A Is for Action by Dan Alatorre

Author:Dan Alatorre
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2018-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.