Being Creative

I like action scenes.

kungfu 1 by Sauerkraut

They’re where we get to see the true colour of a character, where the real person inside comes out and can be a saint or a sinner.  Will they save the day, or run in fear of their own mortality?

Also, lots of people die.

Despite these truths, writing action scenes needs a bit of creativity.  And it turns out, being creative is hard when nature’s done all the cool shit before you.  Seriously, that animal exists?  I’m never going swimming again.

When I started out writing, I was pretty comfortable with my dialogue, but my action scenes were less … easy.  I’ve done more of them now, and they’re coming faster and – I hope – a bit more coherently.  It’s easier to “see” what’s going on in the scene when I read it back to myself.

This is good and bad.  It’s good, because I’m (I hope) getting better at it.  It’s bad, because there’s a bunch of earlier scenes that are going to need liberal editing.  Them’s the breaks; I’ve got the time, and I want it to be right.

Today’s scene was a mix of m4d skillZ action and witty dialogue.  Word goal: 2,500.  Word achievement: 3,700.  But it was 3,700 words of good, clean, fun.  I figure if I finish the scene happy, that’s probably a win any way you cut it.