Too much action?

I am different, and it changes with each work. One of my problems is scenery... I usually have to go back and fill that part in. It's typical for every writer to get caught up in the moment. Usually later edits clean this up. At least you wrote 40K.

A story can never have too much action.

Er, wait --- by action, do you mean something like action movie action, or something like "And then I went into the bathroom, unzipped my pants, and did my business before zipping back up and flushing."

Don't pad! Make the description and characterisation part of the conflict/plot.

Example: You want the readers to see the cool minarets on the Temple of Khag? Put snipers in them.

First draft I often have this problem. My answer is to put in a XX needs setting here XXX or XXX talking heads! XXX or whatever so I can forget it and get on with the draft. Then when I edit I search for XXX

Anything / everything can be fixed in the re-write - including not enough of anything.

Get the draft finished first. Make it perfect later.

lucidzfl said:

I just think when I have 40K words with no descriptions and no internalization that signifies a major pacing problem. And also, perhaps I'm including too much small action. Perhaps I need to summarize more. If I edit the previous work, and add descriptions and internalization it'll be 60+K EASILY, assuming I don't excise anything.

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I think pacing will be less of a problem than your readers wondering where the heck your story is taking place and what everything in that place looks like. And I wouldn't worry about the internalization as much, some characters can be brought to life effectively for the reader without going into their heads.
The only things that should be in your story are the things that are needed to make it work. Have you had anyone look over some of this story and tell you if they think you need more description, etc? And I mean a touch critic, not your best friend.

I am psychic and I know your problem. You've got scene, but you've got no sequel! And no, I don't mean the second book in your series. Go check this out:

http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/2647.html then read
http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/2880.html and then this for extra credit
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php

Scene is stuff happening. Sequel is the character reacting to it afterwards. You need both.

Just to add on Kitty's links, there is also the book "Scene & Structure" by Jack M. Bickham, which does a good job at describing the scene/sequel framework.

-cb

And don't forget MRUs. They're handy sometimes.

Sounds to me like you're suffering from too much showing.

What?? But we are only supposed to show not tell!

Actually . . . not so much. I think because we live in a time where we are so familiar with visual media like films and video games, and we are so used to watching things happen, we translate this into our writing as well. We want to block out scenes, "And then dude walked two steps to the left, turned around, walked back one step, walked over to the door". I know I do. There have been times when I've written a section where each step is described, he wakes up, brushes his teeth, goes downstairs, eats food . . . etc, that the story begins to lose colour. But these mundane moments are the moments you can stop and take pause. That the character can make observations on his life. Instead of showing us these moments, tell us something about them.

So I'd recommend going back over your work and try to determine if you have such moments and if then you can take advantage of such moments and turn them into descriptive passages, as opposed to step by step showing.

Take my dude waking up in the morning. I could show you everything he does. Or. . . I could say this:

Each day had begun to blend into the next. It got to a point where he couldn't remember if the suit he put on that morning was the one he had put on yesterday, or whether maybe it was actually the one he was wearing tomorrow. Eating his breakfast became a chore, the food a cold mush in his mouth. But this made no sense either as he'd always loved Oats and Bunches since a child. Why was his old cereal staple suddenly failing him? It hurt his heart to think it. And so it was, that again, like every day before it and he had no doubt every day after, he stepped out into the morning light to just miss the bus as it splashed through that puddle that never went away. "This is my life," he thought. "This is my hell."


Hmm . . . I rather like that, made that up just now. Anyway . . . see how I'm describing his day, but also telling (and okay also showing) how tedious his life had become, how the day is more than just his actions but representative of something larger, something that only he as a character is observing. Telling a story is so much more than just watching a character move through his life. It's about the way he observes his life as well.

It's tough, especially if you want to keep your main character a bit of an enigma. But you can hint at interesting character traits, without going into depth "He had been beaten at the age of eight and had vowed from then on . . ." You can hint at a history. It isn't all or nothing:

The woods were thicker now, unfamiliar. The last time he'd seen trees like these was twenty years ago on that hunting trip, and he wasn't about to go down that particular memory lane. Not now. Not ever. Damn trees, dredging up the past. He buried it promptly. He was good at that.


So you don't have to actually say anything, but you can show his response, hint at a habit, something that extends beyond the scope of the story you're telling. In this little passage we now know something happened twenty years ago on a hunting trip that he does not want to remember. We know that he's hunted before, been in forests before. We also know he's good at burying memories and automatically question why that is. And that he has a bit of a dark sense of humour.

