One way to improve your action writing is by writing a scene with a simple premise: two characters get into a fight. This may sound overly simplistic, but that’s why it works as a perfect tool to practice action scene writing. An engaging action scene in manuscript format can’t be solely about the action taking place because simply reading about punching and kicking doesn’t translate the same way in a book that it does on screen. Instead, the focus should be on what is at stake on a character level.

By writing a scene based on this simple, you’re able to focus on the why behind the fight, rather than making the action exciting as we’re often feeling pressured to do. For example, let’s say we have two characters: Matt and David. Matt and David get into a fight, why? Are they two friends who had a falling out based on some dishonest behavior, only to wind up running into each other at a bar one night and having it out? If that’s the case, what was the lie and what did it cost each of them?

Or are they two strangers out at a club who bump into each other, a few harsh words are exchanged, and suddenly punches are being thrown? If that’s the case, what put them each in a bad mood? Maybe one of them just has anger issues, what has his anger cost him in his life? What could this moment cost him, should it get too out of hand? There is so much going on behind a fight and, in a manuscript format, focusing on these aspects is how you’ll be able to keep readers engaged and excited about the action.

Writing Prompt: Write a scene where two characters get into a fight. You can choose two already-made characters or create two new ones for the purposes of the scene. What is the relationship between the two characters? What caused the fight vs. why are they fighting (sometimes these are two different answers)? What are the stakes of their fight, both internally and externally? Put your dukes up, writers.

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Do the Work Beforehand

In order to write an engaging action sequence that keeps readers hooked, the work begins prior to the scene actually taking place. One of the main things that separates a good battle sequence from one that readers will skim through is one that your readers truly care about. And in order to make the readers care, they’ll need to care about your characters and story. That involves putting a lot of leg work into fleshing out the characters and plot, making them creative and engaging, and then by the time readers arrive at the action sequence, you’ve got them right where you want them.

Focus on Emotion

Unlike action in film or television, the action itself isn’t what is going to keep your readers engaged. Unfortunately, action on the page just doesn’t translate the same way as it does on screen. In a film, you can begin with an action sequence that lasts ten minutes before you even meet any of the characters, and not a soul will complain. In a book, however, it can be boring to read an entire chapter of just mindless punching and kicking. Instead of the action itself, the scene should focus on the emotion behind the action. Is a character fighting their former best friend? Are they trying to save someone they care about? Are they trying to obtain an object of great emotional significance to them? Focus on what is emotionally at stake for the character and the action itself should be happening around that.

Pay-off

Additionally, you want an action sequence to feel like a pay-off for the reader. As stated previously, action in books can’t be the same mindless fun as it is in film. Instead, when deciding what action scenes are necessary in your manuscript, focus on including ones with the most pay-off. For example, if your protagonist has some snide interactions with a character throughout the book, all of a sudden finding themselves faced with fighting them. Or the final showdown with the villain of your series or maybe a fight with a character who had a hand at killing your protagonist’s parents.

Having your protagonist spend ten minutes fighting one random guard is just going to result in your readers skipping around. If, however, their fight has the potential for a pay-off for them or for their character arc, the readers will remain engaged.

Stakes

Similar to the pay-off, high stakes are another way to keep your readers engaged during an action sequence. Perhaps your protagonist has to scale the side of a building to break in. Or maybe they get into a bar fight with a group of their friends, glass bottles being broken and stepped on all over the place. Perhaps they run into a very deadly and unearthly creature that they once believed was a myth. And their conflict results in the breaking of a priceless artifact. Having something at stake within the fight, something that both the characters and readers care about, will allow readers to remain enthralled.

Language

In addition to all of the story components that add to an action sequence, your writing style and the language you use must adapt as well. When writing other scenes, the language can be flowery with lots of adverbs and time spent on minute details. In action sequences, the opposite should occur. Your sentences should be choppy and short as it creates more of a sense of urgency for the reader. You should also limit your use of adverbs and try to keep minute descriptions to a minimum unless they relate to the action of the scene.

