  Action/Adventure
This week: Action Packed Thrill-ers Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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Greetings! Welcome to this week's edition of the WDC Action & Adventure Newsletter
Each day is a blank page, an adventure to be written, action and re-action ~ be pro-active. Writing itself is action ~ creating an adventure for your readers to embrace in prose or verse. I'm back again in search of adventure and hope you will share with me this exploration and maybe create one of your own in prose or verse.
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Greetings, fellow thrillseekers. Yes, we weave our adventures for the thrill of the action.
Consider the 'thriller,' where there is action and more action. The story is exciting, dangerous, and suspenseful all at the same time. Action, high stakes, and a ticking clock. What could be better?
Action is fun to envision but takes practice to write. Too fast-paced, and the reader gets lost; too slowly-paced, and the reader gets bored; too over the top, and your readers laugh or, worse, merely shrug and set aside your story. When they pick up a book they want to enter the adventure with your characters, not merely watch them for a scene then move on.
So what goes into writing an action scene? It's more than just puncutuating a bunch of chaotic events with commercials.
 Set the stakes high to fit the payoff your reader will find at the end. Your reader will be left hanging if your hero beats out three attempts on his life by a villain who destroys a power plant, steals a computer chip with the names of 100 counterspies, and rolls over a train loaded with passengers, all for mere money. Let the stakes involved give rise to the extent of the action.
Plan the action scenes and use foreshadowing or conversation to lead your readers to the aciton. For example, if your heroine needs to know karate, bring up those skills throughout the story. Show her using the necessary skills so that when she flips a metal-clad guard and knocks him cold, your readers will believe she did it herself, and not through some last-minute magickal intervention. Let her be the hero and not a rescued heroine, if such is her talent!
Catch your breath, if for but a moment. Give your readers (and characters) a chance to catch their collective breath and to absorb what's happened. If the action is constant and uninterrupted, there's no chance to engage the story itself. A rollercoaster that merely climbs in ever increasing circles becomes ultimately boring ~ where are the dips and pauses where you can raise your hands and scream and even laugh with your seatmate, then climb slowly to the next peak, the car rattling just enough to make you grip the side a little tighter, then at the peak engage the elements as you plunge into the action once again.
Thrill your readers with goals they must attain along the way. Give them a reason to want that next thrill, and a sense of success, or failure of this encounter along the journey to resolve their mission or quest. In other words, don't just blow up a car for the sake of an explosion. Who blew it up, why, what was destroyed, why does it matter, and yes, it needs to matter - does it advance or thwart the adventurer's journey? And once again, make your characters act according to their nature. Suspend disbelief in your readers with credible acts, though they may be untested, but not so fantastical that your reader says 'no way' and loses empathy with the characters.
Thrill with the details that are necessary to the story. If a car is going to crash we wouldn't be listening to a litany of why it's crashing in that particular spot - we'd be hearing the crackle of crumbling metal and the crackling of glass and the smell of flowing gas. See where I'm going here - providing the sensory details to move the story and keep the reader engaged.
Time is relevant. Create a deadline that must be met ~ be it a ticking bomb (literal or figurative), a train arriving, a meeting that must not be met as scheduled ~ and let the reader (and characters) know that something horrid will happen if the deadline is not met. Along the way, the action your hero or villain takes will also have timelines and consequences for meeting or failing to meet them, so your reader will stay engaged in the quest. And remember to keep your characters' (and readers') eyes on the ultimate quest, without too many sideroads to distract them and diminish the importance of the ultimate quest.
Engage your characters in the action and your readers will jump in with them. Use touch, taste, smell, as well as sight as your characters encounter each other and the thrills that both thwart and help them along the way. Your readers will likewise become engaged in the thrill of the chase and the journey to resolve the quest.
I wish you thrills and joy in the crafting of your story and verse.
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Engage the adventure ~ action and thrills in prose and verse ~ and let the writers know they've kept you on board the coaster with a comment or review
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#1610307 by Not Available. |
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|  | Death Wink (13+)
First prize in two contests. A gambler encounters his addiction's end in a deadly game.
#1018243 by Kotaro  |
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Thank you for sharing this exploration with me ~ until we next meet, may your adventures be thrilling and your words ebb and flow like the coaster that thrills with just that bit of hair tingling chill.
Write On!
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Action/Adventure: March 16, 2011 Issue [#4238]
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