by Dan Alatorre
As the armies descend into each other, the weapons are raised overhead to be brought down onto the opposition.
Here comes the tricky part. You’re going to have two big armies on foot, running in and clashing together. In your book you will have to consider whose point of view you’re going to maintain, because if you are in Gibson’s POV, he can’t see what’s happening behind him – so for this scene you may choose a different point of view. After all, a lot is happening.
Two side notes: Your scene starts before your scene starts. You can’t just jump into a battle, you have to set the stage. Also, the reason Gibson is so distraught by Stephen’s words is, Stephen had his back before that.
The fact it was a joke still introduces the audience to the fact that Wallace is not invincible and could in fact get killed. Which he does at the end. So it’s also a masterful bit of foreshadowing.
The armies surge forward into each other.
The sound of steel on steel fills the air as sword meets sword.
Bodies stream past each other and smash into each other as weapons fly.
In the center of the field, an ocean of men and weapons swirls.
The old man, bleeding from the forehead, rushes forward and wields his weapon, screaming as he collides with an Englishman.
A young man throws himself into an English soldier and they both fall to the ground.
The mob is chaotic as each person swings their weapons trying to make sure it lands on a foe.
An Englishmen up-ends a Scotsman and throws him to the ground. Gibson raises his sword with both hands overhead and slashes at the arm of one English soldier, turning and drawing his blade in one smooth motion across the belly of another, then raises it high again to knock the sword out of another advancing Englishman.
His best friend slashes away at an English soldier, a wild-eyed look on his face.
A mallet smashes into a head. Blood spews everywhere.
With many of Gibson’s army holding nothing more than sticks, they rush towards the Englishmen.
Hacking and slaying as weapons meet flesh, regardless of whose side they are on in the melee.
Stephen slashes at an English officer.
The old man collides with an Englishman and drives his sword into him, turning to cheer victoriously before driving his knife into the next soldier.
Gibson swipes at one soldier after another.
His friend swipes a broadsword across the belly of an Englishman.
Gibson raises a hand and catches a soldier’s sword before headbutting the soldier and whipping around and dropping low to take out the legs of a horse that rushes by.
The old man, grabbing his sword with by the handle and putting his other hand on the blade, kicks at an Englishman.
A mallet meets an English soldiers head. Blood flies everywhere.
The old man screams as he slashes wildly at his opponent.
Stephen slashes and an English soldier.
An English soldier gets his throat slit.
Stephen stabs his opponent
One of Gibson’s soldiers, no weapon in his hand, kicks at a fallen English soldier.
Gibson’s friend slashes another soldier, taking on two at a time and pushing his way into them. He raises his battle ax and chops at the soldier’s head and neck.
A sword rips through an English soldier’s leg, severing it from his body.
One of Gibson’s men falls. Then another, as if the Englishmen are able to turn the tide a little.
Gibson’s young lieutenant slashes his opponent.
The old man chops into the belly of another Englishman.
St. Stephen skewers an opponent, then bows low and takes an advancing soldier and throws him on his back before raising his sword and slashing at him.
A Scottish soldier bashes an English officer in the face.
Another square mallet splits open an English soldier’s head.
The old man kills one opponent then another, in a bloody violent dance, grabbing a third and elbowing him in the head.
Gibson swings his long sword in a circle with both hands, getting one or two Englishman with each pass.
He jumps forward, slashes a man’s face open before raising his sword high and plunging into another one, taking the man off his knees and dropping him over his back.
Gibson plunges his sword into one of the English sergeants, it goes completely through his back. As he throws him to the ground, another soldier advances. Gibson takes a backswing across the soldier’s face before raising his sword high with both hands and bringing it down onto the soldier’s skull, splitting it like a coconut.
The English commander’s face is drawn, his lip lips in a tight O. Thundering hoofbeats are heard behind him. He turns around to see the second wave of Gibson’s army – the ones they thought had left – advancing upon his flank. He turns and shouts to his lieutenants
He licks his lips first. Nice move.
The English archers, retreating from behind by Gibson’s second wave attack, leave the field.
The commander spins in all directions, his eyebrows raised and his mouth tight.
More shots of his archers being butchered by the second attack.
The second attack is on horse, so they had the advantage of height on the archers.
Rushing forward on their horses, the second Scottish wave butchers the archers one after another, trampling them and squishing them between horses and stabbing them and spearing them.
The English commander is in complete confusion over what to do. He commands his army to flee from the battlefield.
The ones who can, do. The rest fall victim to the swords and clubs and mallets and rocks and spears and knives of Gibson’s army as the assault in the middle of the pasture continues.
Gibson ducks out of the way of a soldier’s sword and brings a mallet from the ground into the man’s belly. Another soldier comes in. Gibson grabs the soldier’s sword hand and clubs the man’s legs. Another soldier comes forward and Gibson grabs an axe and throws it into the man’s chest.
