Talking out Quiet - Talking to myself about action scenes.

Sometimes, while trying to figure things out, I engage in a process I refer to as 'ToQQing', or 'Talking out quiet' - as opposed to talking out loud - to work on my thoughts. Here's an example from today where I muddle my way around trying to work out why I'm having trouble structuring a story around some action set-pieces that landed in my head and charmed me

Brief definition – an action scene is a scene built around a given action, not necessarily violence. Tony Stark in the Iron Man film forging the armour in secret? Action scene. Rocky’s training montage? Action scene. Sarah Connor’s love scene with Kyle Reese in the Terminator? Action scene.

Action scenes are flexible, the definition is definitely hella foggy on the edges, but for the purposes of this talking-to-myself, they’re fundamentally built around a specific action being taken which is not, in itself, of plot relevance but the outcome of that action is.

Hurling the One Ring into Mount Doom isn’t an action scene by this definition, because the action being taken is directly the plot. Gandalf ‘You Shall Not Pass’-ing is an action scene, but the whole running from orcs and leaping around bit is the ‘action’ part, and Gandalf sacrificing himself so the rest of the Fellowship can escape is the way that action scene resolves – it’s the outcome. A scene that focuses primarily on dialogue and back and forth is unlikely to be an action scene, but a scene that is primarily focussed on doing one thing is.

Does running something with enormous action scenes in text make sense, as compared to film where you can rely on spectacle?

Action is not necessarily the way books work, except insofar as to create movement, demonstrate stakes, conflict, etc. But it’s all serving to support a larger structure.

A chase scene, for instance, only means something if getting caught is something the reader has an opinion on. In a horror movie, being chased by a ‘terrible creature’ runs with ‘the protagonist you care about could be killed’ as a kinda major element. But you have to demonstrate the terribleness of that creature or it falls flat, innately. You have to demonstrate the value of the person. And, much more importantly...

These action sequences are inherently transitionary, in that they’re moving from point to point on the plotline, rather than creating a point on the plotline.

The action itself is a kind of dead air that doesn’t, intrinsically, do anything in relation to the flow of plot or the nature of the characters involved. If you have a chase scene or a fight that runs five pages or fifteen, a minute of screen time or thirty, they’re both the exact same amount of plot movement – ‘the situation, which was exciting, resolved in this particular way.’

The action is going to resolve in one direction or another. From the perspective of the plot’s structure, that is the only relevant point to the entire action.

‘The chase is halted when the character reaches a locked door... so they take another, riskier route! And on that route they’re chased EVEN HARDER, so they have to run more and get extra TIRED’, all those kinds of moves – the twirling around on the dancefloor – can serve to move focus around and amp up stakes and lead a reader to assume that one outcome over another is likely... But the particular twirls on the dance floor don’t matter, structurally.

In general, structurally, an action set-piece can get shrunk down to a single action ‘the chase happens’, which can be a dull little two-line summary, and that still works on the structural level.

Which is a really longwinded way of saying this: The emotional weight and power behind action scenes can’t really come from within the action scene itself, intrinsically. They can only really move what’s already on the board, so to speak, meaning that all of their power is derived from the characters, situations, stakes, which have been previously established.

Now, an action scene can introduce some of those elements, can introduce new threats, demonstrate character, all of that, yes, but that’s skilful twirling on the dance floor – that’s really fine detail story structure, which is reliant on the broader foundations at play.

Before an action sequence can mean anything, those foundations have to be built – so maybe one of the reasons I have difficulty with having a really exciting action scene in mind and trying to build a story around it is that action scenes are not load bearing structures within a story. I can have a beautiful, wonderfully exciting car chase in mind with moves and twists and turns and that’s great for what it is... But just having the car chase doesn’t give me the reasons the car chase matters.

Just having the beautiful steps characters take on a dance floor doesn’t give me the way those characters relate to each other or why dancing together means something, what social status they’re demonstrating.

Just having the love scene doesn’t give me the relationship structure between the characters, doesn’t give me their emotional lives.

All of those things give me some hints towards these deeper elements of story, but fundamentally action scenes are there to take what is foundational and hold it up to the reader/viewer, to demonstrate something happening with something that matters for another reason, and they don’t – on their own – provide what matters.

Because action scenes are.... ‘there is a situation, this is how it happens – the part that thrills us is how that action leads to that situation changing.’

The situation is load bearing, that’s where story and structure and everything can be built from. The action scene isn’t load bearing – it’s where all of the things inside the story move and breathe and play and live, demonstrating how all that load bearing stuff works and why it matters and why it’s at risk and how it changes.

Is this me beating my head against writer’s block and figuring out that it’s at least partly a ‘what is my POV on how plot gets structured’ issue? Maybe. We’ll see what other thoughts I have, here, later.