Action and Opening Scenes: Yea, Nay, or Balance?

This is my very last post about When Words Collide 2015. After this I’ve used up all of the notes I think others will find useful and/or interesting.

It’s not surprising that over the course of the extended weekend in August, I heard contradictory pieces of information. Devil’s advocate that I am, I like to play both sides of the fence, unless it’s something really obvious where there is only the right side to be on. The opposing views I came across are from Faith Hunter and Fonda Lee, and they concern using action as a book opener.

To be fair, Faith Hunter was busy discussing and dissecting opening scenes generally over the course of a day, so her comments are not as in-depth as I’m sure they would be had I asked directly. And while Fonda Lee’s panel Knock ‘Em Out: How to Write Action and Fight Scenes went into depth about action scenes, openers weren’t her priority. Then of course this post has been filtered through me with my own agenda.

Fightgirls by MGEARTWORKS via Flickr

Here are Faith Hunter’s thoughts on action scenes as book openers: Regardless of the current vogue, it’s never a mistake to open with action and/or conflict. Of the three types of openings she identified, Hunter labelled action as an ideal one because it can be an instant hook for readers. That was her priority and the topic of her workshop –hooking readers in those first five pages.

This is Fonda Lee’s opinion on action scenes as book openers: Ignore the common advice “start with action.” Action is precious. People are not emotionally connected to the characters or the situation or cause in your book’s first scene which wastes the action. For better insight into Lee’s opinion, you have to look at the three principles she outlined for great action: 1) Action evokes emotion; 2) Action must serve narrative purpose, and 3) Action is about character.

Lee adds that the only thing that makes your action scenes stand out is a vulnerable protagonist in a desperation situation. It makes sense that if we don’t yet know the protagonist, it’s hard to identify or empathize with their vulnerability and we won’t recognize the true desperation of the situation if we’re thrown in head first with no information. Thus, she recommends starting with the inevitability of action, the promise of it.

I have to say I fall somewhere in between these two brilliant ladies. As a reader I appreciate a book opening that grabs me with its breakneck speed, but at the same time I recognize that I’m not as emotionally invested if intense action is happening to a character I don’t know. I’m interested, but I’m not compelled.

I agree with Lee in that an intense action opener seems to be a waste of emotion. However, if it were a subsequent book in a series I could live with it because I’m already invested emotionally in the cast of characters. But that’s assuming that readers read books in order (I actually can’t believe that there are people who don’t).

Lee’s breakdown of action makes perfect sense to me. So does Hunter’s ideas about an action packed opener that grabs the reader’s attention. I think there’s a way to meld the two and balance them out, but I’m inexperienced. Still, in medias res is not touted in the writing world for nothing…

Action is part of reaction to a situation, and while we never want our protagonists to only react in a story, why can’t an opener have a tense reaction on the characters part? All books start when the protagonist is pushed into exiting their normal lives. That seems like the ideal setup before they start the action when I’m emotionally invested in them.

What do you think?

The post Action and Opening Scenes: Yea, Nay, or Balance? appeared first on Anxiety Ink.