If that makes sense.

Losing track of the POV character's emotions and thoughts, especially in action passages, is a common enough problem for Thomas McCormack to discuss it in The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist. He says that he experiences it as a sudden coolness in the narrator, an unfortunate drawing back of someone he's gotten close to just at the moment when he wants to be closest.

If you never get into the character's head, and you're writing from his POV, I guess the reader never does get a chance to feel intimate with that character. A real problem, for most stories or novels.

But, yes, this is one of those things you can correct in later drafts. I know I often do.

Toothpaste said:

. . . see how I'm describing his day, but also telling (and okay also showing) how tedious his life had become, how the day is more than just his actions but representative of something larger, something that only he as a character is observing. Telling a story is so much more than just watching a character move through his life. It's about the way he observes his life as well.

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Very well said. It's not the thing described so much as it's the way the POV character perceives and reacts to it. And when the character perceives and reacts, bingo, you're in her head.

What Sevvy said; it is hard to say that it's not effective just like it is, without reading a sample of it, if you want to post some in SYW. But just the fact that you say you haven't learned a damn thing about him in 40K words tells me that your instincts might be right; you might have a cardboard guy running around doing stuff.

Try this: Think about what internal conflicts this guy might have. They don't have to have anything directly to do with what he is doing, but they will need to feed into what actions he takes. However, you can work it backwards from what you have already written, you don't have to change your plot. Take the actions you already have him doing, and come up with an internal conflict that would be plausible to make him do those actions. (PS edit: if you work it backwards this way you may need to change some plot actions to make it consistent, and you have to guard against "tacking" it on to force it to fit.)

For example, he's hiking in the woods and, coming around a curve in the trail, he confronts an adult bear up on it's hind legs, roaring at him. What does he do and how can you weave internal conflict behind his action?

* He turns and runs

Internal conflict - he ran from bullies back when he was a child. He is conflicted because he feels he can't stand and fight like a man. You can place a memory or two of bullying incidents in dialogue or you can show this in a minor incident early in the book; he buys something at the store and is shortchanged by the clerk but the clerk disagrees and he backs away and leaves feeling cheated, and worse, weak and inadequate as a man. Now with the bear, instead of writing, "He turns and runs. The bear chases. He grabs a nearby tree branch and hauls himself up... " and so on, you can write, "He turns and runs, like the coward he is, and the bear chases him. This time he's going to die for being such a sissy. He grabs a nearby tree branch and hauls himself up...." and so on. Now you're seeing inside his head, not just his external actions. And it is the internal conflict that allows you to show what is inside his head.

* He pulls out a .44 Magnum and shoots the bear

Internal conflict - he reacts instantly and with violence to most confrontation, even minor. He was the bully in school. He has had trouble keeping control of himself all his life. For once, today, that flaw has paid off in a good way. There are appropriate times to react with swift violence. But, standing over the bear carcass, and now seeing the motherless baby bear off to the side of the trail, even though he knows he probably just saved his own life, he feels, once again, that he has been a "bad boy".

* He drops to the ground and plays dead

Internal conflict - he learned as a child that the best way to minimize the beatings he received from his drunken father was to pretend to have been knocked unconscious with the first blow. Likewise, he figures playing dead will make the bear lose interest. But as he grew up, the trick worked less and less with his father, and he suspects it won't work now, indeed, the bear swipes his back with it's claw, ripping his shirt and gashing his flesh.

* He yells at the bear, opens his arms and spreads them wide, making himself look as big as possible. Then he picks up a rock and throws it hard at the bear.

Internal conflict - When he fights with his girlfriend, he yells too much, and puffs himself up with self-righteousness, once in a while grabbing a knick-knack and throwing it on the floor to emphasize a point. This has caused a big problem in their relationship because he broke the prized Hummel that was her mother's, who died last year. The internal conflict is that he knows he needs to handle arguments in a more mature way, but hasn't quite learned how yet. His way of handling confrontation may, or may not, work with the bear. Read on to find out....

So, no matter what your character does about the bear, you can deepen his character and reveal what is inside his head by planting these stories earlier and then just making brief references to them during the action.

