Lesson Five: Action!
Every book--even the more ‘fluffy’ romantic tale--has a bit of action embroiled within its pages; if you’ve read even one title from Lesson Three’s recommended reading list then you are aware of just how much of a fulcrum a good bit of action can be. The Hornblower series, as one example, is nearly riddled with it from stem to stern. The quasi-ugly, scarred and plain-looking crews dash about in fearsome storms, fight desperate battles with muskets, daggers and the sword, all the while led by their mysteriously-brilliant captain, who stands like a bird of prey upon the quarterdeck. Not all books contain so much action, but the things which happen to your characters act as a good stock does in a kitchen: it is the base of all main course recipes and the quality of it affects the flavor of the piece.
What qualifies such action? Dealing with trials, troubles, problems and issues are a part of everyday human life, and these make up the majority of most fictional pieces regarding human characters. The fulcrum action, so to speak, which pivots the book up and causes the reader to sit forward,just a a bit, comes usually from a different angle than the normal happenings of life. It is the event or events which constitute change in the general attitude of the characters in the scene and then follows a specific course of behavior which the writer has laid out in their mind: a building fire and subsequent rescue… or tragedy; a car accident with only moments for bystanders to act; the robbery in progress which the frightened victims either endure or escape from. It is the enemy arrows fired into the lord’s tent, which causing a shift in the scene; the mood changes—rapidly--from placid to defensive, and then the adrenaline-backed anger floods in with adjacent grasping of a nearby weapon.
Some genres can only tolerate a little action, falling into the ‘enough is as good as a feast’ category; a few, like science fiction or adventure novels appear quite dead without a plethora of successive trials that the characters must endure. Then, there are the rare pieces which take a single bit of action and compile upon it, making it stretch out the entire length of the book, as in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
Here are a few things to remember when planning out and writing your bit o’ action:
Tragedy is a part of life; if you choose to include it in your book, remember that Tragedy is just like salt; it should be used to enhance the story, not drown out the flavor in massive amounts. If you’ve read Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, then you understand what it looks like when fantastically-written characters, in wonderfully-sculpted scenes, are mercilessly tortured by the author again and again and again, and then killed off… apparently out of wine-induced boredom. Remember that in life the stories most remembered are the one in which humans come in contact with nearly insurmountable obstacles, perhaps even suffering a great woe or two, but then they shake themselves off and climb out of the pit into the sunlight, and so as wiser folks.
On the other hand, try very hard to avoid the obviously coincidental series of events which simply could not happen in Reality. In my first novel, the heroine is briefly embroiled in a building fire; I based the bit of action on real events, however, so instead of the hero magically appearing amid the smoke and carrying her to safety, she got out by following good advice and stood outside until her fiance (who was at work) came running up nearly a half-hour later. As tempting as it is to make things ‘work out’ all the time, in life they do only about 60% of the time, and if so it is because of logical and rapid decisions, coupled with decisive action. In looking at natural disasters of times past, for example, one can see that if a warning was given prior to the tragic event, some folks rallied themselves and fled the area, while others stayed (whether by choice or not) and suffered unduly because of it
If including a disaster or large-scale event, read up on real events in the past to get the ‘flavor’ of the human reactions (they are quite varied) as well as the emotions displayed prior, during and post. The sequence of the minor actions within the overall event is important to get right, almost as much as correctly guessing what your character(s) would do in such a situation.
Continued in comments below due to lack of space...
