Episode 060 - Mastering Action Sequences with Joshua Essoe
January 5, 2021
"Thanks for producing such a great podcast. I particularly found episode 60 very helpful. I've always been pulled out of a good action scene in otherwise good books by not so great writing. It was really interesting to hear how to improve!" The Indy Author Podcast listener Veronica
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Editor Joshua Essoe discusses tips for drafting and editing your action sequences to ensure that the reader isn’t pulled out of the story – tips that apply even if your scene doesn’t involve battle plans or broadswords. He talks about the importance of strong, engaging characters, because if your reader doesn’t care about the people involved, no amount of exciting action is going to draw them in. And he discusses how you can save your editor time – and yourself money – by paying attention to the logistics of the scene: don’t have a character holding a knife in one hand and a shield in another hand their magic amulet in the … well, the other other hand.
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Joshua Essoe is a full-time freelance editor who has edited for New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, and many top-notch independents and award-winners. He was lead editor at Urban Fantasy Magazine from 2014-2015. You can find Joshua teaching about editing, pitches, and back-cover copy every year at the Superstars Writing Seminar in Colorado. And he just completed his Kickstarter release for the first in a five-book series, each covering two subjects of the most-common issues he sees in fiction writing.
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"Writers start to forget in the pressure to make the scene exciting that this is still a story that they're writing about characters and those characters have to remain the focus of everything that you do, not just action scenes. Dynamic action is great, of course, but it doesn't mean anything unless readers care about the characters that are indulging in said dynamic action." --Joshua Essoe
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast! Today my guest is Joshua Essoe. Hey Joshua, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Joshua: Hey, Matty. Pretty good. First day of snow so, yeah, we're a little bit excited over here. My wife has been going bonkers all morning.
[00:00:14] Matty: A pretty one, too. And hopefully many people will just be able to stay at home and enjoy it from inside their nice warm homes and not have to go commuting through it.
[00:00:21] Joshua: Not seeing as much traffic today, honestly, and we were having snowflakes like this big here, they were gigantic.
[00:00:29] Matty: Yeah, it is a very pretty snow. So let's hope that we all still feel good about it in 24 hours.
[00:00:34] Joshua: Yeah.
[00:00:36] Matty: So Joshua is a repeat guest. He actually just appeared in Episode 056, which was CROWDFUNDING FOR AUTHORS, and we talked about his Kickstarter campaign for his book, "Essoe's Guides to Writing Action Sequences and Sex Scenes," but just in case anybody missed that episode, just to give you a little introduction ...
Joshua Essoe is a full-time freelance editor who has edited for New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, and many top-notch independents and award-winners. He was lead editor at Urban Fantasy Magazine from 2014-2015. You can find Joshua teaching about editing, pitches, and back-cover copy every year at the Superstars Writing Seminar in Colorado. And he just completed his Kickstarter release for the first in a five-book series, each covering two subjects of the most-common issues he sees in fiction writing.
[00:01:23] And today's episode is actually on one of those topics: mastering action sequences, and based on what I've read and heard, I understand this to be not only one of the most common issues, but the most common issue that Joshua is encountering. So we're going to be talking about that today. But before we dive into the details of that, Joshua, can you just talk a little bit about how you ended up taking the editing path in your creative journey?
[00:01:51] Joshua: Sure. That started in 2009, there was a big economic downturn. I'm sure that you remember it. And I was a real estate agent at the time -- I've had three major careers in my life. I spent a decade doing art and book restoration, and I spent a decade doing real estate, and now I am over a decade on editing, which is pretty cool.
[00:02:20] So with the downturn, I had a lot of extra time. And so in 2009, I wrote every single day of that year. And at the end of the year, in 2010, I found out that there was going to be held a writing conference and I found out from Brandon Sanderson's website and I think at that time it was called The Superstars of Writing seminar. And it was being taught by all of these New York Times bestselling authors and Brandon Sanderson, who I had a man crush on at the time. And so I was like, "Oh my God, I have to do this."
[00:02:51] And what's interesting is that after taking the seminar, which was a very intensive three-day thing about the business of writing, really not about craft at all, I ended up through random circumstances editing another of the attendee's epic fantasy books.
[00:03:07] It's pretty much all Brandon Sanderson's fault. And he asked me to edit it. I said, okay, after hemming and hawing a little bit, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into a project like that, that wasn't really what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer and I remembered a big piece of advice that they gave in the seminar, which was, try not to say no to things, accept new opportunities, because it gives you a broader range of experiences from which to draw forth for your writing. So I was like, okay, I guess this is a good thing. And also giving back to your community. So I said, yes, I edited the book.
[00:03:38] It turned out to be a great experience. I really enjoyed it. The guy who I edited for his name is Moses Siregar III, and he came out with a book called "The Black God's War," which was a fantastic book. He was really happy with the work.
[00:03:51] And after I finished, I was like, hmm, that was way better than I thought. Maybe I could switch from real estate into editing and support myself that way while I try to be a writer, which is kind of laughable. But yeah, so those are the little steps that happened to me to push me off a cliff, randomly, into editing.
[00:04:11] And I went to a David Farland workshop, and that's how my business got started because I thought, how can I get people to send me work? How would they even know about me? And I decided that the best way to do that was to meet other writers and talk to them. And so I went to a writing workshop and the primary goal was to get David to let me edit one of his books. New York Times bestselling author, sold copies all around the world, super successful. He's just going to let this random dude edit one of his books.
[00:04:42] But that was the plan -- and actually it happens. I spent some time with him. The workshops started officially he had meetings with people as they requested, and so I had a meeting with him before, and I had a meeting with him after, and in between I tried to show him and the class what kind of thing I could bring to the table. And so after that experience, he said yes. And he let me edit "Nightingale," which went on to win awards and such. And from there that's how word of mouth started to spread, from that workshop from David.
[00:05:15] Matty: That’s a great story. And I think it's a great example of taking that chance and asking the question, asking it, I'm sure, politely and professionally, and seeing what opens up and you also, with your very first editing experience, sounds like you not only jumped off the cliff into editing, but you jumped into the deep end, just to mix metaphors, by taking on an epic fantasy. How long was that? How was long was the first book that you edited?
[00:05:39] Joshua: That's a good question. I think that one was around, if memory serves, 600 or so pages right around there.
[00:05:46] Matty: That's a lot of editing for the first time out, so good for you on both counts.
[00:05:52] Joshua: I think that's a really good point. Don't be afraid to ask because they can say no, and if they say no, no harm done. You don't lose anything. But if they say yes, then literally, it could change your life. I think that changed the direction of my life.
[00:06:08] Matty: Absolutely. So you've obviously had many, many editing gigs since then. And I think it was in our previous podcast episode where you said that of all the time that you spend on editing, the most time you spend is on action sequences. Did I remember that correctly? ...
[00:00:06] Joshua: Hey, Matty. Pretty good. First day of snow so, yeah, we're a little bit excited over here. My wife has been going bonkers all morning.
[00:00:14] Matty: A pretty one, too. And hopefully many people will just be able to stay at home and enjoy it from inside their nice warm homes and not have to go commuting through it.
[00:00:21] Joshua: Not seeing as much traffic today, honestly, and we were having snowflakes like this big here, they were gigantic.
[00:00:29] Matty: Yeah, it is a very pretty snow. So let's hope that we all still feel good about it in 24 hours.
[00:00:34] Joshua: Yeah.