The old man is clubbed to the ground and his hand hacked off. He plunges his sword into the belly of his attacker.
Stephen skewers a sword through the eye of an opponent.
The best friend clubs man after man with his battle axe.
The scene in the middle of the field shows fewer and fewer Englishman.
Gibson slashes an opponent before driving his sword through the next one.
Man after man falls by Gibson’s hand.
Looking around, Gibson takes a moment – as he stabs his next victim – to assess the situation. The English Lieutenant rides forward on his horse towards Gibson. Gibson drops his current opponent and stands, his arms outstretched, sword in hand, raised to meet the lieutenant in battle.
The lieutenant speeds forward on his horse, screaming.
Gibson screams and raises his sword higher.
As the horse descends upon him, Gibson slashes the legs out from the horse and the lieutenant falls to the ground. Gibson beheads him with one powerful swing of his massive broadsword.
In the middle of the melee, we see the clan leader on horseback from the second wave of Gibson’s attack nearing the middle of the field, shouting victoriously.
Priests drag Gibson’s wounded from the field amidst the fighting.
Hand to hand combat ensues on the ground. Those were wounded and are on the ground slash and stab at whatever opponent they can reach.
A sea of bodies lies in the middle of the field, many with swords sticking out of them, all of them bloody, as Scotsman weave their way through them, stabbing the wounded English to death.
A Scottish victim here and there tries to crawl out from under an opponent who has died on top of him.
The air is filled less with the clash of swords and more with the moans and groans of the wounded, as the mounted second wave continues to the center the field. The commander of the mounted second wave approaches Gibson, who turns and raises h
is sword to attack. Both men then realize that victory has been achieved. They gaze around and smile. The main part the butchery is done. Now there’s only a little cleaning up to do.
Gibson says, “All right,” and walks off the field, turning to look back over it.
Exhausted and bleeding, staggering, he looks out upon an army of the dead among his living soldiers, raising his sword and giving one last battle cry.
His army raises their arms and shouts back triumphantly.
Gibson, gasping, nods, his mouth open his eyes tired. They have won.
He stabs his sword in the ground and walks off the battlefield.
That’s the end of the battle, so we need to make it official:
The next scene is him kneeling in a church before the nobles as they knight him. When he stands, knighted, they all cheer. His army and everybody else.
OKAY.
This scene took sixteen minutes to unfold on screen in the movie. It took about an hour for me to go through it on slow-motion and narrate the main points of what was happening in the scene to create this play by play outline/template. 4000 words went down on paper, to be clarified by me over the next 90 minutes.
How many words this turns out to be is up to you and your book’s requirements. I could easily see 8-16 hours creating the first draft of this chapter or scene, so don’t try to rush. Take each microscene and make it – show it – as best as you can.
I could easily see spending another few hours – spread over a couple of days – refining and tweaking it before I sent it to a critique partner for their assessment.
I would let it rest 3 to 5 days before reading it again, catching words that were wrong or things that seemed out of place. After that, I would let my beta readers have a look and I would refine it one more time after they were done with it.
Then I would probably let it go.
My point is this: you could come away with an amazing battle scene. Yours is not going to be Mel Gibson’s. You’re not writing Braveheart. But by looking at these 4000 words and what information they convey in outline form, you see a starting point for an amazingly complex battle! Whatever action scene you are imagining, if you can dictate to yourself whatever you see in your head, then you can go back and lay in what amount of detail you feel necessary. Then you can refine it so that each micro segment is a scene unto itself.
And when you jump around from one to the other, it will be okay because everyone understands there’s a lot going on at the same time – but you show it step by step, one microscene at a time.
It’s like the answer to the question, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time.
Do you have in your head what your big action scene looks like? If you don’t, use this as a template. If you have your own, write that down as we discussed.
Even if you use this template step-by-step, you’re not going to end up writing Braveheart because what is important in your story is different from what was important in Mel Gibson’s.
And you’re not going to want to write every single scene and shot anyway. You’re not writing a screenplay. You’re not drafting a movie.
In your book you’ll write as much as you need. And then you will take out whatever is not needed.
And after you’ve done it a few times, it won’t be this big intimidating mountain of information. It will be something you’ve done – and if you do it a few times, it will be something you do well. And by a few times, I mean a few different books or a few different drafts or a few different short stories. Doesn’t matter. Practice is what will make it great.
Use Different Structure And Punctuation To Write The Action In An Action Scene
Most people who have trouble writing action scenes are trying to put the words down the same way they’d write other parts of a story. That doesn’t really work for me. Action scenes are different from what we usually write. We talked about how to map it out; here are some tips on how to write it.
See, when we are calm, we speak in different tones than when we are upset or excited. Your mom calling your name to dinner when you were playing in the yard had a different feel than when she called it after discovering you burned a hole in the living room rug and pulled the end table over it – right?
Create that vibe in your words via sentence structure and punctuation.
