writing action scenes

You want to deliver the best punch possible to any action or fight scene because in deep point of view, the reader is IN THE ACTION so it better be believable. You need words that will pack a lot of meaning into them, show don’t tell, maintain a fast pace, move the story ahead, and deliver characterization – action scenes need to do a lot of work so don’t skip or skim over details that could make or break these pivotal scenes for readers!

In deep point of view, we (the writers) are not telling the story. We are writing it as though the story is happening in real time and coming directly from the character. Removing distance, telling, and filters helps, but ask yourself some key questions:

What does your MC see as the stakes of this action scene?
What won’t they do? What would be their instinct at first?
What would a better fighter do? Why don’t they do that? How does that make them feel?
How far would they go to survive? What principles won’t they sacrifice? Why?

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The fallout of these scenes can be very powerful, but the outcome feels fake if the battle to get there wasn’t bloody (physically or emotionally).

How To Put Your Reader In The Action With Action Scenes

Using Internal Dialogue To Enhance Action

Let’s dive a little deeper at the techniques and stylistic choices that add a punch to your action scenes in deep point of view. How much internal dialogue you use will be determined by your POVC’s (point of view character’s) personality, perceived threat level, and also the genre you’re writing in. Sword and sorcery novels will be expected to have less internal dialogue in action scenes than paranormal romance for instance.

Some genres prefer what I call thoughty characters and skim over the action details. The specificity is in the emotional chaos and trauma caused by the action scene. Other genres want to focus on the physicality of the fight scene and work through the emotions later.

Remember, in a life-or-death action sequence all you have time to do is react. Psychology tells us that the part of the brain responsible for survival—that fight, flight or freeze response, shuts down or slows functions that aren’t needed to survive. That’s why bladders release when people are scared. That’s why we have a hard time thinking or forming articulate sentences when we’re frightened or panicked. Everyone will have a different window of tolerance so what terrifies one person will cause barely a blip for another. If your character is or isn’t freaking out, make sure the reader knows THE WHY.

But not every action sequence is a life-or-death scenario. Be strategic in what you need that scene to accomplish story-wise. What are some of the stylistic choices you can make when writing an action scene?

Strategic Word Choice Brings Sound And Emotion To Action Scenes

Hit, punch, jerk, stab, strike, slice — these are all words that sound fast. Compare that with words like push, gouge, impale, run-through, pummel — these are all well-used words in action scenes too, but they don’t sound fast. It’s the hard-consonant sound that can get onomatopoeia working for you. That’s not to say don’t use words with longer soft consonant sounds, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Instead of having your POVC strike an opponent in the face, have them crack an eye socket. You don’t have to be graphic or gory if your genre doesn’t call for it, but if you’re able to describe with more precision what’s happening it’s easier for readers to picture.

She swung wildly with her knife.

She swung for his eyes with her knife.

One makes you wince and the other doesn’t quite engage you the same way, right.

Use action scenes to build characterization. Someone who’s a trained killer will know precisely what organs, joints, or bones they’re aiming for, what damage they’re aiming to create, and how debilitating that injury will be. The housewife assaulted as she’s getting into her van in a parking garage will be fighting for her life. She might not be able to use the same specificity as the trained assassin. It’s the difference between a sucker punch to the gut and one to the spleen. These strategic word choices show your reader a lot of things about your character—but be true to your character. If they couldn’t find their spleen with a map, they probably wouldn’t use that word, right.

Be strategic with your verb choices. I pointed out the sound value that can work for you, but verbs can also infuse either positive or negative emotion into each action sequence. Let the verbs do some of the emotional lifting so you don’t have to use internal dialogue to show those details as much. Trust your reader. Consider:

nudge vs punch vs wallop

These words hint at the nuance behind the intended force but also the emotion behind the blow. This is economic writing that packs a punch – pun intended lol

Prolonged Action Scenes Can Tire Readers

Most action scenes are short. You can’t maintain that breakneck pace without readers checking out just to breathe. If you’re writing a prolonged battle scene (whether it’s with fists, swords, or words) remember to give the reader a chance to breathe.

