Guest Post - Steve McHugh on Writing Action Scenes
Hellooo!
Today I am on the blog tour for No Gods, Only Monsters by Steve McHugh that tells the tale of Diana the Roman goddess of the hunt called back from her isolation to help an old friend and then the adventures start. I’ll review soon but today Steve McHugh was able to talk about how their approach to action scenes
One question I’ve been asked a lot over the decade of being a published author is about how to write action scenes? How do I make each one different? Where does my inspiration come from?
The latter of those questions is easy to answer. I’ve been watching action films for as long as I can remember. I grew up watching Hong Kong cinema, specifically Jackie Chan, and Golden Harvest films. There was no finer education to the world of action films and martial arts in movies than spending my teenage years watching everything I could find from this prestigious company.
And not just live action films either, but videogames, anime, comics, manga. There’s a host of stuff out there that helped turn me into the writer I am now. So, when it came to writing something, I knew it was going to have action scenes. I also knew that I wanted each action scene to be different, to have its own flavour, its own feel to it.
Each action scene in a book should feel different. One on one, one against many, with weapons, without, a chase seen, etc. There are endless ways to show good action scenes without having to always do the same thing. And they should change with the character or characters involved.
For example, Marvel films have become great at action. Shang-Chi’s actions scenes are very different to Winter Soldier, the action should be an extension of the character. It should tell you something about the character in the scene, are they quick, strong, do they care about bystanders, are they vicious and mean?
Incorporating magic into the action should be the same thing. If you watching something like Naruto Shippuden, every character fights differently, and every character’s personality is involved in the fighting and action scenes. Just doing the same thing over and over again hasn’t been something I’ve ever wanted to do, and I’m always looking for new and interesting places to put action scenes. Scenes that further the plot and character work. Action scenes that don’t do either of those, that are just there because they’re cool, tend to stand out as being unnecessary and that’s the last thing I want.
Writing action is hard, or can be, but it’s also an extremely creative thing to involve yourself in. Having done various marital arts has certainly helped me understand movement and positioning, but it’s not strictly necessary. If you want to write good action, watch and read the masters. There’s a wealth of stuff out there that will help, but be prepared to take some time off to go through it, as it’s quite the rabbit hole of awesomeness.
