aaaaaaand.... ACTION!

Sex. Violence. Car crashes. Explosions. Those of you who write that kind of contemplative, solipsistic fiction where nothing much ever happens *might* just want to stop right here!

This might get a little basic, but it's on my mind lately. After all, the action is the juicy meat of the story. And nothing knocks me out of a story like bad action. Or maybe I should say action, badly done.

I'm going to have to let go of my coveted triple-tap here, because the way I see it, there are four basic ways to show action:

1. Cut to the Fireplace: An oldie but a goodie, and still a favorite of mine. Back in the days of the Film Censorship Board, the couple would kiss, the violins would swell and the camera would move to the fireplace. Or the pounding surf. Or a train going through a tunnel. So that *we* knew they were, you know, doing it.

I like this technique because your readers fill in the blanks. And they have much, much nastier imaginations than you do. *Much*. :-) You just show the upraised axe and cut to the scream, and their fevered imaginations strike the blow for you.

She stood in the doorway. Her body was framed in shadow and her eyes stayed on his.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.

Her bare feet made a whisper of sound crossing the threshhold. She locked the door behind her.

Drawbacks: Two things you have to look out for with this technique.

The. PRIME. Consideration. is that you don't shortchange action that needs to be in the story. If how the love scene, fight, crash, etc. happens matters to the story, you'd damn well better put it in there. If not, by all means, fade to the fireplace...

Also, be sure that you're clear enough to your target audience about what happened. The Tiny Dynamo *loves* the Bridget Jones movies (yet she likes me anyway - go figure), but it wasn't until we watched the director's commentary that she found out Bridget had anal sex with Daniel Cleever. That particular item was handled too subtly for her innocent ears to pick up.

And I say target audience. Readers know the ins and outs of their genres, but what might seem cliched to a 'regular' might completely stump a 'newbie'. Some people may read Miss Marple and wonder how this little old lady's supposed to be solving crimes the police can't. And I still don't see why every romance has to have a Big Misunderstanding in Act I that isn't cleared up until Act III. Your 'fireplace' action needs to take reader's expectations into account. Of course, since you probably read the sort of stuff you write, it likely will anyway.

(All right, this is taking longer than I thought, and I've got some novel to write. I'll pick up Part 2 tomorrow...)

And without further ado, today's

Official Daily Wordcount-o-Meter: 8898 words

Don't know what that is since yesterday. Simple math is beyond me this morning....

Knockout Moments

Some dead French guy once said something along the lines of, "A writer tells lies to reveal the truth."

Or if he didn't, he should have. Cause that's what we do: we make stuff up, left, right and center. But the stuff we make up has to ring true to hold up our end of the story contract. For her part, the reader agrees to put aside some skepticism to play make-believe with us.

Until we drop the ball.

I'm not talking about the obvious suspects:

Info-dumps ("As you know, Bob, these caves are rumoured to have been...")

Eye-crossingly bad dialogue ("If you dare to move I will shoot you," he threatened menacingly.)

Hackneyed story tropes (A needlessly complicated serial killer makes fiendish puzzles out of his victims, and a moping vampire crimefighter needs to stop him before the innocent love interest is next. Yawn.)

Those are all style problems, and bad style can be unlearned. I'm thinking today of those times we tell the reader the wrong lies and knock them out of the story. CS Harris did a couple of great posts on man-stuff and women-stuff that strains story credibility.

Or on Killer Year, Sean Chercover put up this post on fictional firearms gaffs. My personal pet peeve is the hero giving us the make and model of the gun the bad guy's pointing at him. I've had guns pointed at me, and never once did I think, "Why, that's a Colt Python .357 Magnum," or "Hmm, now is that pistol a Berreta or a Sig Sauer? Sigs have that slim line, but I think it's the Berreta has that particular butterfly safety."

Or whatever. To be honest, I can't remember what the hell I ever thought in those moments. I'll buy James Bond or Jack Reacher being disinterested enough to think about these things. The rest of us? Not so much.

It goes back to the writer's sense of the world, and of people. When it differs too much from the reader's, the reader is knocked out of the story. Naked women admiring themselves in the mirror, men commenting on their own chiseled jaws and sensuous mouths, teenagers who talk like the Scooby Doo gang, all are at odds with life as I know it. And probably the reader, too.

It's not always the writer's fault, either. I rented the first season of The Wire recently. I was riveted. The Dynamo watched maybe five or ten minutes before pronouncing it unbelievable. "Those kids dealing drugs, why aren't they in school? And nobody curses that much, especially not cops."

Widely different experiences of the world. I lent the DVDs to another Kiwi who *loves* The Sopranos. He brought it back the next day. His comment?

"People in the US don't really curse that much, do they?"

Fuck no.