[00:00:36] Matty: So Joshua is a repeat guest. He actually just appeared in Episode 056, which was CROWDFUNDING FOR AUTHORS, and we talked about his Kickstarter campaign for his book, "Essoe's Guides to Writing Action Sequences and Sex Scenes," but just in case anybody missed that episode, just to give you a little introduction ...
Joshua Essoe is a full-time freelance editor who has edited for New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, and many top-notch independents and award-winners. He was lead editor at Urban Fantasy Magazine from 2014-2015. You can find Joshua teaching about editing, pitches, and back-cover copy every year at the Superstars Writing Seminar in Colorado. And he just completed his Kickstarter release for the first in a five-book series, each covering two subjects of the most-common issues he sees in fiction writing.
[00:01:23] And today's episode is actually on one of those topics: mastering action sequences, and based on what I've read and heard, I understand this to be not only one of the most common issues, but the most common issue that Joshua is encountering. So we're going to be talking about that today. But before we dive into the details of that, Joshua, can you just talk a little bit about how you ended up taking the editing path in your creative journey?
[00:01:51] Joshua: Sure. That started in 2009, there was a big economic downturn. I'm sure that you remember it. And I was a real estate agent at the time -- I've had three major careers in my life. I spent a decade doing art and book restoration, and I spent a decade doing real estate, and now I am over a decade on editing, which is pretty cool.
[00:02:20] So with the downturn, I had a lot of extra time. And so in 2009, I wrote every single day of that year. And at the end of the year, in 2010, I found out that there was going to be held a writing conference and I found out from Brandon Sanderson's website and I think at that time it was called The Superstars of Writing seminar. And it was being taught by all of these New York Times bestselling authors and Brandon Sanderson, who I had a man crush on at the time. And so I was like, "Oh my God, I have to do this."
[00:02:51] And what's interesting is that after taking the seminar, which was a very intensive three-day thing about the business of writing, really not about craft at all, I ended up through random circumstances editing another of the attendee's epic fantasy books.
[00:03:07] It's pretty much all Brandon Sanderson's fault. And he asked me to edit it. I said, okay, after hemming and hawing a little bit, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into a project like that, that wasn't really what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer and I remembered a big piece of advice that they gave in the seminar, which was, try not to say no to things, accept new opportunities, because it gives you a broader range of experiences from which to draw forth for your writing. So I was like, okay, I guess this is a good thing. And also giving back to your community. So I said, yes, I edited the book.
[00:03:38] It turned out to be a great experience. I really enjoyed it. The guy who I edited for his name is Moses Siregar III, and he came out with a book called "The Black God's War," which was a fantastic book. He was really happy with the work.
[00:03:51] And after I finished, I was like, hmm, that was way better than I thought. Maybe I could switch from real estate into editing and support myself that way while I try to be a writer, which is kind of laughable. But yeah, so those are the little steps that happened to me to push me off a cliff, randomly, into editing.
[00:04:11] And I went to a David Farland workshop, and that's how my business got started because I thought, how can I get people to send me work? How would they even know about me? And I decided that the best way to do that was to meet other writers and talk to them. And so I went to a writing workshop and the primary goal was to get David to let me edit one of his books. New York Times bestselling author, sold copies all around the world, super successful. He's just going to let this random dude edit one of his books.
[00:04:42] But that was the plan -- and actually it happens. I spent some time with him. The workshops started officially he had meetings with people as they requested, and so I had a meeting with him before, and I had a meeting with him after, and in between I tried to show him and the class what kind of thing I could bring to the table. And so after that experience, he said yes. And he let me edit "Nightingale," which went on to win awards and such. And from there that's how word of mouth started to spread, from that workshop from David.
[00:05:15] Matty: That’s a great story. And I think it's a great example of taking that chance and asking the question, asking it, I'm sure, politely and professionally, and seeing what opens up and you also, with your very first editing experience, sounds like you not only jumped off the cliff into editing, but you jumped into the deep end, just to mix metaphors, by taking on an epic fantasy. How long was that? How was long was the first book that you edited?
[00:05:39] Joshua: That's a good question. I think that one was around, if memory serves, 600 or so pages right around there.
[00:05:46] Matty: That's a lot of editing for the first time out, so good for you on both counts.
[00:05:52] Joshua: I think that's a really good point. Don't be afraid to ask because they can say no, and if they say no, no harm done. You don't lose anything. But if they say yes, then literally, it could change your life. I think that changed the direction of my life.
[00:06:08] Matty: Absolutely. So you've obviously had many, many editing gigs since then. And I think it was in our previous podcast episode where you said that of all the time that you spend on editing, the most time you spend is on action sequences. Did I remember that correctly? ...
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[00:06:08] Matty: Absolutely. So you've obviously had many, many editing gigs since then. And I think it was in our previous podcast episode where you said that of all the time that you spend on editing, the most time you spend is on action sequences. Did I remember that correctly?
[00:06:26] Joshua: Yeah, that's true.
[00:06:28] Matty: Why do you think that is?
[00:06:30] Joshua: I like to say that the more hacking and slashing your characters start doing, the more I ended up doing also, and it's just true. Every single time, I would say, yeah, pretty much a hundred percent of the time, when I get to an action scene, that's where I'm going to be embroiled in a heavier duty editing with every project that I start working on. And why is that so hard? I think it's because you're trying to do a lot of things at once when you're writing an action scene, and with that added pressure that it has to be exciting and that pressure is no small thing. I see that pressure messing writers up the most, I think. How do you write something exciting? I feel like that question rumbles around inside writers' heads as they try to figure out what they can do to make writing thrilling and dramatic and action-packed. And I think that that pressure can do three main things.
[00:07:28] First, it could stymie them completely. And they end up getting to the part in the story where there's an action scene and they leave a note "action stuff here," and they just skip over it entirely. "I'll come back to that later in the editing process," or whenever, hopefully it'll happen.
[00:07:42] Second I think that in trying to create something exciting that they start to know, collect other details, of the action scenes that are equally important, like blocking and setting, the consistency of placement for both people and environmental details and equipment or objects and making sure that while dramatic, everything stays believable, at least within the bounds of that world.
[00:08:13] It's very easy to start having your characters turn into Gumby, for example. And if you start to think about the action move that the character just committed, you'll go wait a minute, limbs don't move that way. Wait, how could he possibly have been five feet over here after making a move five feet this way against that opponent? That's not possible, like physically impossible.
[00:08:37] And I think a third, and this is probably the biggest thing, is that writers start to forget in the pressure to make the scene exciting that this is still a story that they're writing about characters and those characters have to remain the focus of everything that you do, not just action scenes, and they end up focusing too heavily, I think, on the wrong aspects. So thinking that the only thing that makes a good action scene is dynamic action. Dynamic action is great, of course, but it doesn't mean anything unless readers care about the characters that are indulging in said dynamic action.
[00:09:18] A book isn't like a movie where you can wrap your audience up into really amazing visuals and stuff like that. They don't know about or care about your characters yet. I mean if we're starting a movie or a book, a story, with an action scene, which I think is a huge faux pas, I was going to say don't ever started with action but of course there's always exceptions to the rules. That author that I mentioned a few minutes ago, Moses, he was very fond of pointing out exceptions to rules that I mentioned to him.
[00:09:49] Matty: Guidelines. They're general guidelines.
