How to Write Action Adventure Novels

by Michael Newton

  This doesn’t mean that “dated” novels are impossible to publish. Don Pendleton’s Canadian Crisis (Pinnacle, 1975) placed Executioner Mack Bolan in the vicinity of Montreal’s summer Olympics, and eight years later, Balefire sent a solitary Arab terrorist against the L.A. games. It happens, but in general, you’ll find that editors prefer a theme that does not come complete with built-in obsolescence.

  An obvious exception to the rule of thumb on dated themes involves historical events. John Jakes has made a fortune from the Civil War, and there is ample room within the action genre for incorporation of authentic history. Jack Higgins and Ken Follett are two masters of the craft, and now that Vietnam is history instead of prime-time news, a growing crop of authors are producing manuscripts about that war that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. At present, Vietnam is “hot” across the board—in literature, on television, at the movies—and the would-be writer looking for a point of entry to the action market could do worse than sailing up the Mekong for a one-on-one with Charlie.

  Novels based on history would seem to have a clear advantage in the plot department; they can even call on real-life characters for cameo appearances, provided that the author knows his libel law. But woe to any writer who depends on history to tell a tale, relieving him or her of basic obligations as a storyteller. You are writing fiction, after all, and it is not enough to simply change some names, air-lift your characters to Bunker Hill or Gettysburg, and then proceed to plagiarize a college textbook for your story line. There is a world of difference between Del Vecchio’s The Thirteenth Valley and a Time-Life volume on the war in Vietnam. Your readers count on you to amplify reality while providing solutions and, from time to time, a happy ending. If they wanted homework, they’d be taking classes at the local university instead of spending time with you.

  Handling the Headlines

  Precisely how are news reports converted into action novels? Once you get the hang of what to look for, what to ask yourself, it’s not as tricky as it seems. I’ve randomly selected and synopsized ten news items, published in the week before I wrote this chapter. Names and the specific settings are deleted—they’re irrelevant—and you should take a stab at spinning thumbnail story lines around each case before we tackle them together. Let’s imagine that—

  A. A free-lance American pilot is shot down and jailed in a hostile Third World country.

  B. The U.N. opens up its files on Nazi war crimes … and 433 of them are missing.

  C. The families of nine Americans killed in a foreign air crash complain the local government will not release any corpses for burial.

  D. Soldiers of a Third World nation capture the reputed leader of a recent unsuccessful coup.

  E. A fanatical Middle Eastern ruler announces creation of a “political will,” naming his chosen successor.

  F. Moments before a disastrous airplane crash, the pilot radios for help, reporting sounds of gunfire from the passenger compartment.

  G. An unidentified woman, disguised as a nurse, kidnaps a newborn infant from a hospital maternity ward.

  H. Soldiers on routine border patrol kill five foreign terrorists.

  I. A chance misdemeanor arrest bags an international fugitive linked with terrorism, narcotics smuggling, and multiple murder.

  J. A jealous husband shoots his wife, two children, and two neighbors, then commits suicide.

  I grant you, these are easy, but they serve our purpose as examples. With imagination and a dash of background research, any one of the selected items should provide an adequate foundation—inspiration, if you will—for a respectable adventure novel. If you draw a blank on one or two, the other eight or nine should keep you busy for a while. If you strike out on all of them, relax; there’ll be more news tomorrow, guaranteed.

  For openers, I scan our sample clippings with a healthy dose of paranoia. Treachery, conspiracy, and good old-fashioned subterfuge are staples of the action genre. Wise adventure heroes trust themselves, their guns, and not much else. You’re points ahead if you can make yourself familiar with the mind-set, taking on a front-line grunt’s perspective as he scans the shadows for potential enemies.

  In item A, I ask myself about the pilot, first of all. Is he a hero or a heavy? Was he actually breaking any laws, or is the hostile government just using him for leverage against America on some distinct and unrelated issue? If his actions were illegal, who’s his sponsor? Who might wish to rescue him—or silence him—to salvage their illicit operation? Should a strike force be dispatched to liberate the hostage? And, if so, will other gunmen be en route to murder him before he can escape?

  On item B, our crucial question is the contents of the missing files. Who stood to gain—or lose—by their convenient disappearance? Is some European statesman running for elective office, possibly concerned about disclosure of his Nazi past? Who has the files? Have they been stolen by the Nazis named therein? By an Israeli hit team? By some freelance thief who plans to offer them for sale to the highest bidder?

  With item C, we face a multiplicity of questions that may launch us off into adventure land. Who were the nine Americans? What took them to the country where they died? Were any of them linked to the American intelligence community, “sensitive” industry, or organized crime? If they were simply tourists, what may one (or all) of them have seen that would have placed their lives in jeopardy? If your protagonist is sent to solve the mystery or bring specific bodies back, where should he start?

  Coups and revolutions offer great potential for adventure writers. An example is The Dogs of War, by Frederick Forsyth, which pursues the toppling of a Third World government from its conception through the final firefight. In the case of item D, the capture of a revolutionary leader may be useful as the end—or the beginning—of your story. If the coup fails early on, survivors of the revolutionary force may try some other move against the government, perhaps enlisting mercenaries to support the cause. Your hero may fall out on either side, depending on your characterization of the ruling government, American interests in the area, and so forth.

