How to Write Action Adventure Novels

by Michael Newton

  With all of this in mind, what sort of opening should you employ?

  Remember that the hook should be the springboard for your novel, launching readers into an adventure they won’t soon forget (you hope). If your springboard doesn’t give the readers adequate velocity, they fall short of your story, interest-wise. You’ll recognize the feeling, if you’ve ever tried a diving board so stiff it bruised your feet and knocked you off your stride. A painful belly-flop is the result, in either case.

  It’s not enough to bait a flashy hook, however. Come what may, you have to reel in your catch—the readers—and make delivery on your promise of a story worth their time (and money). In the short run, you may con your audience with sound and fury, signifying nothing, but the dullest fan will have your number soon, and ripped-off readers won’t be coming back. Intimidated? Don’t be. Just remember that you’re not alone out there. You’ve got an army on your side—your characters—and they’ll do anything you say to keep the story moving briskly. All you have to do is give them life and tell them where to go. The rest is easy … more or less.

  6. Lights… Camera… Action!

  We have established that an action yarn must hook its readers early on, if it has any reasonable chance of being a success. Long paragraphs (or pages, God forbid!) of exposition simply will not cut the mustard here. You don’t need smoking pistols or a bloodbath, necessarily, and your protagonist need not appear, but if you spend the first half chapter setting up a peaceful scene, your readers may not stick around to find out what comes next.

  At this point, I should mention that it’s not enough to open strong and finish with a stack of bodies. In between the hook and the final showdown lies your story, and your audience is looking for adventure all the way. They won’t be satisfied with one or two quick fixes buried in a boring travelogue. If you propose to deal in action and adventure, you must be prepared to make delivery on both.

  Adventure, Anyone?

  For openers, we must agree on definitions. Checking out my trusty dictionary, I perceive that action is “the state of being active.” Simple, right? Each time you walk across a room or eat a sandwich you are taking part in action, of a sort. Adventure, on the other hand, confines our scrutiny to actions that involve “a risk, unforeseeable danger, or unexpected excitement; an exciting or remarkable experience.” Selecting groceries in the supermarket is an action, but unless you suffer from agoraphobia, it hardly qualifies as an adventure. Likewise, urban freeways are a nonstop cavalcade of motion, but I dare say most of us can watch the cars go by all day without discovering a plot that holds our interest.

  We’ve established that adventure stories are, in essence, modernized heroic quests. Through plotting, you determine where the characters are going, how they get there (if they get there), and the ultimate success or failure of their efforts. Action, in this context, is designed to serve your plot and the development (or the degeneration) of your characters. To some extent, you must eliminate the non-essentials—showers, visits to the rest room, meals and haircuts—in a bid to keep your story streamlined, moving with deliberate purpose.

  I am not suggesting that a novel should contain no action that diverges from the central story line. The “Dirty Harry” movies are a perfect case in point: Throughout each story, the protagonist is briefly and dramatically distracted from his quest to cope with robbers, terrorists, and sundry other misfits. His response to different confrontations serves a purpose by establishing his character through action, leaving viewers in no doubt about the kind of hero they are dealing with. When Harry is allowed to go about his business, tracking down the major villain of the piece, we know precisely what that villain may expect as his reward.

  Conversely, interruptions in the story line that merely serve as padding may be detrimental to your work, regardless of the action they contain. Be careful with digressions, using them to help develop characters or build suspense; remember that if they serve no useful purpose, you are simply wasting time.

  As mentioned earlier, an outline may be helpful as you work to keep your plot on track. By jotting down your thoughts and stray scenarios as they suggest themselves, arranging them in some approximation of their final order, you may notice gaping loopholes in the plot … or find your favorite scene to be expendable. The story must take precedence above all else, and it should not be twisted out of shape to justify inclusion of a “catchy” episode. If you’re primarily concerned about the fact that no one has been killed or bedded in the past two chapters, I suggest that your priorities are out of whack.

  The Quest

  The way in which your characters proceed depends upon the characters themselves and on the nature of their quest. Pursuit of secret information may require more technical finesse than the construction of a plot to get revenge against an enemy. If loved ones are in jeopardy, your hero may proceed with greater care than if he merely stands to lose his job, his reputation, or a suitcase full of cash. Again, it all depends upon the manor woman—and his personal reaction to the given situation. Some men, asked to choose between a million dollars and their wives, will take the money every time.

  An action yarn, by definition, squares your hero off against a dangerous antagonist. The adversary need not be another human being—witness Jaws or Alien—nor must it necessarily be animate, if we are dealing with a force of nature, as in Icefire or The Towering Inferno. Any way you slice them, adversaries are the driving force behind adventure fiction; they provide the necessary conflict, place your hero in a situation where his jeopardy becomes intolerable and he is compelled to take decisive action. Your adventure lies within that jeopardy, the element of risk that he (or she) may not succeed in neutralizing the impending threat.