[00:09:52] Joshua: General guidelines, precisely. So in a movie they can get curious with really interesting and beautiful visuals and choreography and stuff like that, but that doesn't happen in a book. So they don't at the beginning of a story or scene or your introduction introducing a character, they're not going to care about that character yet, so you get that emotional engagement. Generally speaking, action is just another vehicle for character development. And I think that's where a lot of writers stumbled, forget that in the pressure of trying to make it really exciting and dramatic.
[00:10:24] Matty: I wanted to ask you a question about the movies, because also fairly recently, Tiffany Yates Martin, another editor, was on talking about lessons that writers can learn from movies and TV. We spent a lot of time on THE PRINCESS BRIDE, and I want to come back to that, but I'm thinking about an action sequence that I wrote specifically for the end of THE IRON RING, which is the third Lizzy Ballard Thriller. And what I found is that I had to think through it as if I were directing a movie. Well, first of all, I had to think through it as if I were writing a movie script, because I didn't have any idea of who the primary actors were or what they were going to achieve. I kind of knew what the guidelines were about who had to play what role in the end that was achieved.
[00:11:08] But it took a little while to work through that. And once I knew the big blocking for the scene, and I thought through more of the details of what I wanted each character to do to achieve that goal, then I found the actual writing of it fairly easy. So that might just be my internal writing process, or do you think that there's any value? It's not like writing in a movie, but can imagining it as a movie be helpful or is it usually more of a hindrance?
[00:11:40] Joshua: For me personally, I find it helpful. I think that everybody's writing process is unique to them and what motivates them and what inspires them and what gets them enthusiastic and excited. You know, just taking something from current pop culture: superhero movies. I find that those action sequences are very exciting because, well, here I go back to character. First of all, it's so exciting to see a bunch of your favorite characters all together and on the screen and, teaming up to foil the bad guy. I find that very inspiring and enthusiasm making.
[00:12:21] I think that in a book you really have to concentrate on what motivates you emotionally rather than what motivates you visually. If you do that, then I think that you're aiming your action sequence or your action scene or your sex scene on things that are going to move your mood, your readers, and create a lot of emotional engagement.
[00:12:51] If they have that engagement, then they're going to stick with you even if you have flubs of consistency or you have some action that's a little bit unbelievable because they block something with this arm while they strike with this arm and they eat a sandwich with this arm and you're "wait a minute." I have come across action sequences or action scenes that suddenly characters develop a third arm or a third hand or the ability to stretch across the room, or they create objects out of nothing that weren't there or present before. Does that answer that question?
[00:13:27] Matty: Yeah. I think we're coming back to that idea that it's the characters and the emotion, it's not really the action. The action is sort of a mechanism for advancing the story, but it's not the foundation of this story. Is that a fair way of putting it?
[00:13:41] Joshua: Yeah, it's I think the action is a fantastic tool for character development.
[00:13:46] Matty: To what extent does that apply beyond swashbuckling kind of movies? It's easy to think about the sword fight or the gunfight or the fistfight or the running away from the bad guys or those kinds of action sequences that you would find in maybe thrillers or fantasy or science fiction. Talk a little bit about to what extent the tips that you've already shared and the tips we'll continue talking about can be applied to more placid circumstances like a family drama, let's say.
[00:14:18] Joshua: Sure. What you're going to want in those kinds of scenes where there's no wham, bam, pow, you're going to want to be able to create tension of some kind and the way that you create tension without any physical violence or fighting or things of that nature is you have to create a dilemma for your character that your readers care about. You have to create stakes for your character, that if they fail, it's going to affect them dramatically. And that failure is going to make readers care. There's always going to be in any kind of action that you write, whether it's a fight or whether it's sneaking down into a potential serial killer's basement or it's wandering from room to room in a zombie apocalypse wondering if there are going to be zombies in that room. The emotional engagement is the key thing. If your readers are scared with your character, then they will really enjoy it. So you're going to want to try to do things a little bit differently.
[00:15:25] You're going to try to engage them, not in wondering whether or not the next blow is going to hit or if they're going to be able to block or interesting fantastical new magical spell is going to come at them. You're going to try and create the suspense and the tension through your character, feeling their way through the situation, essentially. If you have somebody back into our zombie apocalypse example, because they're my favorite examples, and they're looting for supplies and they don't know what's going to be around the next corner, but they know that if they don't get a can of food, that they are going to start starving to death.
[00:16:03] So it becomes an exercise in risk management and priority. Do you risk being eaten by zombies or starve to death? That is a very compelling question. So you follow your character, even if there is not a single zombie in the scene, the threat of the zombie is what creates the forward momentum in that action scene, the tension of what if or what is going to happen next? So suspense and tension are your friends when you're not --I mean, they're your friends always, but they're your friends especially when you're trying to create an action scene that doesn't have any fighting.
[00:16:42] Matty: Are there any different tips if a character is in a situation where there is not an human or monster opponent of some sort, if they're making their way across the ice floe, trying to get to help at the research station, are the rules any different in terms of that kind of description of an action sequence?
[00:16:58] Joshua: No. No, not at all. You can think of whatever is opposing the character as the monster, that's your big, bad in that scene. In that case, it's man versus environment. So the ice is the monster in that scene and treat it like that. If it's ice, if it's a hurricane, if it's a tsunami, if it's a meteor heading towards the earth, if it's darkness, birds. I mean, you can think of all kinds of stories that match each one of these things that I've said. I'm sure that your mind went there when I said birds. It could be Alfred Hitchcock or it could have been this recent movie with Sandra Bullock, BIRD BOX.
[00:17:33] So there are lots of ways to get around that question mark and that pressure of, "Oh my God, this is supposed to be exciting. How do I make it exciting?" You put your characters at risk. You put their goals and their desires and their wants at risk. If they can't fulfill any of those things, it's going to be an unsatisfying story in some degree, probably. Yeah, there are exceptions, of course. So you put those things at risk because you're not only putting your character at risk at that point, you're putting your reader at risk.
[00:18:05] Matty: One of the examples that I liked, and I said I was going to bring up THE PRINCESS BRIDE because I've been steeped in PRINCESS BRIDE since the conversation with Tiffany Yates Martin. In the "Action Sequences" side of Essoe's first GUIDES TO WRITING, there was a reference to THE PRINCESS BRIDE. And I don't think the part that I'm thinking of had a reference to a specific scene, but the scene that I go to is the scene with Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black having the sword fight at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity.
[00:18:34] And it's very interesting to think of that one because I think it violates what's got to be a lot of those general guidelines of action sequences. Like they talk a lot. There are parts where the action almost stops to make a point, like when the Man in Black does a flip off the parallel bars to indicate his prowess at that. And everybody's just kind of standing back and watching him make the flip off the parallel bars. Not really parallel bars, but sort of like that.
[00:19:04] Joshua: Yeah.
[00:19:05] Matty: What do you think about that scene? What does that illustrate either about the best practices of action sequences or what rules is it intentionally violating? Because in a way it's sort of a parody of that kind of scene as well.
[00:19:18] Joshua: Yeah. Well, we like those characters a lot. They're really interesting. And they're funny. That's a huge thing. If you can make your readers feel amused or outright laugh, you can get away with all kinds of stuff that you normally wouldn't be able to get away with. I mean, putting the spotlight on him flipping around like that as is a spot of melodrama that's not very believable, but he has you with those characters at that point, they can do lots of stuff and you'd be totally okay with it because you like them. You're amused by them and you are engaged with their witty back and forth.
