Action is vital in fiction. But the action must fit the story. If you are writing a gentle love story you will probably not include car chases and IEDs. However you might include a hero who obsesses over a “potential” or “lost” love to the point of stalking. “Really, I was just picking up my dry-cleaning and can I help it if you work next door?”
Details are also a vital part of bringing a fictional world and its inhabitants to life--however a wise writer chooses dynamic details, meaning those details that reveal something about the inner and outer life of a particular character. If you’ve ever seen the funny and sweet film WONDER BOYS (based on the delightful second novel by award-winning author Michael Chabon), you will remember the scene in which the earnest and sexy student Hannah Green (played by Katie Holmes) reminds her favorite professor (middle-aged Michael Douglas playing a former “wonder boy–author Grady Tripp–desperate to finish and at the same time avoid finishing his second novel) that writers must pick and choose their details–this in reference to the static, pages-long lineage of a racehorse he has included in his immense unfinished second tome.
So, today, TGIF, here’s to including fitting action and dynamic details in your latest novel! Happy writing~Sarah
Enjoyed this! Love the idea that maybe explosions belong in their own genres
🙂 Agree~~and there are so many different types of explosions, including the shaken-soda-kind.