  Antagonists may be conveniently divided into two main categories: they are either known or unknown to your hero. There is never any doubt about the enemy’s identity in Jaws, the James Bond novels, or the early Bolan series. Jeopardy arises from the question of our hero’s personal ability to cope with lethal adversaries. How will good Chief Brody find the killer shark in time to save his job, his marriage, and his town? Can one intrepid warrior stand alone against the Mafia, the KGB, or SPECTRE? Readers may presume the hero will prevail, but they can never know for sure until they read the final page, and therein lies adventure.

  On the flipside, unknown adversaries mingle mystery and action in a bid to keep the hero and the reader guessing to the point of climax, when the masks are dropped and traitors are exposed to cleansing daylight. Robert Ludlum takes the honors here, with layers of double-, triple-, and quadruple-cross so intricately woven through the fabric of his stories that his readers—like a Ludlum hero—can’t trust anyone.

  A character’s response to different challenges will necessarily depend upon the nature of his adversaries. If the enemy is known, your story may amount to a straightforward chase, climaxed when your hero overtakes his quarry—or, in the alternative, is himself forced to stand and fight. Conversely, if the enemy’s identity is secret, the protagonist will have to search for vital clues, perhaps enduring attacks to lure his adversary out of hiding for the final showdown. Why has dynamite been wired to the ignition of your hero’s car? Who fired that bullet through his bedroom window late at night? Is that a man’s voice, or a woman’s, on the telephone? Who abducted your hero’s lover—the CIA, the KGB, or just an “ordinary” psychopath?

  Remember, in constructing the reaction of protagonists to high-risk situations, that a character works best when he or she remains in character. A radical departure from established personality must be explained and justified before your editors and readers will accept the change. You can’t expect Paul Kersey, in the Death Wish series, to sit idly by and watch while muggers victimize a woman on the subway. Likewise, Pee Wee Herman probably would not produce a .38 and mow the scumbags down if situations were reversed. Unless you’re dealing with a maniac, there should be logic in the actions of your characters, and timid souls will not respond with force unless
they are compelled by overwhelming circumstances, as with Farrah Fawcett in Extremities or Dustin Hoffman’s wimpy character in Straw Dogs. Keep your people true-to-life, and they should serve you well.

  Believability

  Setting up an action scene within a novel makes demands upon an author’s eye for detail, capacity for research, imagination, and ability to edit final copy. Ideal action sequences are both exciting and informative; they spike the reader’s pulse and keep the story moving, all at once. Like women’s skirts, they should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting.

  That said, what is an action scene? Within the definition of the modern genre, action sequences are those involving conflict, physical in nature, that provide your major characters with space in which to strut their stuff. The hero and his chief antagonist may not appear together every time—in fact, it gets old in a hurry if they do—but one side or the other will be pulling out the stops in an attempt to capture, kill, or otherwise distress the opposition.

  Action scenes may run their course within a single paragraph, or they may be protracted over several chapters. Let your story be the guide, whenever possible, but bear in mind that needless padding slows things down and undermines suspense. Your hero may be threatened by a sniper on a crowded street, but do you really need three snipers? Half a dozen? Should he be pursued for miles on end, through heavy traffic, merely so that you can raise your word-count with a long description of the chase? (If you’ve been answering these questions with a cheerful yes, please reconsider at your earliest convenience. Like, right now.)

  Successful action writers have a handle both on what to say and what is better left unsaid. We’ll deal with graphic violence later; at the moment, I’m discussing style. In general, when preparing action sequences, I’d be inclined to say that “less is more,” but you can also take the maxim to extremes and leave a scene devoid of substance, as in this example:

  Hickock faced the seven outlaws. At a signal, guns were drawn, and moments later Hickock stood alone.

  They don’t come any shorter, but where action is concerned, this “scene” possesses all the interest of a plot synopsis clipped from TV Guide. It’s well and good to let readers exercise their own imagination, but your audience is paying you for entertainment here. That’s where the verbs and adjectives come in. If Hickock is about to gun down seven men, your readers want to see it, in their mind’s eye, and experience the smell of gunsmoke for themselves.

  These days, we’re told that millions of Americans would rather watch the tube or hit their local theater than read books. I tackle action sequences the other way around, by “watching” them before I put the words on paper.

  How’s that, again? He watches them?

  That’s right. In simple terms, I run a private “movie” in my own imagination. All my characters are present and accounted for—I’d recognize them anywhere—and I can put them through their paces any way I choose. Sometimes, I run the action in slow motion, like the final shootout from The Wild Bunch, watching people scatter, falling when they’re hit, returning fire despite their wounds. It may take practice, but I dare say everyone has daydreamed in their time, and writers do it more than most. In fact, unless I’m very much preoccupied, I seldom look at any piece of scenery without imagining an action scene in progress, and I’m willing to lay odds that every fiction writer has a touch of Walter Mitty in his soul.