[00:19:55] And that's not to say that he doesn't write really good action in that same scene as well. I actually have an example from that scene in my book, and I wish I could remember it word for word because I'm not going to do it justice, but basically what he does there is he puts emphasis on a special move that Inigo employees against the Man in Black, that he should never have been able to block. You just put a lot of emphasis on it and you're like, "Oh the Man in Black has had it." And then in a single line, he says, " ... and the Man in Black countered with a Thibault." It's just like, "What's the Thibault? How did he do this?" It's like this most amazing move, no one can defeat it, and the Man in Black is just: done.
[00:20:37] So there's a spot of melodrama, but you can also see that he creates the tension and the rising action not only with what he says, but the way he lays it out on the page. So sentence structure and the length of sentences and putting a single line like that as an entire paragraph are all little things that you can do to guide your reader through how they should feel. Should it be tense? Should it be shock and awe, you know like that.
[00:21:04] There's a lot of little things that you can do that are outside of actual storytelling and actually the writing, the words themselves, right on the page to help further the tension and your action, your interest and your engagement.
[00:21:16] Matty: When you're talking about the importance of humor and how much we enjoy Inigo and the Man in Black, and that's why we're willing to buy some of those unusual things that they're doing in that scene. If they're writing a story that's not humorous in the way that THE PRINCESS BRIDE is, what are your recommendations in terms of inserting humor in the middle of an action sequence,
[00:21:38] Matty: Where do you feel like that's appropriate and where does it go too far?
[00:21:42] Joshua: It depends on the mood and the tone of the scene. And it depends on what kind of characters you're writing. If we're back on the zombie apocalypse example, and there were two characters instead of one, if you're trying to create a really tense moment, then putting humor in the middle of that is going to deflate that tension. Now you might want that. There are great examples. I'm thinking movies, of course, like ZOMBIELAND, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, those types of movies where the whole mood of the piece, the tone of it fit that humor in the middle of the action scene, because they're not really going to scare you.
[00:22:16] But if you're writing a tense and dramatic story, then having humor in the middle of something like that will usually deflate your tension rather than increase it. And if your characters are very serious, then having a note of a bit of humor can also deflate your tension.
[00:22:33] There's an interesting way that that could go the other way around, though, because if you're writing a scene that is really, really tense, you could exhaust your readers, especially if you have a number of tense scenes one right after the other. And if you exhaust your readers, they're going to want to put the book down, regardless of how much they're enjoying it. Could be a fantastic story, your writing is superlative, but you exhaust them emotionally. They just can't take the tension without the relief, and a beat of humor like that could relieve that tension and therefore enable readers to keep going rather than stop.
[00:23:10] So there are certain circumstances and it really just depends on the story, it depends on your characters, whether or not having that interruption is going to make your story stronger or weaker.
[00:23:22] Matty: The example that pops into my head is from THE SHINING when Jack Torrance has axed open the door to the bathroom where Wendy is hiding and says, "Wendy I'm home," or " Here's Johnny!" or one of those kinds of lines.
[00:23:37] Joshua: Yeah. And "here's Johnny" was a bit of humor, but it was used in a frightening way. So you have all of these tools to try and create momentum and engagement and they can all be used in a number of different ways. And so humor sometimes like that, which is a really good example, it can be used to enhance your tension or the amount of fear that you're trying to make your readers feel because it shows them the opposite.
[00:24:08] It gives them just a snapshot of things being normal and contrasts it. So in that huge contrast of "here's Johnny," there is more fear that's created because this killer is excited. He's happy. I don't know, I think that a mean intent killer is a little less frightening than a happy, excited one if he's coming after you with an ax.
[00:24:37] Matty: Yeah. So if somebody is sitting down now and they're writing their action sequence, do you have any tips for them when they're first drafting it, any advice for them on how they can do that in a way that's going to give them the best first draft result that they can then go on to edit.
[00:24:55] Joshua: I think they really need to know their characters and that can solve a lot of problems in your writing. If you really know your characters, how they would react to various situations, especially if you're a pantser, then you will be able to write things that are convincing that won't need as much editing afterwards.
[00:25:10] Another thing that you can do is if it's a really complicated battle, if you're writing an epic fantasy, for example, and there are armies involved rather than just individuals, keeping track of all the big details, writing a list, making a battle map even, so that you can reference it, but keeping all your details consistent and keeping track of all of them will really help you.
[00:25:32] The worst editing that I have to do is when there's a huge action sequence and the writer has unfortunately lost track of all their details, which leaves it to me to be like, wait a minute, wasn't this over there? Wait a minute, this thing wasn't in the story at all. Hey, how did this guy arrive in the scene? I thought he was over in this part of the battlefield. And that not only makes the cost of the edit go up because my time is going up because I have to pay such close attention and I have to write so many remarks. But, wow, does that interrupt the movie in my head.
[00:26:03] So keeping consistent on all of your rules, whether they'd be magic, whether they'd be a social or religious, keeping track of the consistency of how your characters speak, if they're going to be doing any speaking during the action sequences. Some characters have accents, or they have very particular ways of speaking. I think the best example and the most immediate one that comes to mind is Data never used contractions on STAR TREK. So keeping track of that, if Data suddenly said, "can't," you'd be like, "Whoa." It would represent a bump in the road. That smooth ride that you're taking your readers on will suddenly encounter a pothole. That's what you want to avoid.
[00:26:42] Matty: With some of the scenes that I've written, and I'm thinking of one where a lot of people are driving around and sometimes they're in one car and sometimes they're in another, and then two of them get into a different car and drive away, and eventually I just have to make little like "these salt shakers each represent a car." Like I have to actually play it out with something physical because it's very easy to abandon someone without a car, and then suddenly they show up 50 miles away because they drove there and the reader goes, huh. But I think sometimes implementing it physically in some way can help with that.
[00:27:14] Joshua: Absolutely. I've yet to write a full-length fiction novel, but I've written a lot of novellas, I've written a lot of short stories, and I'm always getting up out of my chair and be like, Hey, it was like this. And then can I do that? And act out the scene. I can find out what a body can and cannot do.
[00:27:34] Matty: Yep. Exercise caution though. That will be our little public service announcement. Don't necessarily get out the broad sword, right?
[00:27:42] Joshua: Well, I mean, if you've got one and there's nobody in your swing arc. Yeah. But don't go jumping off the roof to see how much impact legs can take. You know, "Will the character's legs break or the ankle break if he jumps off the roof?"
[00:27:54] Matty: There is a time when you can take research too far.
[00:27:57] Joshua: Yes, sometimes you can take research a little bit too far.
[00:28:00] Matty: Actually, that makes me think of another question. How good or distracting is it to use terminology that would be appropriate for the situation but might not be familiar to the readers. So if you're writing a scene where people are using broadswords and I'm sure there's a whole host of language that applies to that that would be unfamiliar to the average reader, is it good or is it problematic to include that kind of language?
[00:28:25] Joshua: Yeah. "What's a vambrace?" For action scenes, for any kind of writing, you want the writing to cause readers to want to go forward, not cause them to stumble out of the scene in their head by encountering a word that they don't know. So if you're going to include a word that is, you know like gambeson or something like that, and there were characters putting on armor, then make sure that by context readers understand exactly what that is.
[00:28:52] If you can't do that, I would say especially during an action scene, save those words that readers might not be familiar with because of the characters, vocation, or interests or scenes where it doesn't matter quite as much that they don't get it. In an action scene it should be tight, every word should matter. And so a word like that, that represents a stumbling block, should be taken out.
