WHAT MAKES FOR A GOOD ACTION SEQUENCE?
This isn't part of the story but also felt way too long to shove into a pre/post-chapter note, so my solution is to have something more akin to a little blog essay. The topic is simple:
How do you evaluate if an action or fight scene is good or not?
I think some readers might be curious to understand how a writer like me evaluates fight scenes, so here's a bit of "behind the pages" covered from my point of view as a reader, writer, and overall consumer of media. I learned a lot coming out of writing what effectively was a 20k-word action sequence in the last arc.
As for grading myself: the ingredients were assembled, the intent was reasonably clear, but the execution only barely made the cuff of "good enough," and so I give myself a C+. That's not to say I believe the arc was poor (I try to deliver a pretty polished reading experience), but that my standards are just really high for myself. The version of me that wrote it understood far less about balancing a good fight sequence than the person who graded it, so to speak. But that's growth, right? How many writers can say they wrote a 20k-word action sequence featuring one continuous fight?
The sheer size of the fight itself amplified a ton of my learnings and takeaways as well. As with anything, small problems become bigger problems when processed at scale. A quick 2k-word fight scene can get away with certain aspects; previous fight scenes in Below the Heavens were me exploring various kinds of combat, storytelling, pacing, and more.
My little write-up is not intended to be an exhaustive treatment on the topic as I believe a full breakdown of all the various types of action scenes is not within my abilities, nor would it be doable within what is effectively a mini-essay. I don't consider myself a master at this either, and I'll include a few sections about how I evaluate my own work against these criteria as well. I simply don't think I am very good at action sequences, though I do incorporate as much as I can from what makes for a good action sequence into my other scenes of conflict (see: dialogue and negotiation scenes).
If you find this interesting, I encourage you to apply the principles below to other stories or even evaluate other forms of media, as they should largely translate to comics, manga, anime, movies, or more. Look at mediums where you saw a great action scene and see if what I say rings true, then look for those bad ones and also see if they commit the sins I lay out.
In case this is shared with would-be readers, I will spoiler tag points where I refer to the story.
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DISCLAIMER SECTION:
The following is just my own opinion. There’s many ways to do action scenes and there’s an audience for everything. It simply lists out what I believe makes for generically good action sequences, and will not cover some of the more niche forms and formulas that do exist and have a great impact as well. In short, this is the essence of what I judge my own work by.
I think more importantly is to understand your goal as a storyteller. My personal style is to view action sequences as just another tool in my woven tapestry of story elements. For those who write stories where the action is the point, I doubt most of my incoherent rambling will provide any value. That being said, my goal is to hopefully have each action sequence linger with the audience and provide further revelations if ever revisited.
WHAT MAKES AN ACTION SCENE BAD?
Let's start with what I believe makes for a bad action sequence or fight scene. The top three common sins I see are:
1. IT DOES NOT MOVE THE PLOT, DEVELOP A CHARACTER, OR IMPACT THE WORLD.
Example: This is sort of self-explanatory and often seen in gratuitous violence scenes. These tend to have a saving grace where they establish a character (they’re a badass, they wake up and kill bandits for breakfast) or occasionally develop a character (the person involved is now participating in violence as a form of escapism). However, if the scene or sequence doesn’t go beyond that, I often consider it a waste of time. It doesn't linger with the audience and in many cases causes me distaste, much like adding a layer of sugar to a cake because "more sugar in sweets is good, right?"
2. IT COULD HAVE PROBABLY BEEN RESOLVED WITH A QUICK CONVERSATION.
Example: Well, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. “Words are meaningless. The only thing left to exchange are our fists.” Then after the fight no one died and it’s just handwaved with “Well I was just testing you.” No — as the audience, I often feel these are a waste of my time if they did nothing besides provide spectacle. The worst offenders cheapen the very concept of the threat of violence. Perhaps establishing violence as a viable stand-in for conversation is integral to setting up the flavor of the world, but I think it becomes a bit more counterintuitive after the first instance. This inevitably devolves into spectacle creep and the writer is forced to continuously one-up their approach to violence in the face of a desensitized audience.
It also increases the difficulty of worldbuilding in the context of society. Think of the societies in our world where violence is a day-to-day occurrence — when casual violence becomes common, it warps the entire aspect of society. Entire social norms and mannerisms have been adopted to explicitly avoid this in first world countries. Ask any individual from a country where police brutality is a social norm how they act around police.
Don't cheapen the violence or be ready to warp your societal worldbuilding around it.
3. IT IS AN EXTREMELY ONE-SIDED FIGHT.
Example: Any curb-stomp scene where power fantasy is not the point. These scenes tend to exist in power fantasies to serve up a specific experience for vicarious enjoyment. I firmly believe that at the heart of most good stories is the ever-present progress of struggle. Rambo is fun to watch because the power fantasy is the point. The Karate Kid is less fun to watch if Daniel beats his bully without effort and the bully cannot fight back.