  In order to provide the necessary punch, an action sequence must possess intrinsic credibility. The various components—setting, characters, and action—should be scrutinized in detail for mistakes and inconsistencies before you put a manuscript to bed. A careful editor may ferret out mistakes you’ve overlooked, but if it gets to be a habit, you’ll be looking at rejection slips instead of royalty checks.

  We’ll have a great deal more to say about your characters in time, but here I must reemphasize the need for logic, credibility, and reason. If you know your people inside out, the way you should, you will be able to predict which ones are likely to be forceful, violent, cowardly, or stoic in the face of danger. “A” might no more leave his gun at home than he would leave his trousers; “B,” conversely, may absorb ferocious punishment without a whimper, praying for a hero who will save his bacon. Either way, your characters should logically behave as you have led your readers to expect in any given situation—or you should provide a reason for their sudden change of heart.

  Unless you make a special point of “writing what you know,” the setting for an action sequence may require some homework. On-site visits may not always be within your means—how many of us can afford to hit Karachi or Jakarta for the weekend?—but resorting to detailed maps and guidebooks may assist you. Once again, be careful; try to make your work precise. I once received a query from an editor about a car chase in Los Angeles: unconsciously, I had my heavies driving north, along a southbound one-way street!

  Some authors, in the mold of Elmore Leonard, visit cities where their stories will be set and walk along the streets their characters will travel, stopping in to give the local bars and restaurants a try. I’ve talked to others who (supposedly) play out their action scenes by crawling through the shrubs at home and calculating fields of fire firsthand. A word of caution, here: Make sure you have a modicum of privacy before you start performing like a poor man’s Rambo. Public escapades may prove embarrassing, to say the least.

  The quest for credibility encompasses all aspects of an action scene. Your hero will become a butt of ridicule if he insists on leaping out of seventh-story windows onto handy awnings. Submachine guns firing at a cyclic rate of 750 rounds per minute will not hold the enemy at bay for hours with a single magazine of thirty cartridges. (And if your gunner’s packing extras, keep the weight in mind; a dozen loaded magazines inserted in his pockets makes for one hellacious case of droopy drawers.) A tire iron cracked across your hero’s unprotected skull will not result in “just a headache.” Even Smokey and the Bandit had to stop for gas.

  There are no ironclad rules about the “where” and “when” of action scenes within a manuscript. The action may take everyone (except the author!) by surprise: a bomb blast in the middle of a dinner party; an abduction or a drive-by shooting on a quiet residential street; an airplane’s crashing through the roof of a hotel. Other scenes—especially climactic showdowns—may be telegraphed from the beginning, while a series of preliminary bouts maintain suspense. We know the hero has to meet his adversary in the end, but if the author knows his business, getting there is half the fun.

  Your story primes the pump for action scenes, and so it dictates their construction. No one can advise you on the type of gun a character should carry in his belt, the make of car he ought to drive, his brand of cigarettes, or other such minutiae. Beware of slavish imitation—hard-boiled cops who violate department regulations by their choice of handguns are a prime example—and remember that suspense must have a solid foothold in reality.

  While we’re discussing credibility, it is an excellent idea to take some notes as you complete an action scene. How many shots were fired? Who bit the big one? If a crucial character is wounded, make a note of his condition in the interest of consistency. (When Dr. Watson first meets Sherlock Holmes, we learn about his recent shoulder wound, sustained while serving with the army in Afghanistan; a few adventures down the road, we find the doctor limping from his old leg wound.) When Dirty Harry loses track of bullets fired in anger, you can bet he’s playing games, but it can be embarrassing when characters return, unbidden, from the dead.

  Pacing

  As you prepare your outline, keep in mind the necessary elements of a successful action plot. The first of these—and the most difficult for many fledgling writers to control—is pacing. Action/adventure novels must, by definition, have action, but please bear in mind that nobody fights and fornicates all the time. (Even Hell’s Angels take naps now and then!) You normally won’t show your characters consuming every meal or making visits to the
restroom, but you should allow for normal functions like fatigue and rest, confusion, indecision, strategy discussions, and the like. In comic books, you may have only six or seven pages to complete your story, but we’re working on a novel here. Relax and take your time.

  Successful pacing is achieved by breaking up the action at strategic points, allowing readers—and your characters—to take a breather now and then. Your people will look silly if they simply race from one brawl to another, piling up a massive body-count at the expense of common sense. Remember that your characters are human, even though you made them up, and show them some consideration. After all, their lives are on the line.

  Intrusion on the mainstream narrative must be accomplished skillfully, and there are several ways to pull it off. The flashback, properly employed, can be a useful tool, providing the author with a chance to call “time-out” while filling in some background on a crucial person, place, or problem. In Red Dragon, Thomas Harris interrupts the driving action for three chapters to fill in the past of his awesome monster, Francis Dolarhyde. I used a similar technique in Child of Blood, employing flashbacks to flesh out each major character as their lives converged on a collision course. It works—but, I should add, it can become a hopeless mess if you are simply rambling, killing time.