A definition for ACTION! · 10:06am Jan 9th, 2017
I was recently reading a story where the author was given the prompt of 'transform this person into a dragon and possibly incorporate an action scene into it.'
Putting aside that the story was very brief and kind of clumsily written(and late...) the thing that REALLY leaped out at me was what the author of it interpreted an action scene to be.
Basically the hero and someone else are looking for some kind of artifact, they find it and the other character decides this is the time to betray the main character and kill him so he can take the artifact for himself.
So the antagonist pulls out a gun and proceeds to shoot the main character... when suddenly the artifact stops time and in that stopped period of time explains all the cool powers it is going to give the main character while the main character uses the stopped time to move the antagonist into the path of the bullet. Then the character finishes changing, flies off into the horizon and the story ends happily ever after.
Lame.
BUT!!!
Educational.
Because reading what someone else interpreted an action scene to be gave me insight into what I consider an action scene to be.
The situation was resolved effortlessly with a magic super power for which a gun was just not a match for. But series such as the last avatar prove that magic super powers and action are not exclusives, just the opposite.
The key word here was 'effortlessly'. The villain was defeated/ challenge was overcome/ day was saved 'effortlessly' with the protagonists just using a macguffin to flip a switch and resolve the conflict. Those kinds of stories are almost guaranteed to have very unsatisfying action.
With that in mind I'd dare say that action is defined as effort and intensity. Its possible that ANYTHING can be defined as action as long as the situation forces the protagonist to their absolute limit and leaves them barely avoiding catastrophe with every ounce of their being.
Action = anything as long as it involves maximum effort on the edge of catastrophe
In the example story there was an edge of catastrophe, but the situation was resolved with little effort because the forces of good had powers the antagonist was woefully unprepared to deal with.
Lets test this theory elsewhere.
Maximum effort train engineering.
Results look good so far! You can see that they start the situation out of control and struggle to get it back under control with catastrophe in the form of the lake breaking apart hot on their heels. Lets try a catastrophe that unfolds faster for the next one.
Maximum effort baseball catching.
What I love about this is there's no time for tension to build up, yet seeing it unfold tells the audience everything they need to know. It tells the audience 'this is what a really good baseball player looks like' because the audience can RELATE and UNDERSTAND how hard it is to catch a baseball barehanded, let alone in a split second while facing away from the incoming ball.
For comparison in our example, time just stops and the main character and audience have no idea what just happened. They witnessed something, but they had no idea what it was and had to have it explained to them. There was no way for the audience to understand how easy or difficult it was to stop time and the character that did it treated it as if it was no big deal, so thats what we assumed.
Okay lets finish off with something that would seem hard to ever define as action.
Maximum effort ADMONISHMENT!!!
Maximum effort
Cant run, cant fight, cant hide.
All she could think to do was do what she normally does to misbehaving critters, give it a dressing down. And she did this to the best of her ability while ignoring the sensation of her body TURNING INTO STONE. If her fear had gotten the better of her and caused her voice to crack even just a bit in this exchange she would have been doomed.
Edge of catastrophe
If Fluttershy had failed then she and a fair number of innocent friends and young ones would be frozen in stone, possibly forever.
The part where Fluttershy was hiding her eyes and cowering then took a second to glance back at the girls shaking in fear behind her was an amazing way to drive home how high the stakes were. it also very clearly and dramatically marked the instant where Fluttershy consciously made up her mind that it was time to do or die.
I feel pretty good about this theory!
It explains why trying to demonstrate how cool a character is by having them breeze effortlessly through an action scene often comes off as amateurish and cringe inducing.
Let me know what you think. Or not, its not like theres an impending catastrophe if you dont. 8)
(tagged with twitch plays equestria because that story was nothing but stumbling from one catastrophe too another.)
That's actually a very helpful way to look at action scenes, as well as a wide spectrum of how well different ones present it. Well presented well thought. Thank you for it.
4375415 No prob! Ive always been a fan of unconventional action scenes. I think Jackie Chan was a major inspiration for me as a writer.
Maybe obvious already from you thinking of Jackie Chan, but I'd amend "maximum effort" to say that the hero's not necessarily operating at peak skill so much as "as well as they can under the circumstances". Which for Chan means things like fighting while handcuffed to someone, or with random objects. Phil's done things like having his hero fight a battle while suffering from chemical burns on his butt from exposure to alien cleaning chemicals, or with a bucket caught on his foot.