Move the fight to a new location – the argument moves to another room, another player enters the scene (the waitress brings the meal), you get the idea. This also gives you a chance to change or ratchet up the emotional tension in the scene.

Do Your Research When It Comes To The Physicality Of Action Scenes

Nothing will jerk your reader out of the story like something impossible. We’ve all seen the bad guys jump off a roof and walk away from that. *rolls eyes* Where we might turn to our partner or friend and comment about the lack of reality in a movie and keep watching, many readers will distance themselves from the story and never get back into the action again.

I am very blessed to have a sister-in-law who’s a critical care paramedic, and a friend who is training to be a competitive MMA fighter. I have bounced questions off of both of them to make sure I’ve gotten details correct.

A fight to the death should be dirty. Too many fight scenes employ these half-hearted, polite swings and head butts. If your life is on the line, you’re going to draw blood, break bones, there won’t be any holds barred.

A writing teacher rightly criticized one of my fight scenes between two trained soldiers as being too tame. These were two characters trained and experienced in killing people. One is overpowered and stops relying on fancy moves and is simply trying to survive. The critique rightly pointed out that character didn’t want to live, because a teen in prison with a make-shift shank would fight back harder than that. I undermined that character’s believability by pulling up short on the action scenes.

In your current WIP, how much experience does your POVC have with fighting? How would they handle a physical encounter with someone bigger and stronger than them? How would they rationalize a physical encounter with someone they overpower?

Been told you should learn Deep Point Of View? Had an editor or critique partner tell you to “go deeper” with the emotions in your fiction? Looking for a community of writers seeking to create emotional connections with readers? Check out the Free Resource Hub and then join the Going Deeper With Emotions In Fiction Facebook group.

How do you write action scenes that keep readers leaning in, holding their breath, and cheering for the character to win no matter how impossible it looks? Put the reader IN THE ACTION by writing in deep point of view!

Know The Why Of The Action Scene

Just like in every other kind of scene written in deep point of view, know the why for your point of view character (POVC). Why are they fighting right now? Most people take quite a bit of nudging before they’re pushed far enough to take a swing at someone.

The WHY of an action scene must be specific to that character in that moment. The WHY should give the reader insight into the POVCs motives, their character, their priorities, their passion, etc. All fight/action scenes should move the story or the emotional plot ahead. If you can remove that scene without changing the story, it’s not essential. Only essential fight/action scenes get to stay.

Emotions In Action Scenes

Remember, primary emotions are the instinctive, knee-jerk, unthinking emotional responses we have to things. What mix of primary emotions are at play for your character in this action scene? That mix may trigger the fight, flight, or freeze response if there’s danger or threat perceived, or it could trigger a secondary emotion — where there’s a thinking response — TO DO something — with the primary emotions at play.

In action sequences this process must happen fast *snaps fingers* to keep the tension high and the pace moving. Let’s have a look at an example:

“Reacher chose the path of least resistance. He ducked his head and let the punch scythe through the empty air above it. Then he bounced back up, and launched to his feet, and twisted, and used his falling-backward momentum to jerk his elbow into the guy’s kidney, which was rotating around into position just in time. It was a good solid hit. The guy went down hard. Reacher fell back in his chair and sat there like absolutely nothing had happened.”
Lee Child, The Midnight Line, ch 3

So, we have Reacher in a situation that’s escalated to violence. I haven’t included the primary emotions here, but Reacher’s already placed his scarred giant-sized left fist on the table, and then the even bigger more-scarred right fist beside it in a failed attempt to intimidate.

Reacher’s watching the guys around him for tension, for anything that tips him off to action about to happen. So, the primary emotions at play here would be anticipation – hyper vigilance, wariness, plus maybe dread or suspicion that’s led him to seek the information to begin with.

So, the secondary emotion then isn’t anger. It colors more like frustration or irritation because they’re making him work harder than he thinks he should have to to get the information he needs, but he’s flexible. (Many primary emotions can also be secondary emotions depending on the context — if that emotion is a thinking reaction to a primary emotion.)

