Balance - She Be A Tricky Mistress

I’m about to start the final action sequence in my book. The showdown, the climax, the shoot out to end all shoot outs. Well okay, maybe not. I’m still partial to the whole High Noon showdown, but I’m hoping it’ll be entertaining nonetheless.

The problem I have with action sequences is trying to take what I’m seeing in my head, which generally looks great, and then translating it onto the page and making it sound like much more than a bunch of swinging body parts and whizzing bullets. Sometimes it’s hard to find the balance between action and emotion, but I still think you need both in the scene, otherwise it starts to read like a bad Rambo movie. Not that there was ever a good Rambo movie (and could someone please give Sly Stallone a call and beg him not to continue with the franchise as I hear he’s planning. There are some things that simply need to die a complete death and be left in the dust. I’d call him myself, but there’s that nasty restraining order that’s still in place what with the incident following the last Rocky debacle and all).

So now in my head I’m trying to determine how to insert emotion and some introspection into the action, without slowing the scene down or taking away from the pacing. I need to heighten tension, but I think the reader needs to be brought into the emotion of the scene in order to do that properly. Yet at the same, our hero (that’d be Connor, the cutie down below) doesn’t exactly have time to sit there and have a tête-à-tête with his emotions. He’s got a bad guy to take down, a heroine in trouble, and a town to save. Not exactly the time to stretch out on the shrink’s chaise lounge and think about how all of this will affect him should things not turn out to his liking.

I’m wondering if the easiest way to do this would simply be to write out the action, then go back and intersperse the emotion into it. I’m not sure. But hopefully by tomorrow morning I’ll have it figured out, because I’m too close to the end to start screwing it up now!