Action!

How do you guys write action scenes? The book I’m currently working on is full of big shoot-em-up, take-em-down scenes and I want them to be good. I’ve read other books with such scenes but there’s only so much they can teach about writing your own.

So much is going on that it’s hard to keep everything from becoming too hectic to read. In this particular scene, ten people are making a getaway in a big, RV type vehicle. They’re being chased down by some pretty vicious soldiers. Bullets are flying everywhere. Two of the people are occupied with driving and aren’t referred to much, and two others don’t get much involved. But that still leaves six characters to keep track of.

Granted, some are more important than others. The main character gets most of the focus and a lot of it is told through his observations as he tries to help. But there are things he can’t see. Unfortunately, I had to cut some of them because there were too many perspective jumps, and I'm still worried about having enough detail for the reader to get a feel of what's going on. That's the thing about writing: you have the picture in your head and you need to show it to someone else!