[00:29:16] Matty: So now the person has their initial draft with the action sequence written based on your advice. Do you have any particular tips as they're going back to edit that they should look out for?
[00:29:26] Joshua: Yeah. And again, we're going to go back to consistency. When you're editing your own stuff. Pay real close attention to, if you have your blocking, you don't have characters suddenly reappearing and disappearing and being able to take one step and it covers 20 feet. Make sure that if they had a dagger on their belt, they still have a dagger around their belt and it's not on a table suddenly, or they're not standing up over and over again.
[00:29:50] I encounter that frequently, where a character will stand up, but I'm like, they stood up two paragraphs ago, they can't keep standing up. Or this one time it was a dramatic scene where a character was dying, and it was on the side of a mountain and the sun was setting over the character's death scene and I was like you had the sunset two pages ago.
[00:30:15] So making sure that all those things stay consistent will save your editor a lot of time. I think that maintaining consistency and blocking will probably be the best single thing that you can do for your wallet.
[00:30:28] Joshua: I think making sure that in your enthusiasm to write an action scene or have a confrontation, that it serves a purpose, don't just throw it in gratuitously because it doesn't work well. If you're doing fan service, that's one thing, and Lord knows those Marvel movies I mentioned a little while ago do a lot of fan service, which is great because it makes it more enjoyable.
[00:30:52] Matty: What do you mean by fan service?
[00:30:54] Joshua: So basically, you include something in your stories, not because it's great for the plot line or it's great for the conflict or the character or anything like that. You do it because your readers are going to really have fun reading it. And that's the only reason for it.
[00:31:07] Matty: There was a a conversation in one of my other episodes, I think it was the Robert Dugoni episode, and I was asking him about repeating things from book to book in a series. Like in CJ Box's Joe Pickett books, the truck always gets destroyed. And my husband especially watches for the truck to get destroyed because if you got to the end of a Joe Pickett book and if the truck hadn't been destroyed ...
[00:31:35] Joshua: Yeah.
[00:31:37] Matty: So that's fan service. I learned a new term. I didn't realize that.
[00:31:39] Joshua: I've been caught with that as well. A reader of mine, I guess he'd done something like three beta reads for me, and he pointed out that apparently, I always put squirrels in my stories. It's always going to be a squirrel.
[00:31:53] Matty: It's good to know, because readers would be disappointed if they got to the next story and there wasn't a squirrel. Yeah. It's like the little Easter egg for them, except it's a squirrel.
[00:32:02] Joshua: Yep.
[00:32:03] Matty: One of the things that I liked was your description of words to avoid that are okay to use once or twice, but not all the time. Like groaning, I think was one of them. Do you recall what that set of words was that you advised against using for the action sequences?
[00:32:20] Joshua: I can tell you some of them at least, because I see them all the time: growling, warring, charging. I think those are the three main perpetrators of this because they're such high intensity words like "he growled," because he's saying it with such emotion, such anger or upset that his word comes out all gravelly. But having the character do that over and over and over again, unless that's a part of how their voice works. And even then, I still wouldn't agree with using that word too much.
[00:32:52] Not only is it going to lose all impact -- it's going to become semantic satiation and it loses its impact. It's going to start sounding like not a word because you've used it so many times and it is going to pull readers out of the story because they're encountering the same thing over and over and over again.
[00:33:09] And it sounds wrong. It sounds like a mistake was made and anytime a reader feels like you've made a mistake, it's going to pull them out of the story and they're going to start losing faith with you, little ticks into their faith in you as their storyteller. There are a lot of reasons why you want to avoid those kinds of things, but "charging" and "roaring" are the other two big ones, especially in action scenes.
[00:33:32] "He charges over here" ... "He charges into that bad guy" ... then there's another bad guy over there, so he charges into that one. He's really mad. He got knocked down. So he charged to his feet and across the room. It's just all over the place. And I see these things used in tandem a lot. "He roared and charged." "He charged and roared." Yeah. There are others in the book, but really watch out for those three, for sure.
[00:33:55] And then just in normal writing, we have things like turning and looking, looking and turning. Man, that does get used a lot. I think what happens is in action scenes, growling, charging, roaring, those become your sort of place where you're sort of fall backwards.
[00:34:09] "I don't know what I'm going to write right here, but I feel like something has to go there." And so they turn and look. I see this all the time -- two people can be engaged in a conversation, they're standing right next to each other, and suddenly in the middle of all of that, one of the characters looks at the other and I'm like, "they been talking for 15 minutes -- where was he looking?" If you we're looking somewhere else, I want to know that in the first place. What was he doing? Watching the squirrels?
[00:34:36] Matty: That's right. I can imagine that what is going on in their minds is "he looked at him with compassion," or "he looked at him with --" There's some other word there that's existing in their mind, but it hasn't made it out onto the page.
[00:34:50] Joshua: Exactly. Just to say something that's not so great but changes the wording a little bit -- "you looked at him with compassion," you can say something like, "compassion filled his eyes." You don't have to have "looked" in there, especially not "turning." People don't turn that much.
[00:35:02] But like I said, I think what's going on is a writer feels like that character has to be doing something. What are they doing? They're not just talking, and I'm tired of using "he said," "she said," "he said," "she said," and so they turn. And so they look.
[00:35:16] Matty: Yeah. I could look forward to a -- I could turn and look forward to a spoof that you would write that represents every bad thing you see in action sequences.
[00:35:27] Joshua: That would be kind of funny. Yeah.
[00:35:29] Matty: And if you ever do that, please send it to me and I've got to add it to the show notes because sometimes you can learn more from those kinds of groaners than all the good versions that you can read.
[00:35:42] Well, Joshua, thank you so much, this has been so helpful. Please let listeners know where they can find you and your book ACTION SEQUENCES AND SEX SCENES online.
[00:35:50] Joshua: It's coming up on Amazon. Finding the time to do the whole process of getting it up on Amazon. I need to do it and I haven't done it yet. So right now it's only available on my website, which is joshuaesso.com.
[00:36:07] Matty: Great. Well, Joshua, thank you so much for coming back and being a repeat guest. This has been fun.
[00:36:11] Joshua: Yeah, that was awesome.
[00:06:26] Joshua: Yeah, that's true.
[00:06:28] Matty: Why do you think that is?
[00:06:30] Joshua: I like to say that the more hacking and slashing your characters start doing, the more I ended up doing also, and it's just true. Every single time, I would say, yeah, pretty much a hundred percent of the time, when I get to an action scene, that's where I'm going to be embroiled in a heavier duty editing with every project that I start working on. And why is that so hard? I think it's because you're trying to do a lot of things at once when you're writing an action scene, and with that added pressure that it has to be exciting and that pressure is no small thing. I see that pressure messing writers up the most, I think. How do you write something exciting? I feel like that question rumbles around inside writers' heads as they try to figure out what they can do to make writing thrilling and dramatic and action-packed. And I think that that pressure can do three main things.
[00:07:28] First, it could stymie them completely. And they end up getting to the part in the story where there's an action scene and they leave a note "action stuff here," and they just skip over it entirely. "I'll come back to that later in the editing process," or whenever, hopefully it'll happen.
[00:07:42] Second I think that in trying to create something exciting that they start to know, collect other details, of the action scenes that are equally important, like blocking and setting, the consistency of placement for both people and environmental details and equipment or objects and making sure that while dramatic, everything stays believable, at least within the bounds of that world.
