Why "Start With the Action" Messes Up So Many Writers

By Janice Hardy

Sometimes really great advice is anything but helpful.

If I took a poll for the most common writing advice, “start with the action” would make the list. 

Which it should, as it’s great advice. But it’s also like saying, “show, don’t tell.” You know you ought to do it, but you don’t always know how, and those four words don’t really help you write the beginning of your novel.

This can be especially hard on new writers, because they might think they’re doing everything right, but still get negative feedback or even rejections on their manuscripts. “I do start with action,” they cry. “Can’t you see that car barreling off that cliff there? What do I have to do, blow up a planet?”

Well, no. And that's where the problem lies.

If you don’t know what “action” means in fiction, you can easily misunderstand how to use it.

Bob and Weave: How to Mix Character Actions and Internal Thoughts

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The smoother the flow between action and thought, the stronger the scene will be.

Although some scenes (and some writers) naturally find the perfect balance between action and internal thought, other scenes take work to get that balance right. Tip it too far in either direction, and the writing can come across as too slow (too much in a character's head) or too flat (all description, no character).

There's no rule or ratio for this, since a writer's voice grows from how they string words together. If we all wrote the exact same way, all books would sound alike. And who wants that?

A strong action/thought combination is when the character's actions flow smoothly with their thoughts and work in tandem to tell the story. 

The genre will affect that balance, such as a more thoughtful novel typically tips more to the internal thought side, while a thriller usually leans toward the action.

4 Tips on Writing Action Scenes

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A good action scene starts with the character. Seriously.

I love action in my entertainment. Books, movies, TV shows, even games. I also enjoy a great story to go with it, but I like the external forces that cause the true nature of a person to bubble to the surface. I want to see what people do and discover why they did it. 

At this point in my career, writing action comes pretty easily to me, but that wasn't always the case. My early work was way too descriptive in how my fight scenes played out—I explained every detail, I created special names for fighting styles and whatnot. It took longer to read the action that it did to actually perform the action.

Which is the opposite of what you want when it comes to writing action. 

Finding the Right Balance with Your Stage Directions

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Awkward stage direction can turn an otherwise good scene into a clunky mess, but the right balance of action and character thought lets the reader sail on through.

No matter what type of novel you’re writing, at some point you’ll have to describe how the characters move about and interact with the world—the stage direction. Like the theater, you’re directing how your “actors” move on the stage (or the page in this case). 

Sometimes the direction is basic, such as “she walked across the room.” Other times, it’s a complicated fight scene involving six guys and an eight-legged monster. Or it’s a show of emotion, such as when someone “curls into a ball and cries.”

Put Up Your Dukes: Crafting Dynamic Fight Scenes

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

A strong fight scene is more than just who throws the punches.

One of the first fight scenes I ever wrote was for a fantasy novel, so it involved swords and daggers and a lot of fancy footwork. I wanted to keep track of who did what and where they were, so I used little pewter figures from my D&D box. Step-by-step, I moved the figures around and had my "characters" act out the fight.

While this was a useful way to keep track of the movements, it made for a pretty boring scene, because I focused way too much on the mechanics and not enough on the story.

This is a common problem with fight scenes. Describing the fight isn't the same as showing the action.

Five Crucial Tips for Convincing Action Scenes

By Harrison Demchick, @HDemchick

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: Action scenes can be tough to write, since they're often a lot of description to describe a single act. Harrison Demchick visits the lecture hall today to share some tips on writing a convincing action scene. He's also offering a free compelling action checklist on his website, so be sure to check that out.

Take it away Harrison...

You’ve finally worked your way to the climax of your novel, and you’re thinking big. Lasers. Explosions. An avalanche in the middle of a hurricane. Basically the end result of a Marvel-sized movie budget flowing from the tips of your fast-typing fingers.

That’s great—but let’s slow down a little. Great action in fiction doesn’t come from size and scope alone. Effective action is crafted with care. As a book editor, I’ve worked on scenes as massive as a dozen or more superhuman teenagers battling it out with a litany of impossible powers, and scenes as small and well-considered as a heated argument in a confined space—and I’ve also seen all of these scenes fumble and fail for one reason or another.

How to Write Kick-Ass Action Scenes (Part 2)

By Laurence MacNaughton, @LMacNaughton

Part of the How They Do It Series (Contributing Author)

Believe it or not, it's easy to write gripping action scenes—if you know how. In Part 1 of this article, I showed you how to break down complicated action scenes into their component parts: location, characters, goals, and actions. Now I'll show you the real secret to wrapping up any action scene with an unforgettable bang.

How to Write Kick-Ass Action Scenes (Part 1)

By Laurence MacNaughton, @LMacNaughton

Part of the How They Do It Series (Contributing Author)

Do you struggle with writing fight or chase scenes? Do you avoid putting action in your stories because you aren't sure how to make the action tense, original, and interesting? Don't worry. It's easier than you think.

To write a hard-hitting action scene that makes your readers break out in a sweat, you’ll start by breaking it down into its component parts. You'll brainstorm ideas separately for each part, and then weave them all together at the end. I'll show you how. Just grab your notebook and follow along.

How to Write Thrilling Action Scenes

By Vincent H. O’Neil

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: You'd think action scenes would be easier to write--you just describe what the characters are doing, right? But it's not that simple, and great action scenes can be a challenge for some writers. Please help me welcome Vincent O'Neil to the lecture hall today, to share some tips on writing action scenes that readers will stay up all night reading.

