#7 – Sax & Violins
File under: When I say “Action!” I mean “Story!”

Fluidly, meaningfully choreographed to:
Bouncing Souls – “Hopeless Romantic”
Rolling Stones – “Street Fighting Man”
The Pogues – The Essential Pogues [album]
Rancid – Life Won’t Wait [album]
Elvis Presley – “A Little Less Conversation (A Little More Action)”

There are no little deaths.

I saw a man in a very nice suit punch a junkie in the face at Rockefeller Center last December.  They were arguing over quarters and crackheads, and it really didn't seem worth getting into, for a man in a three-piece.  But a good look showed his formal suit hung from his shoulders like sheepskin.

The crowd of tourists dripping into the station at 3 p.m. didn't want to get close, expecting both parties to reveal their fabled NYC-issue handguns, so a cluster began to form at the south end of the platform.  I had to get out to Woodside and didn't need train delays, so I went upstairs to look for a cop.

For once, Rock Center wasn't blue.  Nothing to do but watch the show.  I returned to the platform, and a train followed me.  Liberated by the subway doors about to separate them, the men began to shout in harder terms.  Watching, I realized something: one of these men would sucker-punch the other before they parted.  My money was on the far-more erratic junkie, but it was the suit who flicked his fist into the other man's face.

Violence – real violence – does strange things to your brain, even as an observer.  Different neurons fire when you're involved than when it's in front of you, but in both sets, a whole new system of nerves and instincts powers on.  That’s why the Coliseum was so popular in Rome. Real violence triggering adrenaline with little risk to the audience makes an addictive sum.

One thing you learn from a good writer – be it Chandler or Shakespeare – is that no one’s death is trifling, not even a minor character whose sole purpose is to expire.  For the deceased, it is literally the end of the world. For the survivors, it’s close to it.

On paper (or screen), action is purest storytelling.  The unncessary shame of action stories is that, too often, we’re treated to spectacle without story; it’s all smoke and no fire.  Action without a plot is just pornography – engaging to watch, maybe, but it’ll only stir the old mammalian brain, not the primate one.  

It’s fairly understandable why this happens in comics.  Iron Man has repulsor rays and they need to be used, which requires a justification, which — come on — twice an issue for twelve issues a year is a bit of a plotting challenge.  So you end up getting all these meatheaded battles begun without justification by people on the same side who seem to lose all common sense.

Shoving someone isn't much for a comic book, but in reality, it's an incitement, a challenge.  You're forcing someone to either accept your power to the degree that you can physically move them around and hurt them without repercussion, or they’re challenged to retaliate in a stronger show that establishes their supremacy.  Every shove, every slap...is a cascade of pebbles at the top of a very shaky mountain.

Real action is a conflict.  Two opposing elements are now in play, and the wild uncertainty moves us.  It’s just not a story most recognize because it’s told entirely through physical developments.  Dialogue, which is where most of the exposition happens, is the easiest way to introduce conflict: “Oh poot! Captain Galaxy’s arch-foe is actually his long-lost daughter!” Etc.

I like lining up the elements before the fireworks.  I stop and think about “Ok, here are my real threats, my nuisances who nonetheless could trip him up, my complimentary threats…” I like knowing I’ve chosen a variety of osbtacles that are going to come up.  Action-driven tales are only brainless popcorn when the action doesn’t serve to advance the story.  That’s no fun.  Steven Seagal beats on a foe for awhile, then the foe gets his licks in, then Seagal finishes him off.

Actually, that’s not true.  In Seagal movies he wades through a dozen foes, looking a little too happy to break their ulnae.  But any other action hero, less sadistic, while spend a two-minute sequence beating on a foe to get the piece of information he wants, and it’s little more than a diversion, a study in physics. 

In those fights, the conflict doesn’t ride on the foregone conclusion of Fatboy breaking teeth with a cueball, it just awaits its inevitable outcome.  There was never any reason given to us to suspect Seagal faced a legitimate obstacle to his goals except being outnumbered, but by then, we’ve seen him face multiple foes enough to yawn.

Also, Seagal’s a washed-up, uncharismatic prick, but we won’t blame the script for that.

But action is not all fist fights and chase scenes. It’s anything, really, that changes the operating world of the story from within, including a lot of dialogue — consider a shouted warning that saves a life, the words don’t really matter, it was an action taken to prevent the story from going one way or t’other.  You might describe action simply enough as “The things that people do,” and then put a value on those things as they serve the story. 

I was lucky enough to take a writing class taught by Denny O’Neill one winter (and luckier still that most of the dozen people in that tiny community college were there as a lark, leaving ample brain-picking opportunity).  Among his fine and useful lessons about storytelling (would that all writing classes contained them!), he said “Sex stops a story dead.”  

While there are always exceptions, and a pretty fair number in this case, it is still true that most sex scenes are about union and release, not conflict and tension.  They may be useful character scenes, and they may even, with careful thought and planning, change the speed or direction of the story, which is what action is supposed to do, but they seldom aim for this, and hit it even less. 