In previewing this I read your post about him in the woods and blaming his psychosis on his wife's death, so you already have plenty of fodder for internal conflict. You just have to pick the action, or non-action, that he's doing, and use phrases here and there to relate it to an internal conflict you've given him. It doesn't have to be complicated but it should be clear to you. For example:

The reader knows where mitch is, as we follow him through the mountains of tennessee. He does get a little lost and doesn't know what state he's in, but the reader won't know either. And we get an idea for where he is when he slips on the loose gravel on the side of the mountain, or hides behind the chopped down stumps in the obliterated forest. I just realize that while I'm showing you the flowers and destruction as he passes it by, you have no idea how he FEELS about anything.

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Suppose the biggest internal conflict he has now is that since his wife died, he feels life is not worth living anymore. How can you inject that into his walk in the mountains so that we see inside his head? Just add some simple statements:

"He slips on some loose gravel. Great, why not just slide all the way down the mountain, splat on the bottom and get it all over with."

Shows how he feels. You don't say, "he felt like life was no longer worth living". You just make what in this case is a sarcastic jab about slipping on the gravel. You don't have to get too flowery or lengthy about it. In fact, it is probably better if you don't. During action, characters (and readers) are thinking more about the action anyway. But you can deepen character and get into close third inside his head by simply adding small phrases here and there, such as "like the coward he is" when my guy ran from the bear in the example above, as long as those phrases reveal a consistent internal conflict going on... your job is to figure out what that conflict is (conflicts are) and to weave it (them) through the whole story. By the end your character can resolve the conflict, or not, whatever is appropriate for your story.

IdiotsRUs said:

First draft I often have this problem. My answer is to put in a XX needs setting here XXX or XXX talking heads! XXX or whatever so I can forget it and get on with the draft. Then when I edit I search for XXX

Anything / everything can be fixed in the re-write - including not enough of anything.

Get the draft finished first. Make it perfect later.

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^^ This!! Stop reading it. Write it!

I do the same, much of it because I have only a broad idea of the character when I start to write (or who I THINK he is) As I write, I learn who he is, and how he will react to the various wrenches I throw in his direction. When I go back and edit, I know what he is feeling about what is going on. You gotta finish the story before you can edit it - this pass is for action and plot and all that!

You have to show the reader why the character does what he does and why he reacts as he does. If you don't, you'll find yourself reverting to cliches, thus coming out with cardboard characters.

For example:
Dave heard a gun shot. He ran away.

Well, we'd expect that. But it tells us nothing about the character and it's boring.

What if he stuck it out:
Dave heard a gun shot. From the sounds of it, it was round the back of the abandoned theatre which was disconcertingly close to where Dave was wandering. Listen for six, Dave told himself. 6 shots and the guy was out of bullets. And Dave, patting the deep pocket of his coat, had a fully-loaded gun.

But if for necessity of plot, he has to run away:
Dave heard a gun shot and instinctively ran. 'Should I call the police? Would they suspect me?' These questions swirled around in his mind as his legs powered on to wherever. Anywhere away from the mess that no doubt followed the shot.

What I like to do is print out pages and stick them to the opposite wall of the living room. Then stand back and see if they all look the same at that distance.

You should have varying appearance in the manuscript. Grey blocks broken up with sections of short line. Or short lines broken up with grey blocks.

Over-all sameness of the visual outline leads to boredom.

I don't think there's a such thing as too much action so much as too little narrative. It is important, I think, to be grounded with a narrative voice.

Plus it gives you strength of pacing. Action, as you said, is fast. There are moments that don't work the best they can if they don't slow down and turn to the internal.

James D. Macdonald said:

What I like to do is print out pages and stick them to the opposite wall of the living room. Then stand back and see if they all look the same at that distance.

You should have varying appearance in the manuscript. Grey blocks broken up with sections of short line. Or short lines broken up with grey blocks.

Over-all sameness of the visual outline leads to boredom.

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You have a room big enough to do that?!


Some would say that examining a character with a 3rd-person view, but never going into their head could be an interesting way of doing things. It really depends on your story.

You could also just zoom out to 10% or 25% in Word. You'll be able to see where there's white space.

Hmm...suspicions confirmed. I don't know if this is at all related, but I had the nagging feeling that where I wasn't using dialogue, my paragraphs were all coming out to be the same length. They're pretty close! I guess that's better than having one really long paragraph, but is it bad?

LOG said:

You have a room big enough to do that?!

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Been there. It's like the fugging Astrodome.


I think Toothpaste's first post was brilliant...something I need a reminder of in my own work.