“It was a good solid hit.” <- This is the internal dialogue in this sequence. This is Reacher’s thinking reaction to the primary emotions he’s experiencing. He hasn’t even broken a sweat — he never felt out of control or in danger, he never exerts himself. His internal dialogue reflects this inner state. Another character with less self-control, less experience, less training, more at stake emotionally, would respond differently to that same mix of primary emotions.

Internal Dialogue In Action Scenes

Internal dialogue is where we communicate/show secondary emotions. Let’s look at a writer whose POVC is a bit more… thoughty than Reacher.

“…George deliberately bumped against her. She [Anna] pulled back from him and instinctively wrapped her arms protectively around herself. He gave her a sneer he hid quickly from the others.
‘Illegitimis nil carborundum,’ she murmured. It was stupid. She knew it even before George’s fist struck out.
She ducked and dodged. Instead of a fist in her stomach, she took it in the shoulder and rolled with it. The small entryway didn’t give her much room to get away from a second blow.
There wasn’t one.
Boyd had George pinned on the ground with a knee in the middle of his back. George wasn’t fighting him, just talking fast…”
Patricia Briggs, Cry Wolf

So, the primary emotions are shown through Anna’s body language. She’s wary, afraid, jumpy, hyper-vigilant. So, how does she react to those emotions (the secondary emotion)? Defiance. “It was stupid.” That’s the internal dialogue here.

This scene feels like it moves a little slower than the Reacher scene. Any romance subgenre tends to be more focused on relationships so that’s reflected here. There’s more internal dialogue, more description in this scene, because that’s Anna’s thinking response to the primary emotions. Fighting back with her fists would be useless, all she has to fight with is her wit and her mouth. Do you see the difference?

Blow By Blow Action Scenes

There are some action scenes that by necessity are stark in their lack of description and internal dialogue. The intention is to create this snap snap snap response to the violence. There’s no time to think, just survive.

The shot thundered across the beach, an echo of the waves. The lead bullet broke his bottom right incisor, tore through his palate, just above his upper teeth, punched through the lower bone of his eye socket, and broke through the skin just in front of his left ear. He staggered back, then dropped down into a sitting position. Pain shot through his head. The blood dripped warmly down his cheek. His left eye wouldn’t focus.
But he was alive.
Deon Meyer, Dead Before Dying

Meyer’s blow-by-blow account is visceral, it makes you want to wince. The only internal dialogue is, “But he was alive.” Where another writer using deep pov throughout the novel might widen the lens and use a shallower point of view to show an out-of-body experience or use a summary technique to force the reader to lean in, Meyer has zoomed way in to create the same but opposite effect for readers.

This is a stylistic choice.

There isn’t a right or wrong amount of internal dialogue or description as long as you keep the pace moving, reveal character, and push the emotional and story arc ahead.

Be intentional about this. What effect are you trying to create?

I had a situation where I had two POVCs in an action scene. I had initially written the scene from the female perspective, the victim of the violence. But I rewrote it in the male POVCs voice as a sytlistic choice based on where I wanted to focus readers’ attention. If we were making movies, we might think of this in terms of which actor do we point the camera at to best tell the story in this scene?

What Tone Are You Creating?

The tone of the fight scene should dictate how deep the point of view is in an action/fight scene. Are you trying to create a feeling of raw shock and awe like the last example? Zoom in close and use cold, fast verbs (broke, tore, punch).

Cold efficiency and proficiency like in the Reacher example? The action will be clean, fast-paced, and without a lot of description. The reader does most of the heavy lifting because the description is so sparse.

The underdog facing a bully’s fists like in the Patricia Briggs’ example? There’s more internal dialogue, more description of what’s being felt – physically and emotionally.

Use similes and metaphors and descriptors that readers can relate to. Short, quick descriptions can be very powerful. Describing a character’s clothes as wet with blood for instance, not many of us will have been drenched with blood (thankfully) but we’ve all been thoroughly soaked while still clothed. This pairs an unfamiliar experience with a familiar physical sensation. In this way, we can write what we know even in action scenes.

Do you have a favorite action/fight scene from a novel?

4 Tricks To Keeping Fight Scenes Authentic