Vincent H. O’Neil is the Malice Award-winning author of the Frank Cole mysteries, the theater-themed mystery Death Troupe, and the Interlands horror novels. Writing as Henry V. O’Neil, he recently completed his five-novel military science fiction Sim War series with HarperCollins.

Website | Goodreads |

Take it away Vincent...

Is a Lack of Action Really the Problem?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Part of the Your Writing Questions Answered Series

Q: This may sound too general to address with concrete examples, but I'll post it anyway with the hope that others struggle with it too: when passages are mainly dialogue, how can you add in little touches of (modest) action?

For example, I'm writing a sci-fi novel. In certain passages where the crew is trying to devise a weapon to defeat the enemy, I have not found a way to insert much action. The story's protagonist is the ship's captain, and she cannot be personally involved in things like weapons building. So I'm reduced to having her call meetings to discuss strategy, which can only maintain our interest for a page, at most.

Is there any trick, mental or otherwise, that one can use to break out of the trap of no-action scenes? When this happens, I find myself going perhaps too deeply inside her head to reveal her fears and discontentment since blocks of nothing but straight dialogue would be boring.

A: Yes, a very easy trick. It’s not about the action, but the conflict.

BANG! POW! BOOM! (writing action like an end boss)

By James R. Tuck, @JamesTuckwriter

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: When I was a wee young writer way too long ago, I remember using pewter figures from my Dungeons & Dragons set to stage a fight scene. I planned it out, had my figs move and wrote that scene in meticulous detail as I ran through it in "real life." Do I need to say it was a terrible scene? Had I only had James Tuck's advice back then, my scene would have been so much better. Luckily for everyone today, he's here to keep us from making the same fight scene mistakes I made.

James was born and raised in Georgia and grew up drawing and reading a steady helping of Robert E. Howard stories, Golden Age comics, and books he was far too young to be reading. Combined with a very Southern involvement in church and watching horror movies, this became the bedrock of his creativity. He became a tattoo artist, and now writes dark fantasy. He's the author of the Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter series, a variety of short stories and novellas set in the same world (and some outside of it), and the editor of the Thunder on the Battlefield anthologies. His newest series (co-written with Debbie Viguie), is Robin Hood: Demon's Bane.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Indie Bound

Take it away James...

How to Punch Up Your Action Scenes

By Alex Limberg, @RidethePen

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: I'm a huge fan of action, both in movies and in novels. I love when things are happening fast and you don't know where it might go or what might happen next. But crafting a solid action scene takes skill, and a breakneck pace isn't always the best route to take. Alex Limberg visits the lecture hall today to share some tips on writing great action scenes.

Alex is the author of Ride the Pen, a creative writing blog dissecting famous writers (works, not bodies); his blog offers detailed writing prompts. Make the dynamics of your plot, description, character and dialogue terrific with his free e-book (download here) about “44 Key Questions” to test your story. Alex has worked as a copywriter in a Hamburg advertising agency and with camera and lighting in the movie business. He lives in Austria and has previously lived in Los Angeles and Madrid.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Take it away Alex...

Writing Fight Scenes Without Melodrama

By Joyce Scarbrough, @JoyceScarbrough

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: I still remember the first fight scene I ever wrote, way back in the day. Complicated, overdone, I actually used ten or so pewter gaming figures to go through it step by step to get the action down just right. I don't think I let a single punch or sword thrust escape my notice, and you can imagine the horror of that scene. (Thankfully I got better at it). Today Joyce Scarbrough visits the lecture hall to share her tips on writing fight scenes to spare you from crafting any ghastly monstrosities.

The valedictorian of her high school graduating class, Joyce Scarbrough is a Southern woman weary of seeing herself and her peers portrayed in books and movies as either post-antebellum debutantes or barefoot hillbillies á la Daisy Duke, so all her heroines are smart, unpretentious women who refuse to be anyone but themselves. Joyce writes both adult and YA fiction and has four published novels as well as several short stories available as Kindle downloads. Joyce loves hanging out with other writers and stays active in the Mobile Writers Guild as well as her regional chapter of SCBWI. She’s lived all her life in beautiful LA (lower Alabama), she’s the mother of three gifted children and a blind Pomeranian named Tilly, and she’s been married for 31 years to the love of her life—a superhero who disguises himself during the day as a high school math teacher and coach.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indie Bound

Take it away Joyce...

Ready, Set...Where's the Action? Keeping Informative Scenes Tense

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

You hear it all the time. Make it active. Start with the action. Make sure your characters act. But we've all written scenes where we have to convey a lot of information and there is no action to speak of. We know we can't just flop the info out there and get away with it, so what can a writer do? How do you convey all that information and still keep the scene tense?

I like the layer technique.

On the first draft, I just write what needs to be said and don't worry that it's probably a pretty boring scene. It's critical information, and what matters at this stage is getting it in there.

Finding the Balance When Writing About Violence

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

There was a lot of chatter about the violence in Mockingjay, the final book of Suzanne Collins's YA blockbuster The Hunger Games series. I paid attention because at that time, I had just finished my own struggle with how to portray a realistic war in my The Healing Wars trilogy. The challenge was to be authentic, but not make it so horrific I'd freak out my younger or more sensitive readers. Or bore those who aren't so sensitive. Every reader has a different tolerance level for violence.