[00:08:13] It's very easy to start having your characters turn into Gumby, for example. And if you start to think about the action move that the character just committed, you'll go wait a minute, limbs don't move that way. Wait, how could he possibly have been five feet over here after making a move five feet this way against that opponent? That's not possible, like physically impossible.
[00:08:37] And I think a third, and this is probably the biggest thing, is that writers start to forget in the pressure to make the scene exciting that this is still a story that they're writing about characters and those characters have to remain the focus of everything that you do, not just action scenes, and they end up focusing too heavily, I think, on the wrong aspects. So thinking that the only thing that makes a good action scene is dynamic action. Dynamic action is great, of course, but it doesn't mean anything unless readers care about the characters that are indulging in said dynamic action.
[00:09:18] A book isn't like a movie where you can wrap your audience up into really amazing visuals and stuff like that. They don't know about or care about your characters yet. I mean if we're starting a movie or a book, a story, with an action scene, which I think is a huge faux pas, I was going to say don't ever started with action but of course there's always exceptions to the rules. That author that I mentioned a few minutes ago, Moses, he was very fond of pointing out exceptions to rules that I mentioned to him.
[00:09:49] Matty: Guidelines. They're general guidelines.
[00:09:52] Joshua: General guidelines, precisely. So in a movie they can get curious with really interesting and beautiful visuals and choreography and stuff like that, but that doesn't happen in a book. So they don't at the beginning of a story or scene or your introduction introducing a character, they're not going to care about that character yet, so you get that emotional engagement. Generally speaking, action is just another vehicle for character development. And I think that's where a lot of writers stumbled, forget that in the pressure of trying to make it really exciting and dramatic.
[00:10:24] Matty: I wanted to ask you a question about the movies, because also fairly recently, Tiffany Yates Martin, another editor, was on talking about lessons that writers can learn from movies and TV. We spent a lot of time on THE PRINCESS BRIDE, and I want to come back to that, but I'm thinking about an action sequence that I wrote specifically for the end of THE IRON RING, which is the third Lizzy Ballard Thriller. And what I found is that I had to think through it as if I were directing a movie. Well, first of all, I had to think through it as if I were writing a movie script, because I didn't have any idea of who the primary actors were or what they were going to achieve. I kind of knew what the guidelines were about who had to play what role in the end that was achieved.
[00:11:08] But it took a little while to work through that. And once I knew the big blocking for the scene, and I thought through more of the details of what I wanted each character to do to achieve that goal, then I found the actual writing of it fairly easy. So that might just be my internal writing process, or do you think that there's any value? It's not like writing in a movie, but can imagining it as a movie be helpful or is it usually more of a hindrance?
[00:11:40] Joshua: For me personally, I find it helpful. I think that everybody's writing process is unique to them and what motivates them and what inspires them and what gets them enthusiastic and excited. You know, just taking something from current pop culture: superhero movies. I find that those action sequences are very exciting because, well, here I go back to character. First of all, it's so exciting to see a bunch of your favorite characters all together and on the screen and, teaming up to foil the bad guy. I find that very inspiring and enthusiasm making.
[00:12:21] I think that in a book you really have to concentrate on what motivates you emotionally rather than what motivates you visually. If you do that, then I think that you're aiming your action sequence or your action scene or your sex scene on things that are going to move your mood, your readers, and create a lot of emotional engagement.
[00:12:51] If they have that engagement, then they're going to stick with you even if you have flubs of consistency or you have some action that's a little bit unbelievable because they block something with this arm while they strike with this arm and they eat a sandwich with this arm and you're "wait a minute." I have come across action sequences or action scenes that suddenly characters develop a third arm or a third hand or the ability to stretch across the room, or they create objects out of nothing that weren't there or present before. Does that answer that question?
[00:13:27] Matty: Yeah. I think we're coming back to that idea that it's the characters and the emotion, it's not really the action. The action is sort of a mechanism for advancing the story, but it's not the foundation of this story. Is that a fair way of putting it?
[00:13:41] Joshua: Yeah, it's I think the action is a fantastic tool for character development.
[00:13:46] Matty: To what extent does that apply beyond swashbuckling kind of movies? It's easy to think about the sword fight or the gunfight or the fistfight or the running away from the bad guys or those kinds of action sequences that you would find in maybe thrillers or fantasy or science fiction. Talk a little bit about to what extent the tips that you've already shared and the tips we'll continue talking about can be applied to more placid circumstances like a family drama, let's say.
[00:14:18] Joshua: Sure. What you're going to want in those kinds of scenes where there's no wham, bam, pow, you're going to want to be able to create tension of some kind and the way that you create tension without any physical violence or fighting or things of that nature is you have to create a dilemma for your character that your readers care about. You have to create stakes for your character, that if they fail, it's going to affect them dramatically. And that failure is going to make readers care. There's always going to be in any kind of action that you write, whether it's a fight or whether it's sneaking down into a potential serial killer's basement or it's wandering from room to room in a zombie apocalypse wondering if there are going to be zombies in that room. The emotional engagement is the key thing. If your readers are scared with your character, then they will really enjoy it. So you're going to want to try to do things a little bit differently.
[00:15:25] You're going to try to engage them, not in wondering whether or not the next blow is going to hit or if they're going to be able to block or interesting fantastical new magical spell is going to come at them. You're going to try and create the suspense and the tension through your character, feeling their way through the situation, essentially. If you have somebody back into our zombie apocalypse example, because they're my favorite examples, and they're looting for supplies and they don't know what's going to be around the next corner, but they know that if they don't get a can of food, that they are going to start starving to death.
[00:16:03] So it becomes an exercise in risk management and priority. Do you risk being eaten by zombies or starve to death? That is a very compelling question. So you follow your character, even if there is not a single zombie in the scene, the threat of the zombie is what creates the forward momentum in that action scene, the tension of what if or what is going to happen next? So suspense and tension are your friends when you're not --I mean, they're your friends always, but they're your friends especially when you're trying to create an action scene that doesn't have any fighting.
[00:16:42] Matty: Are there any different tips if a character is in a situation where there is not an human or monster opponent of some sort, if they're making their way across the ice floe, trying to get to help at the research station, are the rules any different in terms of that kind of description of an action sequence?
[00:16:58] Joshua: No. No, not at all. You can think of whatever is opposing the character as the monster, that's your big, bad in that scene. In that case, it's man versus environment. So the ice is the monster in that scene and treat it like that. If it's ice, if it's a hurricane, if it's a tsunami, if it's a meteor heading towards the earth, if it's darkness, birds. I mean, you can think of all kinds of stories that match each one of these things that I've said. I'm sure that your mind went there when I said birds. It could be Alfred Hitchcock or it could have been this recent movie with Sandra Bullock, BIRD BOX.
[00:17:33] So there are lots of ways to get around that question mark and that pressure of, "Oh my God, this is supposed to be exciting. How do I make it exciting?" You put your characters at risk. You put their goals and their desires and their wants at risk. If they can't fulfill any of those things, it's going to be an unsatisfying story in some degree, probably. Yeah, there are exceptions, of course. So you put those things at risk because you're not only putting your character at risk at that point, you're putting your reader at risk.
[00:18:05] Matty: One of the examples that I liked, and I said I was going to bring up THE PRINCESS BRIDE because I've been steeped in PRINCESS BRIDE since the conversation with Tiffany Yates Martin. In the "Action Sequences" side of Essoe's first GUIDES TO WRITING, there was a reference to THE PRINCESS BRIDE. And I don't think the part that I'm thinking of had a reference to a specific scene, but the scene that I go to is the scene with Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black having the sword fight at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity.
