Examples of Action Scenes

Students are understandably confused about how much detail they should or should not write in action scenes. In fact, the answer to this question helps determine a writer's screenwriting style. The principle to hold on to is this: you are not a novelist, so under no circumstances do you write with the detail of a fiction writer. You also are a collaborator, so it really is not your business to direct the actors or choreograph the scene in great detail. Within these restrictions, you still must write a gripping scene.

Here are some examples of action writing in contemporary screenplays.

From Shakespeare in Love by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, a sword fight. Notice how different the rhetoric is here from what a novelist might write.

...the fight has started.

Wessex slashes at Will. Will knows how to fight. He parries and thrusts. Wessex is surprised. The fight goes fast and furious around the stage, until Will thrusts accurately at Wessex's chest ... and would have killed him but for the button on his sword-point.

Wessex grapples with him, and now it becomes a parody of the Hamlet duel. Wessex's unbuttoned sword falls to the ground. Will puts his foot on it, tosses Wessex his own safe sword, picks up Wessex's sword and continues to fight until he has Wessex at his mercy. [REF]

Notice that there is not a single dependent clause in this writing; it is all simple and compound sentences.

Here's a short fight scene from The Fight Club by Jim Uhls:

Jack swings another roundhouse that slams right under Tyler's ear. The sound, soft and flat. Tyler punches Jack in the stomach. The Guys move closer, cheering the fight. Tyler and Jack move clumsily, throwing punches. They breathe heavier, their eyes red and bright. They drool saliva and blood. They each hurt badly and become dizzier from every impact. [script from Internet]

Here is an example from Smoke Signals by Sherman Alexie.

As he walks toward the game, Thomas is transporting, in an assembly line fashion, a plastic chair, a small end table, and a portable radio.

He has all three items set in a line: the radio in front, then the end table, and the chair at the rear.

Thomas picks up the last item in line, the chair, walks it to the front and sets it down.

Then he walks to the back of the line and picks up the end table, walks to the front of the line, and sets it in front of the chair.

Then he walks to the back of the line, picks up the radio, and then walks to the front of the line again and sets it down in front of the end table.

He repeats this process again and again, making sure, steady, and slightly crazy progress toward the court. [REF]

The rhetoric here is a bit more sophisticated than in our previous example but notice how Alexie breaks up the action into single-line paragraphs, an "airy" strategy that he continues through the entire screenplay.

Here is an example from Alan Ball's American Beauty.

Lester's REMOTE-CONTROLLED MODEL JEEP is zooming across the floor of the family room, expertly maneuvering corners and narrowly avoiding crashing.

Lester is sprawled on the couch in his underwear, drinking a BEER and controlling the car. His working out is beginning to produce results. The room, too, seems changed: sloppier, more lived in.

Carolyn enters through the kitchen, flushed and angry. She just stands there, staring at Lester. After a moment, he looks up at her. [REF]

This is closer yet to the rhetoric of fiction, though a novelist still would add considerably more detail than what we find here.

These examples show the range of writing within the general principle of "minimalist" rhetoric -- in fact, you can write detail, and should, but at the same time you need to make your script an easy, even a quick, read. So don't overdo it. You are not a fiction writer.

Extended Action Scenes

The Hollywood "blockbuster" Pearl Harbor, although disappointing in its sappy love and buddy stories, does a great job with its action scenes. Here is how the attack is set up in an early draft of the screenplay by Randall Wallace and is a good example of effective action writing:

EXT.  PEARL HARBOR - DAY

The harbor lies quiet. It's a sleepy Sunday morning.

Children are playing, officers are stepping from their houses
in their shorts to get the morning paper...

EXT.  MOUNTAINSIDE - OAHU - DAY

Hawaiian Boy Scouts are hiking on a side of one of the
mountains overlooking Pearl.

Suddenly booming over the mountain, barely ten feet above the
summit, comes a stream of planes.The boys are awed.  What is this?

EXT.  PEARL HARBOR - DAY

QUICK INTERCUTS - Between the approach of the Japanese
planes, and sleepy Pearl Harbor...
-- The planes, in formation, their propellers spinning, their
   engines throbbing...
-- Pearl Harbor, with the ships silent, their engines cold,
   their anchors steady on the harbor bottom.
-- The Japanese submarines heading in.
-- The American destroyers docking, instead of going out to search for them.
-- Another formation of Japanese bombers climbing high, into attack position.
-- The Japanese torpedo planes dropping down to the level of
   the ocean, their engines beginning to scream.
-- The American planes bunched on the airfields.
-- ON THE JAPANESE CARRIERS, Yamamoto and his staff huddle
   tensely, over their battle maps.

ON THE JAPANESE CARRIER DECKS, the second wave of planes is
being brought up and loaded with munitions...the Japanese
flag snaps tautly in the wind...

ON THE GOLF COURSE NEAR PEARL HARBOR, American officers are
laughing on the putting green near the club house, where the
American flag droops from the flag pole, limply at peace.

-- The Japanese planes roaring down just over the wave tops
   of Pearl Harbor itself.
-- Children playing in the early morning sun, looking up as
   they see the planes flash by.  The children look --
   they've never seen this many, flying this low...but they
   are not alarmed, only curious.

The images come faster and faster, the collision of Japan's
determination and American's innocence.

Notice how easy this is to read and the key to this is using the "QUICK INTERCUTS" slugline rather than individual sluglines for all of the spatial movement in this sequence. For long sequences of action, this is a good model to use.


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