What really hurt, I think, about the second and third Matrix flicks was that few of the the fight scenes really resolved anything.  They might have recovered an ally or maimed a hero, but what did that really change that Neo’s powers couldn’t remedy?  I can even believe this was intentional, since the point of the franchise was the inability of conflict to resolve differences.  It’s only when the war, which profits neither side, is abandoned and machines and humans work together, does either side get what it wants (though how long that will last without the external threat of Smith to both is left in question).  Action within the Matrix at best serves to distract Neo while the conflict speeds away from his omnipotent touch.  When you have Neo and the Conflict in the same room, Conflict gets its ass whooped, since Neo can do anything he wants, given time enough to decode it.

(Regardless, that simultaneous car chase/kung-fu fight/shoot-out on the highway was exciting spectacle, and I don’t care what you say against it. If we must have meaningless battle, let it be lofty.)

That’s what you do to your reader every time you reduce action to unstaked beats, be it a fight or an attempt to recover a dropped nickel, or a leap over the Grand Canyon.  If you’re going to stomp the brakes of the story just to tickle the id, do me a favor and pick the sex scene over a neutered fight scene.  It’ll feel like an interlude, and give everybody warm thoughts.

At least the fight scenes are visual spectacle: color if not shape.  The non-action parts in action-driven stories need their own charm or else we resent Team Jungbluud for dragging us on their quest to rescue Stypple & X-Hatch from The Interlocutor.  In an action-driven story (aren’t they all?) the spaces between count as much as the big, fiery bits.  Rest and recovery is important, because that’s the gold standard that ensures your action pieces have meaning.  You’re buying the audience’s attention, so make sure your money’s good.

 
If you want to see the right way to do action as plot, look at Pixar Studios.  They know their action is a tale in itself.  A beautiful example is the door-chase escapade in Monsters, Inc.  The chameleon Boggs kidnaps human toddler Boo from Sulley, who is about to send her home.  By the time it concludes, the balance of power has reversed a dozen times, with both parties forced to evolve their tactics.  The immediate goal of seeing Boo to safety has been postponed by a new set of obstacles, which gives Boggs time to further his ends, which in turn amplifies the threat of Boo’s fate from quarantine to torture, and reveals new information about the energy crisis, and ultimately, fulfills our happy ending…all because Sulley ends up on the wrong side of a door. 

 
Myself, as much as I’ve learned I like to do it, I usually have the problem of not enough action, which turns all that story I’m trying to lay down into one long, monotonous snooze of verbal repartee.  That might work on stage and for Oscar Wilde, but I’m not there, and I’m not as good as he is. For me, it’s important to remember to put action in there, and to make it work (my superhero fights tend to be over ten seconds because really…why wouldn’t Superman fight all his enemies at mach 3?).  I’ve been trying to correct it these last couple years, and studying writers who are good at it. 

 
There are a lot of them. Grant Morrison comes up with impossible traps for his protagonists, then clever ways of springing them.  Alan Moore either utilizes his characters’ talents fully enough to make them terrifying juggernauts, or takes commonplace, everyday objects and concepts, then turns them into obscene weapons.  Mark Waid knows how to make your heart pound in a fight or a chase.  Beau Smith is at his best in a vicious brawl that consumes most of an issue (or an entire arc).  But for my money, the absolute top action writer in comics is Andy Diggle.

 
Diggle writes the hands-down best action in comics because his action sequences are actually a dramatic execution of a plot question (usually two or three).  "Will they get clear of the bomb?" and “Will they kill Max before he gets away?” combine in a Diggle script into an insane (yet clear!) whirlwind answered almost entirely in visual developments the time the smoke clears, you find you've had 17 pages of splodey, and they've all furthered the story.

Elder’s on my case about Heist.  He wants me to scale down the opening crime because it makes our antihero TOO good, shaming the entire superteam whose base he’ll get trapped on later during the Ultimate Score.  I think he’s right.  He wants to take the security at the event down from earth’s mightiest superteam to some cops. I think he’s half-right.  We need to show our lad, who’s addicted to thrills and bored with life, taking risks in search of more adrenaline, is already well beyond any threat of capture by mere humans. 

 
Andres Ponce says we’re both crazy.  But then, he’d think so, because he’s the one who has to realize all of this madness:

 
We compromise with a single celebrity guest cape. But you know, page space is limited, especially in action sequences.  Our thief is going to have to best an escalating sequence that first shows how his powers circumvent normal security, then increasingly powerful threats, until he shows up our blustery cape. He’s going to have to demonstrate his powers’ full range and limitations.  He’s going to have to introduce us to the cockiness of his character, justified by the panache with which he does his job.  And of course, his schtick is he’s so good a thief the heroes have no idea he even exists, so this must all be done invisibly.

 
It’s going to be tough, and it’s going to look easy, and if we do it right, it’s going to be awesome.  Because when action and plot and character and theme convene, you’ve got a story that tastes as good as it looks.

P.S.  My friend and threatened-collaborator Nick Acs’ fun anime/mecha production, PANDA GIRLS.  He’s going straight for the cinematic brass ring with this one, including an innovative budgeting plan called FrameBuyFrame that makes investors of anyone who enjoys the story (which is a pretty neat souvenir). As he puts it:

Movies are typically made from the money of studios and large
investors. They decide which movie gets made, and which ones never see
the light of day. We thought it would be great to let the movie lover
DECIDE. The studios put in millions; you only put in $15(US) to own a
frame. They have no idea if they’ll get their money’s worth, but you’ll
get your frame sent to you by mail!