Say you have a speeding car that gets run off the road and rolls over going down a hill. Make a little outline of the main things that need to be shown to the reader.
The car gets hit by another car, rolls down a hill, bursts into flames.
Again, you might sit down with a video recorder or tape recorder or your cell phone recording you and describe out loud to yourself what you’d see – in any order, as you think of it.
“Oh, and they were speeding. And Johnny was in the trunk. And there were drugs in the glove compartment. And the car rolled over and over sideways down the hill to the rocky riverbed below…”
See? Go on and on, trying to add detail wherever you can. What do you imagine it to look like, in general?
It was a grassy hillside. It was Fall, so the grass was brown and the trees were bare, no leaves. The water in the river would be cold.
Then I would write that down and arrange it, leave in what’s relevant (it might not all be). Brown grass? Maybe. Trees with no leaves? Probably not, so bring in the leafless tree info before or after the action scene if it’s relevant, but leave it out of the action part of this scene. And the color of the grass is only going to be relevant if we have to refer to the grass at all as the car rolls down it; otherwise it may not be needed.
Now, see what you have. See how it reads. Read it out loud and then add in whatever else is needed. Usually, you’ll be adding in descriptions about stuff we don’t see all the time – like HOW a car rolls over and over down a hill. I don’t see that every day; I may need a little assistance in visualizing it. A car driving down the street, I can get that on my own. The action scene is probably not the place to talk about the color of the protagonist’s blouse.
One thing for sure, you can take extra words to flesh out things that aren’t obvious, and it doesn’t slow down the action. In Harry Potter, when people realize somebody is speeding on a broom towards the ground at a fast rate, we all understand what might happen. So we all tend to go along with the tension.
That will be the case in your story, too. Spend words showing us the car smashing through the guard rail, flipping over and over as it turns up the grass and throws it into the air, the passenger door flopping open and shut with each flip, that sort of stuff.
Then, trim your action scene for punctuation and pace. That’s is a biggie, so it gets its own section, but I’ll touch on it here: use shorter sentences, not looooong, run-on sentences. (Which is what a LOT of new authors inadvertently do – they go on and on and on, trying to make thing read faster by having it all in the same sentence. You can’t do that. More on that in a sec.)
Show what’s happening as much as possible. Put us in that car and bounce us off the ceiling when it rolls over. Have all the crap in your console flying around: pens, McDonald’s napkins, loose change… Get it? Whatever you think of – but do it in layers. Don’t try to write it in one pass like you would other stuff. Map it out the big stuff, then the medium stuff, then the really small stuff – because when I mentioned the loose change and napkins flying around, you all went Aha! didn’t you? So will your readers.
Part 4: Other Parts Of An Action Scene Plus The Writing Technique
As I mentioned a second ago, in an action scene you don’t want a sentence to go on too long.
I prefer shorter sentences in action scenes. Simply break up the different things you are saying in your segment with punctuation. Commas are fine depending on what you’re trying to say.
Finally, remember that the way you are writing the action scene (and loves scenes, by the way) is different from how you write other scenes. If you have a character stop to admire a dilapidated Tuscan villa that s
tands in ruins next to a beautiful rebuilt one, and he notices the complex detail as he stands in the cool night air, you might slow down your pace and maybe even use some flowery language. That’s what I did in Poggibonsi. I wanted to slow down for a moment among the hectic comedy. It’s a nice contrast, and it works well.
In an action scene, you want to increase your pace and really use the most intense verbs you can think of. So instead of saying “stabbed” you might say “plunged his rusty metal blade into.” Things like that. But don’t worry about that on your first or second pass, just make a note that you need to do it.
Then, as mentioned, you send it over to a trusted friend to read. Give them a few hundred or a thousand words that occur before your action scene, and a few hundred after the action scene – so they can get the impact of the battle (or whatever) in context.
Almost no matter what your action scene is, you simply break it down into manageable parts.
Don’t worry about how long it goes on or how many words it takes you to describe something. A car rolling down a hill takes time to roll down the hill. It only takes two seconds to read “car rolling down a hill” but it might take 30 seconds for that to happen. So if you want to elaborate about it rolling over and over or a door flying open and shut with each turn or grass being kicked in the air by the frame as it rolls, you can do that – because the reader understands this particular thing takes time to happen.
Plus, if it’s well written, the reader kind of wants it to go on for a bit. They’re enjoying the moment, so let them. We don’t see a car rolling down a hill every day, and in reality, if we were watching it, it would seem like it took a while for it to happen. That gives you license to drag it out a bit – while writing it – but it won’t read like it’s dragged out, trust me. What takes you hours or days to write will take them mere seconds to read, and if they’re excited, they read even faster. Zoom, it’s over in a snap. You’ll be surprised at how that looong love scene you wrote (or battle or car chase) gets read so quickly, and if you don’t make it fully fleshed, it’ll get read too quickly – and be unsatisfying to the reader after you built it up.