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External Stakes

The external stakes of your story are what your character externally desires. For example, let’s say your character is on the typical fantasy hero’s journey to search for and obtain a rare and possibly powerful object. The external stakes in that situation would refer to the hero physically obtaining the object and what they risk if they are able or unable to obtain it. Perhaps the object is a book with a spell that will heal an ailment that is plaguing this world (or perhaps more specifically a character that your protagonist cares for). The external risks for obtaining the object would be that the object is cursed or that the quest to obtain it puts the protagonist in mortal peril. One risk for not obtaining the object would be that the protagonist would be unable to save the people of this world from this ailment. In a contemporary sense, the external stakes could refer to anything from something as simple as getting a promotion at work to a character running away to start their lives over.

The main stakes of the story will be the same as your character’s main goal or desire throughout the book and what they risk by either achieving or not achieving that goal. Additional stakes throughout the novel will be other things that your protagonist comes to risk along their journey to obtain their main goal. This could be anything from a friend of theirs resenting their quest (which risks their friendship with the protagonist) or even the simple stakes of life or death.

Internal Stakes

The internal stakes of your manuscript refer to any internal desires your protagonist has and what is preventing them from achieving those desires. Let’s refer back to the fantasy hero’s quest for a healing book as an example. In that instance, while the external stakes refer to the hero obtaining the book, an example of the internal stakes could be the hero’s desire to right a wrong, a time that they could have saved someone but didn’t. That, through the act of finding the book, the hero believes that they will right that wrong.

If the latter is the case, the question then becomes what are the internal risks of both obtaining and not obtaining the book. Although the external risks involve saving lives, the internal risks are completely different. The internal risk of not finding the book would be that they are unable to heal from this past sense of guilt that they’re holding onto. And one internal risk of finding the book is that, though they’re able to heal people externally, the fulfillment of the quest doesn’t alleviate the protagonist of their guilt.

Plot Points

The main way to show rather than tell your readers about the stakes of your story is to make sure your novel is expertly plotted. The stakes of your novel should be at the core of each of your main plot points. Every plot point should connect to at least one of the stakes of your story and your main plot points should directly link or relate to the main stakes of your story. This means that your reader should be keenly aware of what is at stake throughout your story because, if you’ve done your job right, everything that they’re witnessing unfold throughout your story should connect to those stakes.

The best way to make sure to keep track of this is to include the stakes in your outline. If you’ve already made your outline, go back and review it again. Write down what the main stakes of your story are and what the additional risks are as well. Then go through your plot points chronologically and make sure they directly relate to what is at stake in your story. If you find ones that don’t connect, you’ve either stumbled upon an easy scene to edit out of your novel or you need to go back and rewrite to make sure the stakes are clear and connected.

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Stories are all about stakes and the stakes are never more obvious than they are in a horror film. It’s all about what you have to gain and lose throughout a story and in a horror movie what hangs in the balance is obvious: your life. This can make a horror film the perfect setting to explore some of the base aspects of your character’s nature and how they make decisions. Would they value self-preservation over the lives of their friends? Are they intuitive and immediately able to sense the danger they’re in? Or would they be the optimist that attempts to convince themselves the scenario is innocent until it’s far too late? If they’re being chased by ‘the monster’ of the movie, would they attempt the long run home or try to lose him through the shortcut through the woods? Putting your character in a life or death scenario can reveal a lot about who they are, while also allowing you to try your hand at something gory and suspenseful.

Writing Prompt: Take a character from your manuscript and put them in the middle of a horror movie. It could be loosely based on your favorite horror film or you can come up with your own creative scenario. Either way, set the spooky scene. If you want to increase the stakes, have them in the scenario with close friends or family members from your book as well. Then, similarly to a horror film, allow them to be presented with life or death choices? Do they go into the house or hide in the barn? Do we go back for their friend or keep running? Walk them through the beats, see what choices they make, and apply what you learn about them to your manuscript.

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Adding a new responsibility to the lives of your characters can show your readers how they’d handle specific situations. It can also help readers understand your character motivations better and allow you to practice a small character arc.

1) What kind of responsibility?

Start by thinking of what type of responsibility you want to inflict upon your character. Think about who they are and what would most force them out of their comfort zone or force them to grow. For example, let’s say you have a character who hates reading. Having this character find out that their grandmother left them her little indie book shop will force the character completely out of their comfort zone. They’ll be pushed into a world filled with people they have nothing in common with whose hobby they view as rubbish. This can create very interesting confrontations and character development.

