The crazy lady held a carving blade from the knife block on the kitchen counter, and she vehemently expressed her desire to hurt me with it. The year was 1990, plus or minus three. We were in her double-wide. The driver of my ambulance was in urgent communication with the EOC–emergency operations center–police were on the way, and the crazy lady (you got the CRAZY part, right?) stood between me and the door. I was armed with a radio and maybe a stethoscope. I suspect that drugs may have been involved because the crazy lady repeatedly sought counsel from someone only she could see. And apparently hear.
This was not my wheelhouse. We volunteers had no training for talking unstable people out of their murder weapons. While she seemed moved by my arguments that I had a young boy at home who needed me, the invisible sonofabitch had a convincing counterargument.
The confrontation ended without nuance. Crazy Lady had left the door open and when a critical mass of cops had arrived–I’ll stipulate that it took less than the seven hours that it felt–they hit her with the subtlety shown to a quarterback who fumbles the snap.
Happy ending. For me. I don’t know how it ended for her. Or her imaginary friend.
I’ve never written of this incident until right now, largely because it exposes me as a moron. Can you articulate the error that nearly got me killed? Read to the end for the reveal.*
Let’s turn this into a writing lesson.
For me, action scenes–fight scenes–are the hardest scenes to write. They’re also the easiest scenes to screw up.
My interaction with Crazy Lady involved countless thoughts, decisions and observations, all of which transpired simultaneously and in the space of a heartbeat.
In fiction, a heartbeat on the page can be a paragraph or a chapter. In Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,” that length of time takes up a whole short story.
The secret to fast action is to write slow.
Let’s imagine a scene we all know: The Old West duel in the street. For my example, imagine that we’re past the build-up and the dread–think “High Noon” or “Firecreek”–and dial straight into the ditry deed of draw-and-fire.
The reality of the action will transpire over the course of a few seconds–five, at the most–but a one-sentence gunfight squanders drama and cheats your reader out of and exciting, engaging scene. So, how do we make it engaging?
Choose your POV Characters carefully, remembering that both shooters have something to prove or defend.
Arguably, the easiest POV characters for the scene are the shooters themselves–the guys (it’s always guys, right?) who are presenting their hearts and spines for penetration at 900 feet per second.
Are they concentrating on not being killed, or on killing the other guy? There’s a huge difference. Think about it: The best chance to score a kill shot means squaring your body across the target for a stronger stance that allows for better aim and trigger control. That also means making yourself a bigger target. Alternatively, you could blade your body to the target to make yourself harder to hit, but also creating a less stable shooting platform. What does it say of a character who thinks this way?
Are you presenting both POVs or just one? What are they thinking? What are they looking for?
Now, suppose that (one of) the POV character(s) is the 12-year-old child of one of the shooters. What does that do to your narrative? Okay, and the 12-year-old’s best friend is the child of the other shooter. Are they watching the duel together? What are their older or younger siblings doing?
Every element of story is about character.
If you write thrillers, your job is to make your audience scream for mercy. That means setting up seemingly irreversible collision courses for your characters. If one of my stories presents a comfortable moment for you to go to bed–or go to the bathroom, for that matter–I have failed.
In our street duel example, why didn’t Good Guy Greg just pop Bad Guy Bart in the back of the head and be done with it? Or the other way around? Did they consider it? Are their hands shaking?
In the real world, all of these thoughts and feelings and considerations whirl at the speed of synapse, but as the recorder of fact in the fictional world, it falls upon you to reveal these instinctive reactions in a way that feels fast yet is still discernable.
*Humiliating tactical error: I allowed Crazy Lady to block my access to the exit. If I could have left and gone to safety, the police response (God bless them!) could have been far less kinetic.
I do find action scenes hard to write–it takes work for me to get out of my own way and let the action unfold in an engaging manner. I find when I overthink it, it gets too clunky.
a way that feels fast yet is still discernable
Well said, John. We don’t write “reality.” We write stylized verisimilitude to weave a dream.
Excellent advice, John. I heard Lee Child say, “Write the fast parts slow and the slow parts fast.” (Although it could have been the other way around.)
In a recent read, however, the author took the “slow parts fast” to the extreme and laid out every piece of action painstakingly slowly. My impression was he knew of what he spoke and wanted to make sure the reader got it. And, in case we didn’t, the author told us exactly, down to tenths of a second, how long those interminable pages took in real time.
It did nothing to engage this reader.
Thanks for this advice, John. Somewhere I read you should write slow scenes fast (IOW, summarize) and write fast scenes slow. You demonstrated that with your crazy lady and her imaginary friend.
Your description of which POV to choose reminded me of the climactic scene in The Shootist, John Wayne’s last movie. It’s about an aging gunfighter who’s dying of cancer. His past enemies gather in a saloon to finish him off. The camera flips among the characters but focuses often on a young boy (played by Ron Howard) who idolizes the gunfighter. All the lessons John Wayne has been trying to teach him through the story come together in that scene. He grows up in those few moments.
Thanks for filling in Lee Child, Terry.
Thanks, John. Great article.
Great advice, John. I guess writing those fast action parts slow also builds the suspense in the reader’s mind. I remember watching cowboy movies as a child. When the shootout scene came up, we all held our breaths as the cowboys’ hands hovered over their holsters. The tension would build as the camera cut to show the townsfolk who were watching the contest, then to the hero’s friends, then to the bad guy’s sneaky accomplices, then back to the combatants. To me as a little kid, it seemed to go on forever before they finally drew and fired. And I could finally breathe again.
My sister and I were having our usual Sunday afternoon phone conversation, and I was telling her about my thought process when someone tried to break into our house when we were teens. The moment I heard the sound at the window, I became the Watson chess computer figuring out options and possible moves. I have never been a deer in the headlights kind of person. So, yes, the brain goes into hyperdrive. And, no, Joni, I didn’t make this up, and do you even know me?