Writing A Great Action Scene and Why Turn-based Role-playing Games Help You Do It

Let’s start this experience in the middle of the action, and work our way back:

“The cramped elevator slowly creaks in protest as you begin to move to the unavoidable conclusion, waiting for you upstairs. There are somewhere around two dozen people in the complex, and they just found out you’re coming up. There’s an odd moment of serene acceptance washing over you about the whole deal ahead, as you can only hear three rhythms. There’s the small melodic dings announcing floors going by, the twangs and tension plucks of the cables pulling you while protesting your chosen direction. The third sound surprises you, haven’t really listened to your own heartbeat in a while, right? Just then, the doors open, and…”

For the would-be action hero of the alt-noir action scene we’ve just set up, things are about to get dicey.

The upcoming couple of seconds are a matter of life or death, and, for our narrative, ideally, the result of hours, even days of planning, tough decisions, and consequences that have been looming over our protagonist(s) this whole time.

Now, when we’re setting up our big heart-pumping pant-seat-grabbing eye-of-the-storm action set-piece, things might get chaotic, right? Our hero or band of likable misfits might get into a scuffle that at first seems impossibly stacked against them, fireworks might fly off in the wrong direction or at the precisely wrong moment, guns always seem to misfire when you’ve lined up the perfect shot, and don’t the best blockbusters always seem to have a grazing shot or two?

Well, no matter if we’re writing an action scene for a movie, a video game, or even a novel, I’ll emphatically agree with most if not all of the above tropes. Especially those that highlight a good eyes-wide-open moment of perception; that eye-of-the-storm frozen instant in time, where our lead is present, alive, tense, and in the moment. And we, the creator of this whole shebang, control every moment.

Now, about that middle of the action…

“…they were expecting someone, but it’s clearly not you!

You move almost without thinking, it’s your only chance to make it out of this coffin on a shoestring.

1…

Darting forward, you slam shoulder-first into a wide worktable, tipping it over to find momentary cover. Before you can catch your breath, your mind registers about five people.

2…

Sun’s out, guns out! You line up and *pop-pop*! One down, but four alert and incoming.

3…

Maybe you can still surprise them with something, especially the one rushing you with a cleaver -man these triad gangsters are kind of cliché, huh-, so you grab the nailer from the table next to you and prepare for incoming.

4…

He’s on you, and you’re out of breath, with nowhere to run. Here goes nothing! He swings, and your only chance is a good reaction. You feel the hot and warm wave of pain radiating from your forearm as the cleaver catches your left side, and is met with a gush of blood. But you’ve moved out of his way just enough for that reaction to count.

5…

Using his shoulder to prop your hand up, you quickly line up the nailer and squeeze. A nine-inch -heh- deathwish is propelled into his temple.

6…

He goes down, with the remaining three people audibly wincing in reaction to your display. Breathe in. Breathe out. Focus. You can do this all day…”

What a round of combat, right? That’s where I wanted to get to. If we take it moment-to-moment, it looks really similar to a round of a turn-based game, right?

Compare a well-shot breach and entry scene in movies like American Sniper or SWAT with a tense and intense round of X-COM(2012) and you’ll see a lot of similar moments and behavior from the characters involved.

I like to use the converse of that idea, and apply a lot of action movie logic and pacing when I’m writing scenes and descriptions for the tabletop games that I run.

Let’s break down that logic and see how you can use turn-based games to help write a live scene.

First, let’s get the elephant in the room out of the china shop. Yes, turn-based means we go one after another, but I’ll pull a nice page out of the biggest tabletop RPG here, Dungeons and Dragons, and we’ll keep in mind that everything IS happening at the same time, relatively speaking.

A player’s turn in D&D takes 6 seconds, but when counting it out, everyone is sharing the same 6 seconds at a time. The difference is reaction speed!

Using that to our advantage, we can give our “good guys” the chance to react first, and tip the odds in their favor, since they are usually coming up against way more enemies, which are going to have combat turns too, right?

That’s called initiative, and it’s usually decided randomly, but hey, we’re in full control here, right?

Next, we’ve got to decide how we can split these 6 seconds at a time, so we have to know what everyone is doing while the clock is ticking, and we have to keep everything tense.

Let’s pull from our bag of nerdy tricks again, with two more ideas.

First of all, and I can’t stress this enough, everyone wants to win. Yes, even the enemies. Especially the enemies!

Aren’t you tired of seeing the people who went to henchman high draw a bullet contour around our heroes, never hit a thing, and fall to the ground when smelling the aroma of incoming danger?

That’s why we’ll always make sure that moment-to-moment, everyone involved is trying to do their best, even though they may not always succeed. The key element here is trying since even though there’s always a small element of randomness involved, their intent is clear.

All right, so we’ve narrowed down when people spring into action, and how determined they are, at least by pen-and-paper mental notes. Now that we know what they want to do, let’s apply the final element of game pacing and take a look at what they *can* do.

Usually, in tabletop games, your turn is split up into a couple of actions. Let’s draw again from D&D: movement, action, bonus action, free action, etc.

So, we’ve got 6 seconds to interact with the scene until the timer stops and everything freezes in place.

Let’s canvas our turn:

1. Perceive everything we can as fast as we can.

2. Find what we think is the best place to be, and move there as fast as we can.

3. Identify the nearest threat, and engage. -the here goes nothing moment-

4. Grab and prepare to use anything around you, if it helps.

5. React to incoming threats in any way you can.

6. Wind down for a fraction of a second, and realign. Prepare for your next turn.

Easy stuff, right? Now, if this were a tabletop game, sure, the chaos factor is multiplied, cause everyone involved is clamoring to get in on the action. That’s maybe three to five players, perhaps even more, and a veritable small private army waiting for them on the other side of the field. Luckily, we can be as in control as we want, whether we’re writing for a movie, show, novel, video game. Time moves exactly when we want it to move, but keep in mind, the best encounters have a degree of randomness, and the mess is par for the course.

Who said video games can’t teach you things? Let’s continue our Freakazoid mindset-powered shared delusion, and get to the point that ties it all together.

“…but you’re going to run out of ammo if you’re not smart about this, and they seem to be hunkering down.

Well, the nail-gun is a sufficient backup for now, but a quick scan of your surroundings might help you out more.

First, though, gotta move again, and if the whirring volleys of bullets are a good hint to go by, those guys have you pinned down.

In a risky display of half-baked coolness, you dive sideways and shoot out the neon no lights over their heads. There goes your clip, but you spot a fire extinguisher next to one of them.

Time to improvise. You shout, turning their gaze towards you, and let fly your last nail. Right into the top of the fire extinguisher…BOOM!”

Let’s rewind that. For a good amount of tension, the protagonist(s) can never have everything they need, but the environment can. Think about it, how many great set-pieces involve roughly half of the objects used as improvised tools and weapons?

I’ll just point to Jackie Chan’s whole career while we’re at it. John Wick, Equilibrium, and the Bourne movies also come to mind. In a nutshell, we can treat the environment as an extension of your character’s inventory, or a nice momentary resourceful surprise they didn’t know about.

Time for a challenge to tie everything together.

Now, about that boss fight…