In 2004, I was waiting on a tube platform and spotted posters asking: ‘Police – could you?’. I thought about that a lot and realised that, at that point in time, I couldn’t. I didn’t feel certain enough that, in difficult situations, I would have good enough judgement always to do the right thing. Fast forward ten years and I’d done a fair bit of growing up. I’d worked in a police force and spent a lot of time with officers – both regulars and Specials.
The post My life as a ‘career Special’ appeared first on OUPblog.
Our beloved John Martz keeps hitting these strips out of the park. Merry Christmas, everyone!
johnmartz:
From the Globe and Mail, December 24, 2011.
Eariler this week, I talked about some of the characteristics of what can make a good action scene.
On Wednesday, I shared an action scene and today I’m going to share another one from a YA novel that I think executes characteristics of an action scene really well.
These paragraphs come from a chapter titled “Pursuit” from Specials by Scott Westerfeld. The title name itself clues the reader that they are getting ready for some action.
The protagonist,Tally, is pursuing a helicopter on a hoverboard to rescue her friend Zane from danger. Tally is a “Special” so she has some seriously kick-a** skills, which had to be nothing but fun to write.
Here’s the first example of the author setting up the action scene (underlined emphasis mine):
The wind hit Tally in a roiling wave, whipping her legs out from under her and sending the hoverboard fluttering away. Her ears popped in the eddies and currents of the helicopter’s vortex, and for a terrifying second she saw the giant blades loom close to her in a great blurred wall of force, their ear-shattering beat pounding through her body.
Right away you can feel the essence of being in the air and the danger of the helicopter. The author uses strong verbs (whip, flutter, pop) that match the scene’s setting and shows it all in movement.
Here’s another paragraph in the same scene that shows the protagonist Tally in action (underlined emphasis mine):
Tally begin to fall…
She stabbed her crashed bracelets’ controls, setting them to exhaust their batteries, to pull her toward the tons of metal above as hard as they could. A sudden, crushing force seized her wrists—the combined magnetics of twenty boards shooting up and taking hold. The bracelets dragged her upward, pinning Tally against the nearest riding surface, her arms almost ripped from their sockets by the sudden jerk.
The author continues to show movement using strong verbs (stab, seize, drag, rip) to portray Tally’s reaction of trying find safety after falling from her hoverboard.
Just like Wednesday’s example, Scott Westerfeld’s books are great to study action scenes. The Pursuit chapter is definitely one to study as a great action scene with the setup and the closing.
So that wraps up my action scene week. I hope that you found it helpful to make your own action scenes better.
No, I'm not posting the same photo I did on December 31 for a second time.
This is Shadows Walking Backward. And it's going out to editors soon. It's about 16-year-old Cheyenne who meets 17-year-old Griffin when he steals the car she's in - and doesn't notice she is in the back. Now Cheyenne must escape her accidental kidnappers. There's only one problem - she's blind.
And the reason it's going out to editors is because Fire, Kiss, Electric Chair is officially accepted at Putnam. (I wrote it between edits on Fire, Kiss.)
And the third wonderful thing is that this retired FBI agent is going to be the most amazing source for the new adult series I'm working on with a coauthor. He knows everyone! Everything! Plus he even understands for fiction you have to speed things up or cut out boring details!
[Full disclosure: other, less wonderful things happened today, too, but I figure I can focus on these three.]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Karen Strong. Karen Strong said: Wrapping up action scene week on my blog with a great YA novel excerpt from SPECIALS by @scottwesterfeld http://bit.ly/9Vkg0N [...]
Another one of my favourite books! Thanks for the examples. I’m going to look more closely at the verbs I choose.
Lesson learned - use strong verbs that create a mental image! Thanks.
The Uglies series are great books to study for action scenes. The Midnighters series is also full of great scenes to study as well.
Great examples! I need to reread some of Westerfeld’s books and keep an eye open for things like this. Thanks for the post!
Another great post of examples! I’ve got this series in my classroom, but the kids won’t stop passing it around so that I get a chance to read it! Maybe in the summer