Thomas Atwood
Thank you.  . Your comments totally made my day.
EdieLaurence  - Great Newsletter...We must all remember that without conflict their is no story, what makes a story interesting is the obsticles our character faces to resolve the conflict.
P.S. I think I recognize you picture...looks identical to the one I snapped from Clingman's Dome in the Great Smokey Mt. National Park.
Thanks. Excellent point. Also, yes, you DO recognize the picture. I go hiking every chance I get!
journalmethis - gods, and in the Greek gods, is not suppose to be capitalized because that wasn't what they were referred to as. More epithets such as "Poseidon, god of the earthquake" or something like that...
Eeeek. Did I do that? And I know better. You are absolutely correct. Thanks for keeping me straight.
On Writer's Block
bronxbishop - How true this rings. As a writer who does depend on my muse for my weekly paycheck it is good to know I'm not the only one in the world going through it. (sure seems like it) Dry gulching in the middle of a project is such a lonely feeling. Thanks for the advice.
My writer's block can be sooo debilitating. Glad you enjoyed my advice.
Doug Rainbow - I once wrote a poem (not site-posted)about running, a joyful, free experience. I began monitoring my time. I bought a stopwatch. Running lost its joyfulness and I stopped doing it. I don't want that to happen with writing.
There's some much out there with writing...if you get tired of fiction, there's poetry, PR material, creative non-fiction, grant writing...that's the great thing about it. It's hard to imagine getting tired of all of it.  . Thanks for sharing your comments.
Adrianna - Thanks for the newsletter. Another thing I'd suggest when struck by the writers block is to take your last point one step further. Go straight to writing the end, that gives you something to work towards.
Regards
Ade
Excellent idea! Thanks for sharing. |
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