I'm having so much trouble with action scenes right now.
This is a bit of a problem, as both of my works in progress are at an action scene. The sci-fi story is moving into what should be the climax of the entire story. Mercenaries vs mercenaries, with one side protecting a kid and the other side protecting an entire people. The other one is a bit earlier in the proceednigs, and involves three people trying to fight their way out of a castle with aid of some very limited magic.
Action scenes have always been a bit of an achillies heel to me. No matter what I do, they never stop sounding to me like little more than a laundry list of actions. Person A does this. Person B does that. Blood flows. Someone trying to run away, yadda yadda yadda. I've been trying to read some of my favorite action scenes from books, and even those in fanfic of some authors who particularly write action well (two of which I am biased toward, as I consider them friends :) ) And when you're on the outside and reading it, it all seems so easy. One action flows into another, cause and effect running smoothly like a silk ribbon among the combatants.
But I just can't seem to get the hang of it. I'm told I'm not the only one who has this issue, but it feels like an exceedingly odd place to get hung up. There's so much happening, how can it be THIS hard?
Ah well. Nothing for it but to go forward. If nothing else, that's what edits and rewrites are for!
Progress: Blessed (32,435); Sci-fi (63,526)
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