A one-sided fight can be done correctly when the violence isn't the point. Good versions tend to focus on why the fight is one-sided, and explore both sides of that fight.
CLARIFYING COMMENTARY
I want to make it clear that I don't look down upon these story sequences. They have their place and they're popular because there's an audience for that. But a reason why people consider the first Matrix movie great and the third Matrix movie not-as-great is because virtually none of the first movie’s action sequences fall into the above three categories.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. However, the above are often the main culprits causing bad action sequences. The litmus test for #1 and #2 are: if this fight scene were removed, would the audience’s understanding of the story drastically change? If not, why did it deserve the audience’s attention?
For #3, if the main character is one-sidedly beating down on an enemy, the overall context of that scene absolutely must sell why I should still be rooting for the main character. After all, we don't accidentally want to end up supporting the baddies.
If it’s the other way around — main character getting dumpster’d by someone else — that’s often used to establish the underdog main character in weak-to-strong stories. However, I often feel that these are shortcuts from a storyteller to establish “hey, make sure you think and feel this way: my MC is the underdog and you should be rooting for them.”
To me, this is show-not-tell with all the subtlety of a pop-up ad. My personal feelings on the matter are that I revile being SHOWN what the writer really wants to TELL me — please respect my intelligence and let me figure it out. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when I feel that I'm being shown what to feel rather than being shown a scene and feeling it out myself, but my rule of thumb is "there is no other way to interpret this scene, a child could probably figure it out."
I believe I’m also guilty of this, so feel free to call me out on it when I fall into it. For example, there’s a scene where
I show Molam being beaten by some children. I believe I can still be forgiven because that scene had other purposes: Molam’s little argument with the phoenix (character development), establishing exactly how weak Molam is without aura against children that can use it (character establishment), and introduces the state of affairs in JiangXi where children are robbing others on the streets (setting development). I’m also not explicitly trying to tell the reader how to feel about Molam or the young assailants; that scene’s true purpose is showing how much Molam relies on the phoenix as Molam has little ability to defend himself against a teenager.
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Finally, I’m not ruling out that I will ever not use any of the above. In the end, different approaches are just tools that a storyteller should understand how to apply and keep in their toolbox. Mastery is just knowing when and where to use a tool — and why no other tool can get the job done.
Unfortunately, I’m far from being a master, hence the self-assigned score of C+.
Now, let’s look at what makes for good action sequences.
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WHAT MAKES AN ACTION SCENE GOOD?
Knowing to avoid adding tomatoes to a fruitcake is not the same as knowing how to make a good fruitcake. So what makes for good action scenes? Here are the ingredients I believe should always be present:
1. CLEARLY DEFINED STAKES
A conflict is meaningless if the result of that fight doesn't affect the story, characters, or world.
“Why should the reader care about this fight?” is hard to explicitly define, but it doesn’t need to be world-changing. For example, here's a hastily thrown-together conflict:
* Sarah’s wedding is coming up and her mother believes she should wear a long-sleeved bridal gown according to tradition. Sarah does not want to go with the more traditional look, choosing to have an exact replica of her gown made in secret but completely sleeveless. On the day of the wedding, her mother finds her friend transporting the secret gown to Sarah, shredding it in the process and leaving Sarah with only the traditional gown. Sarah, in her fury, takes scissors to the traditional gown and removes the sleeves on her own. Her mother's face freezes when she sees Sarah walk down the aisle in her makeshift sleeveless gown, and their relationship has been rocky ever since.
The conflict isn’t actually about the gown, it just represents Sarah’s desire to be her own person, not who her mother wants her to be. The importance of the fight should transcend the fight itself — the results of that fight should linger and be felt in multiple scenes afterwards. You can't just move on from it if the fight had clearly defined stakes that mattered.
In a similar vein, all conflicts should have meaning besides the immediate fight at hand.
For the Roxxa fight, I did my best to make the stakes defined very early. Roxxa determined Molam to be a dangerous problem that needs to be uprooted, given he is the current vessel of the Oracle. Molam understands what Roxxa wants, and his action is to deny her that (on top of generally wanting to live). The world of Below the Heavens would absolutely have a trajectory change if Molam died here. I would explain what those changes are but they’re too spoiler-ridden, however I do believe that’s what each storyteller should figure out: what happens if the other side wins? I highly recommend other storytellers figure out these alternative timelines so they know the full weight of the route they choose to write.
2. AVOID REPETITION, EMBRACE VARIANCE
I'm going to be very vague because I don't want to be political, but there’s a real war happening right now. At first it was interesting and we couldn't look away for about two weeks. Now, for those that keep following it, the latest news is just "and they moved up a bit. Then they were pushed back a bit." Rinse and repeat. There's a reason the media barely covers it unless something new comes up.
All this to say: Once something has happened once in an action sequence, the storyteller should do their utmost to never let it happen again — at least, without the same result. The reader gets numb to the same action and reaction.