[00:18:34] And it's very interesting to think of that one because I think it violates what's got to be a lot of those general guidelines of action sequences. Like they talk a lot. There are parts where the action almost stops to make a point, like when the Man in Black does a flip off the parallel bars to indicate his prowess at that. And everybody's just kind of standing back and watching him make the flip off the parallel bars. Not really parallel bars, but sort of like that.
[00:19:04] Joshua: Yeah.
[00:19:05] Matty: What do you think about that scene? What does that illustrate either about the best practices of action sequences or what rules is it intentionally violating? Because in a way it's sort of a parody of that kind of scene as well.
[00:19:18] Joshua: Yeah. Well, we like those characters a lot. They're really interesting. And they're funny. That's a huge thing. If you can make your readers feel amused or outright laugh, you can get away with all kinds of stuff that you normally wouldn't be able to get away with. I mean, putting the spotlight on him flipping around like that as is a spot of melodrama that's not very believable, but he has you with those characters at that point, they can do lots of stuff and you'd be totally okay with it because you like them. You're amused by them and you are engaged with their witty back and forth.
[00:19:55] And that's not to say that he doesn't write really good action in that same scene as well. I actually have an example from that scene in my book, and I wish I could remember it word for word because I'm not going to do it justice, but basically what he does there is he puts emphasis on a special move that Inigo employees against the Man in Black, that he should never have been able to block. You just put a lot of emphasis on it and you're like, "Oh the Man in Black has had it." And then in a single line, he says, " ... and the Man in Black countered with a Thibault." It's just like, "What's the Thibault? How did he do this?" It's like this most amazing move, no one can defeat it, and the Man in Black is just: done.
[00:20:37] So there's a spot of melodrama, but you can also see that he creates the tension and the rising action not only with what he says, but the way he lays it out on the page. So sentence structure and the length of sentences and putting a single line like that as an entire paragraph are all little things that you can do to guide your reader through how they should feel. Should it be tense? Should it be shock and awe, you know like that.
[00:21:04] There's a lot of little things that you can do that are outside of actual storytelling and actually the writing, the words themselves, right on the page to help further the tension and your action, your interest and your engagement.
[00:21:16] Matty: When you're talking about the importance of humor and how much we enjoy Inigo and the Man in Black, and that's why we're willing to buy some of those unusual things that they're doing in that scene. If they're writing a story that's not humorous in the way that THE PRINCESS BRIDE is, what are your recommendations in terms of inserting humor in the middle of an action sequence,
[00:21:38] Matty: Where do you feel like that's appropriate and where does it go too far?
[00:21:42] Joshua: It depends on the mood and the tone of the scene. And it depends on what kind of characters you're writing. If we're back on the zombie apocalypse example, and there were two characters instead of one, if you're trying to create a really tense moment, then putting humor in the middle of that is going to deflate that tension. Now you might want that. There are great examples. I'm thinking movies, of course, like ZOMBIELAND, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, those types of movies where the whole mood of the piece, the tone of it fit that humor in the middle of the action scene, because they're not really going to scare you.
[00:22:16] But if you're writing a tense and dramatic story, then having humor in the middle of something like that will usually deflate your tension rather than increase it. And if your characters are very serious, then having a note of a bit of humor can also deflate your tension.
[00:22:33] There's an interesting way that that could go the other way around, though, because if you're writing a scene that is really, really tense, you could exhaust your readers, especially if you have a number of tense scenes one right after the other. And if you exhaust your readers, they're going to want to put the book down, regardless of how much they're enjoying it. Could be a fantastic story, your writing is superlative, but you exhaust them emotionally. They just can't take the tension without the relief, and a beat of humor like that could relieve that tension and therefore enable readers to keep going rather than stop.
[00:23:10] So there are certain circumstances and it really just depends on the story, it depends on your characters, whether or not having that interruption is going to make your story stronger or weaker.
[00:23:22] Matty: The example that pops into my head is from THE SHINING when Jack Torrance has axed open the door to the bathroom where Wendy is hiding and says, "Wendy I'm home," or " Here's Johnny!" or one of those kinds of lines.
[00:23:37] Joshua: Yeah. And "here's Johnny" was a bit of humor, but it was used in a frightening way. So you have all of these tools to try and create momentum and engagement and they can all be used in a number of different ways. And so humor sometimes like that, which is a really good example, it can be used to enhance your tension or the amount of fear that you're trying to make your readers feel because it shows them the opposite.
[00:24:08] It gives them just a snapshot of things being normal and contrasts it. So in that huge contrast of "here's Johnny," there is more fear that's created because this killer is excited. He's happy. I don't know, I think that a mean intent killer is a little less frightening than a happy, excited one if he's coming after you with an ax.
[00:24:37] Matty: Yeah. So if somebody is sitting down now and they're writing their action sequence, do you have any tips for them when they're first drafting it, any advice for them on how they can do that in a way that's going to give them the best first draft result that they can then go on to edit.
[00:24:55] Joshua: I think they really need to know their characters and that can solve a lot of problems in your writing. If you really know your characters, how they would react to various situations, especially if you're a pantser, then you will be able to write things that are convincing that won't need as much editing afterwards.
[00:25:10] Another thing that you can do is if it's a really complicated battle, if you're writing an epic fantasy, for example, and there are armies involved rather than just individuals, keeping track of all the big details, writing a list, making a battle map even, so that you can reference it, but keeping all your details consistent and keeping track of all of them will really help you.
[00:25:32] The worst editing that I have to do is when there's a huge action sequence and the writer has unfortunately lost track of all their details, which leaves it to me to be like, wait a minute, wasn't this over there? Wait a minute, this thing wasn't in the story at all. Hey, how did this guy arrive in the scene? I thought he was over in this part of the battlefield. And that not only makes the cost of the edit go up because my time is going up because I have to pay such close attention and I have to write so many remarks. But, wow, does that interrupt the movie in my head.
[00:26:03] So keeping consistent on all of your rules, whether they'd be magic, whether they'd be a social or religious, keeping track of the consistency of how your characters speak, if they're going to be doing any speaking during the action sequences. Some characters have accents, or they have very particular ways of speaking. I think the best example and the most immediate one that comes to mind is Data never used contractions on STAR TREK. So keeping track of that, if Data suddenly said, "can't," you'd be like, "Whoa." It would represent a bump in the road. That smooth ride that you're taking your readers on will suddenly encounter a pothole. That's what you want to avoid.
[00:26:42] Matty: With some of the scenes that I've written, and I'm thinking of one where a lot of people are driving around and sometimes they're in one car and sometimes they're in another, and then two of them get into a different car and drive away, and eventually I just have to make little like "these salt shakers each represent a car." Like I have to actually play it out with something physical because it's very easy to abandon someone without a car, and then suddenly they show up 50 miles away because they drove there and the reader goes, huh. But I think sometimes implementing it physically in some way can help with that.
[00:27:14] Joshua: Absolutely. I've yet to write a full-length fiction novel, but I've written a lot of novellas, I've written a lot of short stories, and I'm always getting up out of my chair and be like, Hey, it was like this. And then can I do that? And act out the scene. I can find out what a body can and cannot do.
[00:27:34] Matty: Yep. Exercise caution though. That will be our little public service announcement. Don't necessarily get out the broad sword, right?