2) How do they feel about it?

How does your character feel about the responsibility that has been thrust upon them? For example, let’s take the babysitting boss’s kids example. In this instance, your character could feel overly confident about their ability to handle their new babysitting duties. This will wind up leaving them surprised when the kids are much more difficult to handle than they’d originally anticipated. On the other hand, your character could have very little faith in their ability to care for children over several days. This could leave them nervous and anxious leading up to the event.

3) What are the stakes?

In order for the event to have weight, it must have something at stake. So, for example, if your character inherits the book shop- they’re also in charge of caring for their grandmother’s legacy. In the babysitting example, the character obviously wants to remain or gain good standing with their boss. If your character finds a stray bird on the brink of death, the stakes are obviously life or death for the animal in question. They could be given a new job or even a long-lost child, in each case the character must have something to gain and lose from the outcome of the new responsibility.

4) How do they handle it & why?

How does your character handle the situation? Do they rise to the occasion or fall short? Do they handle it with patience or anger/resentment? Do they find some joy in a situation they thought was bleak initially? Or do they end up hating a responsibility they were excited about in the beginning? Think about how someone with their personality would handle the situation you’ve created and why.

5) What do they learn from it?

How does your character grow or change from the added responsibility? Do they, eventually, learn to appreciate what they’ve been given? Do they become more responsible and decide to make some big life changes? Or does it drive them further away from something they were already averse to?

Writing Prompt:

Take a character from your book and choose a period in their life when they were given an unexpected responsibility. What are the stakes involved? How do they handle the new responsibility? How do they grow and change from this instance? Make sure you answer all of the questions in the scenes you write and understand how this occurrence was important to their personal growth.

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Examine the friendships in your own life

Writing friendships that feel real is an incredibly difficult thing to do. It’s very easy for them to feel too perfect or basic or manufactured and then they won’t be an important factor in your story. One way to begin to figure out how to make those relationships feel real is to examine your own friendships. Make a list of all of your closest friends- what’re each of their qualities that make them unique? What do they give you as a friend? What do you feel that you give them? How did you meet/decide to become friends? What are some inside jokes you have? What do each of your friends do that maybe gets on your nerves from time to time? Looking at this list will allow you to examine some very real friendships and you can pull some of these details or similar ones into your own story to make it feel more realistic.

Create the characters as individuals first

You may already know that you want these two or more characters to be best friends, but you need to work on figuring out who they are as individuals first. If you work backwards and focus on their friendship first, you risk making them too much of a perfect pair to be believable. Their characteristics shouldn’t feel perfectly catered to one another’s personalities because that’s not how life or friendship really works. It’s about two completely different people with different lives meeting and building a friendship from there. So focus on the character work first, figure out where each of these characters are from, how they grew up, what their relationships with their families are like and what their views are on the world, people, and themselves.

Establish the relationship

Now, this can go one of two ways. Either the friendship you’re establishing is a large part of the plot of the book in which case you’ll likely be introducing them to each other on the page or it’ll be an already established friendship. If you’re going with the former option, go back and look at your list of friends and your meetings. You don’t have to create this perfect meet-cute moment for the friendship to be established, simply think about how you became friends with some of your friends and create a scene that feels real and establishes their separate personalities.

If you’re going with the second option, this scenario may not even make it into your book. But write it anyways. In order to truly make the relationship feel real and established, you need to know what age they were when they met, how they became friends, and how their friendship has evolved over time up until the point where your book begins.

Give the relationship layers

What are their inside jokes? Favorite things to do together? What are their favorite qualities in one another? What do each of them do that annoys the other? Friendships are imperfect and incredibly specific things and in order for this one to feel real you need to establish all of the eccentricities that make it unique.

What is at stake for their friendship in your story?

Even if the friendship is sort of a side plot to your story, there needs to be something at stake in order for the friendship to feel purposeful and necessary to the story. You can’t just add a friend character in order to be supportive and to relay information to us about the protagonist because then the character will feel completely unnecessary. You likely already know what your story’s protagonist wants/desires throughout the story, but also think about their friend’s needs. Do they want different things? Do they want the same thing, but want to go about it differently? Are they competing for the same thing? How does this affect their friendship?

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