I experienced this watching the latest John Wick movie. There was a point in an action scene where I found my mind wandering because I knew what was coming up. John was going to pick up a gun, shoot someone, maybe do a bit of a melee struggle, then shoot someone again. What I didn’t predict was that they would drag that repetition out for quite some time in the film. I remember it because I literally picked up my phone and browsed Reddit for several minutes in the movie theater until that scene was finished.
My issue isn’t that John Wick can single handedly mow down legions of assassins. The problem was that it became repetitive. See John shoot a guy with a bullet for the Nth time and you start craving something new. Bring back killing people with a pencil — a fucking pencil!
First John Wick movie? Excellent. Lots of variance, quite a wonderful display of out-of-the-box thinking, and any repetition was dressed up in different environments or variables to make it seem new and refreshing each time.
I tried my best to keep it refreshing during the Roxxa fight. I think I did well with Shurra and Martyker, though I didn’t do as well with Primrose and Scarlette. In my defense, Primrose and Scarlette have an extremely limited set of options against someone like Roxxa — their preferred mode of engagement would be to not fight Roxxa at all, at least not without copious amounts of preparation and perhaps when Roxxa is asleep. All in all, I did try and ensure that none of the moves revealed would be recycled without a good purpose, particularly for Shurra and Martyker.
Molam occupied an interesting role where he was coming up with plans on the fly. I devoted most of my time thinking about Molam’s various approaches for dealing with Roxxa, and so his nonphysical contributions to the entire sequence should feel the most refreshing.
3. OMNIPRESENT TUG-OF-WAR
I think the best plot beats of an action sequence should be like Uno. Each side is trying to play their way to victory, and then when it comes down to it — UNO! — only to be hit with the skip skip reverse draw +4 draw +2 draw +2 — UNO! — continue ad nauseam until someone pulls it off or the other person has no way to prevent a win.
In short: each side should be taking turns acting to forward their own win condition or react to the other side's attempt at victory, or trying to prevent their lose condition. (There's actually a lot of nuance here but digging into it requires a whole 'nother essay on game theory). It is this back and forth tug-of-war, taking turns "being on top" that makes up what I think readers would find genuinely interesting in a story.
* Who is going to win the next exchange?
* How are they going to do it?
* How is the other side going to prevent it?
* What's the point of turnaround?
* What new variable has been introduced as a result?
That last one is very important to consider when looking at the plot beat: the circumstances of the fight or action sequence must also evolve (or degrade). Fatigue happens. A cut bleeding into the eye negates part of vision. An awkward landing leaves a person hobbling on one foot. A non-lethal blow maims a character. Each rotation of the plot beat should make the fight more desperate because struggle is the heart of storytelling.
Roxxa's fight is a bit off-center for this given the sheer power difference between her status as a Titled One with a Domain and the cast that fought her. However, it was also not a curb stomp (and I took great pains organically handicapping Roxxa to make the fight manageable for our fighting cast). While the overall structure of their fight was "let's escape Roxxa," Molam never abandoned the possibility of turning the tables on her.
While the circumstance of the fight limited what I could do to make it more of a tug-of-war, I still believe my execution of this criteria was not well done considering how lengthy the entire action sequence was. This is a major reason why I assign myself a C-.
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ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES
For those who want an example of what I consider an incredible action sequence, I suggest Tai Lung's Escape from the first Kung Fu Panda movie.
* This scene combines character exposition (it's our first time actually seeing Tai Lung), plot relevance (he's trying to escape), and impact on the world in one go. It's an incredible scene because I realized I was rooting for the villain of the story.
* Clearly defined stakes. Tai Lung's success or failure of this escape scene has a tremendous impact on the plot and world. We genuinely care about this scene because we know what is at stake.
* Avoids repetition. Tai Lung's demonstration of his guile, tenacity, resourcefulness, and ability to adapt to changing circumstances (the changing circumstances really helped) made the entire sequence thrilling all the way. Can you imagine if it was just that bridge fight scene the entire time, with Tai Lung mowing down an endless horde of rhinos? That would have been boring.
* Omnipresent tug-of-war. While Tai Lung obviously outmatches the rhinos, he's actually fighting all their prepared measures to keep him imprisoned. Each mechanism has an easy-to-understand method of trying to keep him locked down, and there's that UNO! moment where the audience isn't entirely sure how Tai Lung will get out of this next predicament. And then he does. And then a new obstacle blocks his way. And then he overcomes it again. The writers did an exemplary job with managing the tension of this action sequence. Just make sure you don't slip into the problem of the character rolling Nat20s or Deus Ex Machina as your solution, because the goal of the tug-of-war is tension.
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Final words
I hope that was an interesting read! Perhaps you will now think of these things when looking at other stories, watching movies, or just evaluating my future fight scenes. I definitely only touched the surface of this bottomless topic and hope to level up myself so I can jot down some thoughts about it again in the future, ideally with a better understanding on the topic. If there's any more interest in Behind the Scenes-type of writeups, please let me know with a simple comment below.
Until then, I do hope to become better at executing upon these criteria when showing action scenes.
May the light of knowledge illuminate your path.