Speaker 1: Welcome back to my channel, my name is Carly Stevens, I'm the author of The Young Adult Fantasy Fury and Rising, and this is English Nerd. So today I wanted to talk about how to write a really good action scene. Now before I get into some of the things that have worked for me, I have read action scenes that break a lot of these rules and still end up being really good, so you can take all this advice with a grain of salt, but I have gotten really good feedback on the action in Fury and Rising, it's something that my editor really loved, so here are some of the things that I enjoy reading and that have worked for my action scenes as well. So if you struggle with them, here are some tips so that you can improve those. Okay, first of all, and probably this is the most important thing, is that you should make sure that the stakes are obvious, like what is at stake if this action scene, this fight, goes poorly, if it doesn't go their way. So make sure that there is investment on the reader's part, that it's not just something cool that's exploding, I mean I like a good explosion, but if I don't care about any of the things that are exploding or the people at stake, then it doesn't really matter to me. So make sure that those stakes are super clear. Secondly, make sure that it is also clear who's doing what action. Don't play the pronoun game here, you might feel like you're being repetitive if you use names over and over again, but I would still advise you to use names if there's any possibility of confusion. There are some ways to get around using characters' names instead of pronouns over and over and over again, but the key is just make sure that it is super clear who's doing what. Because very few things take you out of an action scene more quickly than not knowing what's going on. Just literally, who is the one who threw the punch at whom? Thirdly, and to me this is the most important stylistic thing, stay in really close POV, so point of view. In other words, make sure that your reader feels like they are inside one of the characters. This is not the time to say, this person threw the punch at this person, and then this person punched back. Instead, what I would suggest, what's worked for me is staying inside the character's head, so what is, what are they thinking, what are they feeling, what are they tasting and hearing and seeing, and how are their injuries affecting them as they're in this fight or they're running from this person. So give as many details as you can as far as the senses go, and don't be afraid to explain that inner monologue either. I mean, don't spend an endless amount of time in somebody's head if there's actual action going on, but for instance, there's a scene in Furion Rising where Furion is ambushed, I'm not going to give you a lot of details, but he's ambushed and he has to improvise how he's going to take on multiple opponents at once, and all he has is one little knife, so that's not going to do it. So he has to kind of take inventory of what's around him, figure out what could be used as a weapon, how many people are behind him, how many people are in front of him, what can he do to distract, and so getting a little bit of that inner monologue gets the reader involved in trying to figure out what would they do in that situation, and I think it provides more buy-in on the reader's part. So that's something that is, in my opinion, super important for being invested in any sort of action scene. Along with that, don't forget to mention how the reader feels emotionally during the scene. Is there any reason why they should feel conflicted at this moment? You don't need to spend a lot of time on this necessarily, but having some emotion along the way, in addition to feeling physically like, oh no, I have a sword cut on my shoulder or something, is another good way to get your readers involved. So next, I wanted to give some tips as far as ways, like concrete ways, to write these action scenes, stylistically speaking. So some things that I've used and seen that have been effective are short paragraph breaks. So normally you have kind of mid-sized paragraphs, maybe a variety, but with action scenes, you generally want to make those paragraphs a little shorter because it's faster to read. It'll speed up your reader's experience with that extra white space. It's just a subconscious way to get them a bit breathless along with the characters. Another thing that's important is using active verbs. So I've said this in other videos, but avoiding passive voice and even progressive form, which is instead of I run, it's I am running, or instead of they sat down, it's they were sitting. So if you can cut down on those to be verbs, this was this, and instead use active verbs, then it will make the action more immediate, more visceral, and it's a pretty simple way to do that. Something else that I often do is use shorter, not only shorter paragraphs, but shorter sentences as well, even fragments. So I don't use an enormous number of fragments in my book. I do use some, definitely, but I use more during action scenes because I feel like you wouldn't have the leisure to think in full sentences necessarily or even move in complete movements if you're in the middle of a fight, maybe you're stopped. So having fragments is another way of creating that kind of urgency that you want in a fight scene that you're in the middle of. Okay, just one last piece of advice, and that is to do a little bit of research. If your action scene involves something like guns or a particular kind of martial arts style or police procedure or something that is particular, you know, there are ways that this is supposed to work, then do a little bit of research, you know, interview a soldier about how this actually would go down, or just look it up online. My fights, conveniently, don't really fit any of those styles, so I have a bit more freedom to do what I want, but especially if you're writing something that's contemporary that you want to be realistic, go that little bit of extra mile, because if you, you know, if your book takes off, if you have a lot of readers eventually, which would be awesome, right? Then inevitably somebody is going to be there who knows how that particular gun is supposed to work, and if you are not matching up with the reality of how that gun works, then it's going to totally take them out of the story. It's going to perhaps even ruin your credibility as an author. So it's worth doing some research. You don't necessarily need to do it all in the front end. You can maybe write the scene in terms of what's at stake, what needs to happen, and put in brackets areas where you want to double check that your facts are correct. That will at least keep you moving in the right direction, especially if you're trying to finish this NaNoWriMo business, as so many people are. So that is it for today. If you have any additional tips about how to write good action scenes, put them down below. Like this video if you like it, and make sure to subscribe for more English nerdy goodness. Bye bye.