Post #159 March 4, 2019

“Writing Action/Adventure Stories”

Much of my work in recent years has been in the action/adventure genre.  I read often in this genre and enjoy the challenge of writing in it as well.  So what makes for a great action/adventure story?

The website NowNovel.com offers these tips for good action/adventure writing:

1. Understand (the difference between) ‘action’ and ‘pace’ (and what weakens them)

2. Favor active voice

3. Describe deeds, movements and gestures

4. Focus on characters’ goals

5. Keep details of setting and other description relevant to action

6. Use short sentences to increase pace

7. Set off chains of cause and effect

8. Cut out filter words  (“He saw that it was dark” vs “It was dark”)

 

Let’s see how well I’ve done in using these tips with an excerpt from my new series Time Jumpers. 

 

It was Acth:On’e who saw the ship first, breaching the rough surf several hundred meters out to sea.  The TM1 was loading gear aboard Cygnus, along with Commander Nathan Golich, trying to stay upright in the fierce wind gusts, when he spotted something surfacing just beyond the surf line.  As he watched, the ship rolled in the waves for a few moments, then disgorged a human being, clad in a hypersuit. 

“Commander…look there!  It’s Alicia--!”

Golich looked up.  “Toonie…you’re cracked…Alicia’s—” but he stopped in mid-sentence, for they had both seen the hypersuited figure waddle unsteadily through the surf, stumble onto the beach and drop to its knees.

Both crewmen then tossed their gear away and skidded downslope from the rocky promontory where Cygnus was parked and sprinted out to the beach.

It was Alicia Yang.

She was alive, out of breath, almost giggling at them, but seemingly okay.  They helped the Defense and Protective Systems tech to her feet, brushed wet sand off her face and shouldered her up the slope to the ship, where she ducked through the lockout on F deck and ran straight into Captain Dringoth.

“Well, well…Jumpmaster Yang…decided to pay us a visit, did you?”  Dringoth queried Acth:On’e and Golich.  “She okay…she hurt…what’s her condition?”

But before Golich could respond, Yang blurted out, “Captain…Captain…you’ve got to come with me…come down to the beach.   They said they’d wait.  I think they want everybody to see it…see what I’ve seen.”

“And what have you seen, Jumpmaster Yang?”

Yang fluttered her hands, not sure what to do with them.  Her face was a child on Christmas morning, wide-eyed, electric with wonder.  “You wouldn’t believe it…there’s a whole civilization down there…it’s incredible…there aren’t words—”

Acth:On’e put a hand to her temple.  “These bruises…we don’t know what happened.  The fish may have done something to her.”

“No, really,” she complained, “They just took me to some place called the Pillars…sacred waters…that’s what the translator said.  Ice caves…whispering voices, thousands of them…you have to see it, you have hear it.”

By now, the rest of the crew had come down to F deck and gathered around: M’Bela and URME had joined them. 

“The girl’s delirious,” M’Bela decided, hands on her hips. 

“I’m not delirious…really, Captain…we need to stay awhile, investigate this.”

Dringoth was skeptical.  “Take her to sick bay.  Make sure she’s okay.”  To URME, the Captain added, “And restrain her…you know what to do.”  To the others, Dringoth was firm and unyielding.  “We launch in an hour.”  He disappeared up the gangway.

“Come on, princess,” said Golich.  “Let’s get you to bed.”

So they took her to the tiny sick bay, carved out of a corner of the galley and set up a bioweb.  Probe bots were released—M’Bela drove them—and inserted themselves into her eyes, ears, nose and throat.  She tried to fight them off but it was like fighting off smoke.  Finally, she gave in and sank back in a sulk. 

“Nobody believes me,” she muttered.  “I’m just a DPS tech…just a hired gun.  Nobody ever believes me.”

Acth:On’e was there, a bit sympathetic.  “You’ve been through a lot, Alicia.  Stop fighting.  You know we’ve got orders.  Commandstar said breakdown the Twister and abandon everything else in place.  We’ve got to be at Keaton’s World in three months.  Besides—” he peered out a nearby porthole, “--from the way the light level’s falling off, I’d say this old sun’s about had it.  Maybe a month, maybe a year…then kablooey!”

Yang sat up abruptly and her head penetrated the bioweb, which buzzed sharply, and pressed her back down.  “Ouch, dammit!  Can’t you make this damned web bigger—Toonie, that’s my point.  There’s a whole civilization down below the waves.  A whole culture.  Intelligent creatures, with ships and cities and religions.  We can’t just let them go up in smoke.  TACTRON needs to know about this…there are things he could do…maybe evacuation or something.”

Acth:On’e scoffed, rubbing that faint scar along his jaw—an encounter with thermosaurs on Telitor when he was a young V1—“Doesn’t matter.  Collateral damage.  Casualties of war.  I don’t like it either, but what we can do?”  He shook his blade-shaped head.  “And I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes either, girl…abandoning your post, going AWOL…I’m sure Time Guard’ll have a nice welcoming party for you at K-World.”

Yang rolled over and buried her bandaged head in the pillow.  “I don’t want to think about it.  At least I have this—“she pulled out an echopod from under the sheets and brandished it at Acth:On’e.

He was startled.  “What are you doing with that…you should have left it.  That’s contraband…we don’t know what those things can do.  Let me have that—”

“No way.”  She jammed the device under the sheets again, between her legs.  “It’s just a translator…maybe an encyclopedia too.  I like to listen to stuff.”

Acth:On’e was about to drop the bioweb and reach in and grab the pod,  but a voice came over the 1MC.

“Toonie to the command deck…Master Guard Acth:On’e to the command deck at once….”

He glared back at Yang.  “I’m informing the Captain.  That thing needs to be secured…we don’t know what it could do.”

“Go ahead,” she pouted and turned away.

Acth:On’e left the sick bay with an irritated gesture.

 

That’s a sequence from Time Jumpers Episode 2.  In it, I’ve tried to follow the tips for good action/adventure writing.  This genre demands pace, lots of action, characters always striving to achieve something, and not much in the way of internal monologue or characters contemplating their navels.  Readers of action/adventure stories want to read about things happening to people they can believe in, so they can live their lives vicariously. 

Study the excerpt and tell me if I succeeded.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on March 11.

See you then.

Phil B