[00:27:42] Joshua: Well, I mean, if you've got one and there's nobody in your swing arc. Yeah. But don't go jumping off the roof to see how much impact legs can take. You know, "Will the character's legs break or the ankle break if he jumps off the roof?"
[00:27:54] Matty: There is a time when you can take research too far.
[00:27:57] Joshua: Yes, sometimes you can take research a little bit too far.
[00:28:00] Matty: Actually, that makes me think of another question. How good or distracting is it to use terminology that would be appropriate for the situation but might not be familiar to the readers. So if you're writing a scene where people are using broadswords and I'm sure there's a whole host of language that applies to that that would be unfamiliar to the average reader, is it good or is it problematic to include that kind of language?
[00:28:25] Joshua: Yeah. "What's a vambrace?" For action scenes, for any kind of writing, you want the writing to cause readers to want to go forward, not cause them to stumble out of the scene in their head by encountering a word that they don't know. So if you're going to include a word that is, you know like gambeson or something like that, and there were characters putting on armor, then make sure that by context readers understand exactly what that is.
[00:28:52] If you can't do that, I would say especially during an action scene, save those words that readers might not be familiar with because of the characters, vocation, or interests or scenes where it doesn't matter quite as much that they don't get it. In an action scene it should be tight, every word should matter. And so a word like that, that represents a stumbling block, should be taken out.
[00:29:16] Matty: So now the person has their initial draft with the action sequence written based on your advice. Do you have any particular tips as they're going back to edit that they should look out for?
[00:29:26] Joshua: Yeah. And again, we're going to go back to consistency. When you're editing your own stuff. Pay real close attention to, if you have your blocking, you don't have characters suddenly reappearing and disappearing and being able to take one step and it covers 20 feet. Make sure that if they had a dagger on their belt, they still have a dagger around their belt and it's not on a table suddenly, or they're not standing up over and over again.
[00:29:50] I encounter that frequently, where a character will stand up, but I'm like, they stood up two paragraphs ago, they can't keep standing up. Or this one time it was a dramatic scene where a character was dying, and it was on the side of a mountain and the sun was setting over the character's death scene and I was like you had the sunset two pages ago.
[00:30:15] So making sure that all those things stay consistent will save your editor a lot of time. I think that maintaining consistency and blocking will probably be the best single thing that you can do for your wallet.
[00:30:28] Joshua: I think making sure that in your enthusiasm to write an action scene or have a confrontation, that it serves a purpose, don't just throw it in gratuitously because it doesn't work well. If you're doing fan service, that's one thing, and Lord knows those Marvel movies I mentioned a little while ago do a lot of fan service, which is great because it makes it more enjoyable.
[00:30:52] Matty: What do you mean by fan service?
[00:30:54] Joshua: So basically, you include something in your stories, not because it's great for the plot line or it's great for the conflict or the character or anything like that. You do it because your readers are going to really have fun reading it. And that's the only reason for it.
[00:31:07] Matty: There was a a conversation in one of my other episodes, I think it was the Robert Dugoni episode, and I was asking him about repeating things from book to book in a series. Like in CJ Box's Joe Pickett books, the truck always gets destroyed. And my husband especially watches for the truck to get destroyed because if you got to the end of a Joe Pickett book and if the truck hadn't been destroyed ...
[00:31:35] Joshua: Yeah.
[00:31:37] Matty: So that's fan service. I learned a new term. I didn't realize that.
[00:31:39] Joshua: I've been caught with that as well. A reader of mine, I guess he'd done something like three beta reads for me, and he pointed out that apparently, I always put squirrels in my stories. It's always going to be a squirrel.
[00:31:53] Matty: It's good to know, because readers would be disappointed if they got to the next story and there wasn't a squirrel. Yeah. It's like the little Easter egg for them, except it's a squirrel.
[00:32:02] Joshua: Yep.
[00:32:03] Matty: One of the things that I liked was your description of words to avoid that are okay to use once or twice, but not all the time. Like groaning, I think was one of them. Do you recall what that set of words was that you advised against using for the action sequences?
[00:32:20] Joshua: I can tell you some of them at least, because I see them all the time: growling, warring, charging. I think those are the three main perpetrators of this because they're such high intensity words like "he growled," because he's saying it with such emotion, such anger or upset that his word comes out all gravelly. But having the character do that over and over and over again, unless that's a part of how their voice works. And even then, I still wouldn't agree with using that word too much.
[00:32:52] Not only is it going to lose all impact -- it's going to become semantic satiation and it loses its impact. It's going to start sounding like not a word because you've used it so many times and it is going to pull readers out of the story because they're encountering the same thing over and over and over again.
[00:33:09] And it sounds wrong. It sounds like a mistake was made and anytime a reader feels like you've made a mistake, it's going to pull them out of the story and they're going to start losing faith with you, little ticks into their faith in you as their storyteller. There are a lot of reasons why you want to avoid those kinds of things, but "charging" and "roaring" are the other two big ones, especially in action scenes.
[00:33:32] "He charges over here" ... "He charges into that bad guy" ... then there's another bad guy over there, so he charges into that one. He's really mad. He got knocked down. So he charged to his feet and across the room. It's just all over the place. And I see these things used in tandem a lot. "He roared and charged." "He charged and roared." Yeah. There are others in the book, but really watch out for those three, for sure.
[00:33:55] And then just in normal writing, we have things like turning and looking, looking and turning. Man, that does get used a lot. I think what happens is in action scenes, growling, charging, roaring, those become your sort of place where you're sort of fall backwards.
[00:34:09] "I don't know what I'm going to write right here, but I feel like something has to go there." And so they turn and look. I see this all the time -- two people can be engaged in a conversation, they're standing right next to each other, and suddenly in the middle of all of that, one of the characters looks at the other and I'm like, "they been talking for 15 minutes -- where was he looking?" If you we're looking somewhere else, I want to know that in the first place. What was he doing? Watching the squirrels?
[00:34:36] Matty: That's right. I can imagine that what is going on in their minds is "he looked at him with compassion," or "he looked at him with --" There's some other word there that's existing in their mind, but it hasn't made it out onto the page.
[00:34:50] Joshua: Exactly. Just to say something that's not so great but changes the wording a little bit -- "you looked at him with compassion," you can say something like, "compassion filled his eyes." You don't have to have "looked" in there, especially not "turning." People don't turn that much.
[00:35:02] But like I said, I think what's going on is a writer feels like that character has to be doing something. What are they doing? They're not just talking, and I'm tired of using "he said," "she said," "he said," "she said," and so they turn. And so they look.
[00:35:16] Matty: Yeah. I could look forward to a -- I could turn and look forward to a spoof that you would write that represents every bad thing you see in action sequences.
[00:35:27] Joshua: That would be kind of funny. Yeah.
[00:35:29] Matty: And if you ever do that, please send it to me and I've got to add it to the show notes because sometimes you can learn more from those kinds of groaners than all the good versions that you can read.
[00:35:42] Well, Joshua, thank you so much, this has been so helpful. Please let listeners know where they can find you and your book ACTION SEQUENCES AND SEX SCENES online.
[00:35:50] Joshua: It's coming up on Amazon. Finding the time to do the whole process of getting it up on Amazon. I need to do it and I haven't done it yet. So right now it's only available on my website, which is joshuaesso.com.
[00:36:07] Matty: Great. Well, Joshua, thank you so much for coming back and being a repeat guest. This has been fun.
[00:36:11] Joshua: Yeah, that was awesome.
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