  Sudden instability in any oil-rich country is potentially explosive. Item E presents your hero(es) with a chance to alter history through any one of several means. Once they identify the loony tune’s successor, will they seek to hinder or assist his rise to power? How, in either case, can this be best accomplished with the minimum amount of risk? Is this official business, or is someone in the private sector—a cartel of oil executives, for instance—picking up the tab?

  In item F, the problem of the air crash is a sticky one. It may suggest a climax for your story, but I’m more inclined to have the “accident” up front, allowing the protagonist to search for answers and assess responsibility. If shots were fired inside the plane, who did the shooting? Why? Who were his targets? If you’re “thinking paranoid,” it should be obvious your hero won’t just stumble on these answers free-of-charge. Behind the grim disaster there will certainly be someone seeking to suppress the truth at any cost … including future homicides.

  On item G, the baby-napping is a different sort of problem. We are interested, of course, in the identity of the elusive “nurse,” but first we have to scrutinize the victims. Are they government employees? Mobsters? Millionaires? Participants in the protected-witness program? Once you have identified the baby’s parents, you’ll be well along your way toward motive and the ultimate identity of the kidnappers. Now, all you have to do is bring on a hero and get the child back! Simple, right?

  A border incident like that described in item H is nothing new in Africa, the Middle East, or Central America. Your job is to make it new—and different—from any other showdown of its kind. Who were the terrorists, and what makes them unique? Was one of them an agent for the KGB? A hunted Nazi war criminal? An American agent recently listed as missing in action? Do they represent some new, virulent organization with evil plans in mind? And were they entering the country, or escaping from it, after making contact with allies on the i
nside?

  With item I, we need to ask ourselves about the man in custody. Why does a high-class fugitive allow himself to be arrested in this kind of bargain-basement incident? Was his incarceration planned? If so, by whom? Is he more dangerous in jail than on the street? (Suppose the President is scheduled for a visit to the area, and your assassin is on hand, presumably secure in jail … .) Is the arrest a mere diversion on behalf of his associates, while they pull off the terrorist coup of the decade nearby?

  The “loving father goes berserk” report in item J is all too common; two more have made headlines in the time between my clipping of the item and the writing of these lines. But keep in mind, we’re “thinking paranoid” these days. Is this a murder-suicide, or something else entirely? Was the family wiped out, with Daddy framed (and killed) to take the fall? Who benefits from slaughtering a family—or were the neighbors actually targets of the triggerman? Again, who were the victims, really? Federal witnesses in hiding? Eastern bloc defectors? Relatives of a “retired” CIA agent? The possibilities are limited only by your own imagination.

  If a headline grabs your fancy but you don’t think it will make an adequate foundation for a novel, clip it anyway, for future reference. You never know when you may want a short vignette, digression, flashback, or whatever, to illuminate your story or your characters. The works of Joseph Wambaugh are replete with anecdotes about police work that appear to have no bearing on the plot, but they do wonders at providing atmosphere and bringing Wambaugh’s characters to life. (The image of a black patrolman struggling to lynch a wino stands out in my mind as one of the high points in The Glitter Dome. I don’t recall the plot in any detail, but that scene still comes to mind with regularity, and never fails to bring a smile.)

  Nothing New Under the Sun?

  Ideas cannot be copyrighted, but unless you’re set on building up a reputation as a hack and rip-off artist, you will have to give some thought to that old bogeyman, originality. Make no mistake, developing original ideas can be a major problem. John Cawelti, in his survey of the modern Western, claims that there are only six clear themes in Western films or novels. Stephen King (who ought to know) asserts that horror stories may be slotted rather neatly into four thematic categories: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and “things without a name.”

  I may be oversimplifying (and I’ll certainly draw flack from authors who believe they’ve just devised the hottest concept for a story since the Book of Revelation), but I dare suggest that novels in the modern action genre all possess a single, common theme, which I will label the heroic quest. Within this concept, we have ample room for good and evil, treachery and righteous vengeance, good guys versus heavies. It doesn’t matter if your hero(ine) is hunting MIAs or tackling a drug cartel, pursuing terrorists or tracking down a solitary maniac, the quest motif applies.

  With that in mind, it should be no surprise that revolutionary new ideas for action plots are rare as hen’s teeth. Of the series currently in print, only Barry Sadler’s Casca comes to mind. Its hero is a Roman soldier, cursed by Jesus Christ on Calvary, condemned to live forever as a mercenary warrior in the dirtiest, most brutal wars of human history: If he gets killed in Vietnam, he pops up at the Little Big Horn. Now you see him, now you don’t. It’s interesting to note that Sadler had to dip his pen in fantasy to find a brand-new wrinkle for the action genre, and I’d say he’s pulled it off in style.

  The other end of the “creative” scale abounds in copycats and rip-offs, recently epitomized by Firefight, featuring a Rambo clone for cover art, a search for MIAs in Southeast Asia (sound familiar?), and a hero named—I kid you not—“Montana Jones”! Presumably, his cousin Indiana was away on other business when the SOS came through.

  Most editors do notice rip-offs, by the way. Some years ago, a lazy would-be author mailed the outline of his “new” idea to editors at Gold Eagle Books, hoping for a spot on the Executioner writing team. There are these Russian sleeper agents in America, you see, all hypnotized to blot out memories of training by the Soviets, and now they’re being triggered into suicidal acts of sabotage by phone calls from their KGB controller. It sounds promising… unless you’ve seen the movie Telefon, in which case you will recognize the “author’s” outline as a flagrant act of piracy.

  Great Minds with but a Single Thought

  Between the two extremes of brilliant new ideas and outright plagiarism lies a world of tested, universal themes that may have life left in them yet. The challenge lies in working with a common theme, reshaping it, and making it your own. The fact that you decide to send your hero up against narcotics dealers doesn’t mean you have to make him dress like Sonny Crockett on “Miami Vice” (or, God help us, like The French Connection’s Popeye Doyle).

  Television and the movies hold all honors when it comes to the recycling of common themes. If you’re a fan of situation comedies (and even if you’re not), you have experienced what I refer to as the “I Love Lucy syndrome.” Simply stated, “Lucyisms” are the story lines that got a laugh in 1952, and that return predictably, monotonously, turning up on every other show from “Mr. Ed” to “Mr. Belvedere.” And while we’re talking déjà vu, can anybody name a cop show where the hero’s wife or girlfriend isn’t killed or kidnapped once a season?

  TV Guide, some years ago, published the tongue-in-cheek profile of a scriptwriter who was working his way through a copy of Movies on TV, recycling old plots and selling them—in alphabetical order, no less—to modern television producers. The piece was clearly meant as satire, but it still contained more truth than poetry—as witnessed by the Phantom of the Opera’s recent guest appearance on “The Equalizer.” (In his latest incarnation, venerable Eric was a crazy actor, scarred by fire while free-basing cocaine, and … well, you get the picture.)

  In fact, some story lines are just too good to die. Take Romeo and Juliet, for instance. Penned by you-know-who in the Elizabethan era, it returned to sweep the Oscars back in 1961, as West Side Story. Twenty-six years later, it was back again with yet another ethnic twist, as China Girl. And while we’re being honest, I must publicly acknowledge my own obligation to the Bard. In 1981, the editors of Carousel Books approached me with a problem: One of their authors had defaulted on a multiple-book contract, and they needed two Westerns in a hurry. In two weeks, to be precise. The titles were already carved in stone, but no one in the office had a clue about the plots, and so I borrowed Romeo and Juliet to write that sagebrush classic, The Range War Nobody Won. (What?! You missed it? Oh well, you’re forgiven … this time.)

  Like horror, Westerns, and the rest of genre fiction, action/adventure novels also fall back frequently on common, tested themes. If you’ve done any reading in the action genre—and you should have—you will recognize the old, time-honored themes on sight. You’ll also recognize the difference between a common theme revived and plagiaristic hack-work ripping off the latest action movie or bestseller.

  As a theme in literature, revenge has been around forever. Moby Dick is a revenge yarn, and despite the fact that college courses have been built around the “hidden symbolism” of the story, I suspect that Herman Melville—and his readers, too—were more contemporarily concerned with the adventure aspects of the tale, its pacing, and the monster waiting to make hash of Captain Ahab at the end. When Pendleton sat down to write The Executioner, he found a different twist for the revenge theme, and he thus made genre history. A host of copycats include some jewels, like Rolling Thunder and The Shrewsdale Exit, in the general glut of vigilante lookalikes.

  The tale of Cain and Abel, pitting relatives or one-time friends against each other, is another proven theme, complete with undertones of vengeance and betrayal. Civil War fiction overflows with sundered families, divided loyalties, but fresh angles are still discovered occasionally, as in The Killer Elite and Extreme Prejudice.

  Chase stories are a staple of the action genre, both in print and on the silver screen. Whole TV series, from “The Fugitive” to “Werewolf,” have b
een based around the theme of hot pursuit, and director Walter Hill has made a career out of elegantly choreographed chase movies: The Warriors, Southern Comfort, 48 Hrs., Streets of Fire. Novels like my own Paradine’s Gauntlet and Run to Ground (Gold Eagle, 1983 and 1987) continue the tradition, and it shows no sign of burning out as a potential source of story lines.

  Closely allied to the chase theme is the quest for missing loved ones, usually abducted and in peril. Single titles like The Children’s Game, Night of the Juggler, and Stolen Flower explore the boundaries of this theme, but it is also used, without spectacular success, in some protracted series. The Survivalist, the Night Hunter, and the M.I.A. Hunter series all revolve around recovery of missing relatives or friends, and each inevitably stumbles on the fact that endless searching wears out both the hunter and the readers who attempt to follow in his footsteps.

  Barring inspiration and a wholly new idea for this or that exciting tale, the would-be author’s task is to identify the common themes that he or she can work with most effectively. Beyond that point, if you are worth your salt, imagination makes the story personally and uniquely yours. Before you’re ready to approach that hurdle, though, there’s still more homework to be done. You’ve got to read, read, read.

  Learning from the Competition