One thing that Doctor Who has taught me (and it's taught me a good many things) is how action in stories can exist. Most of what I read before getting into Doctor Who consisted of The Great Gatsby, A Wrinkle in Time, Catcher in the Rye, stuff like that. And there is some action in some of those books (except not Catcher in the Rye...nothing actually happens in Catcher in the Rye). For example, at the risk of giving spoilers, something happens with Gatsby's car (spoiler: Daisy runs over a drunk woman). And in A Wrinkle in Time...I guess there's a little action there. Not much, really. No, not really.
But Doctor Who...that's a different story. And most of it is in the form of running. If you watch Doctor Who, I'm sure you know this fact. There's an outrageous amount of running involved. (Or, as the band Chameleon Circuit puts it, "An awful lot of running...to dooooo-ooooh....") And furthermore, there is monster-fighting, but not in terms of "brute strength and ray guns saves the day". I mean, the Doctor is clever when he battles the monsters. Ever noticed that? For example, in "The Eleventh Hour", he doesn't actually physically fight Prisoner Zero. He takes pictures of it. But in a brilliant kind of way. Or you can go further, like in "School Reunion", where he uses sound, oil from the monsters themselves, and a tin dog to rise victorious. Or you can go back even further than that, to "The Sontaran Experiment", where good ol' Tom Baker gets Harry to disable the monster's energy supply while engaging it in a swordfight. Well, the monster has a sword; the Doctor has a large stick, which is a result of the Doctor being...well, the Doctor.
That large chunk of fan enthusiasm was to bring back my own point that, if action scenes need to happen, they ought to be clever and involve more than just blow-by-blow battle accounts or unnecessary shootouts. At least, that's my theory. Actually, there's nothing inherently wrong with blow-by-blow battle accounts or unnecessary shootouts, as long as they're interesting. It could be fun to watch on film. But that's my trouble; I don't have film. I'm a writer of the written word, so if it's not interesting to read, it's not good. I find it difficult to make my running scenes interesting (and there's quite a bit of running in this story - every time I plan out running in my outlines, I write, in parentheses, "Awful lot of running to do", to remind myself. I'm not sure what I'm reminding myself of, but I am reminding myself anyway.)
Wit is interesting to read. Cleverness is interesting to read. Problem-solving is interesting to read. And our protagonist Chris is a problem-solver. The type of action is always interesting because it takes place in psychological dream worlds, where everything they fight is created by the character's worries and fears. I've already written the first action scene, which involves moths that eat beautiful, impossible artifacts, and I can't tell you how it ends, but it involves a very large sunflower. And today, I am going to write another action scene, which involves humanoid creatures in a bleak wasteland, and I can't tell you how it ends, either, but it involves vinegar. Chris can do all this because he's a problem-solver. This is one of his good points and one of the reasons he's resiliant enough to go through life unscathed. His friend Keith is mentally unstable, and the smallest stress sets him off. He can't solve his own problems like Chris can solve his, which is why they're so different. So not only are my action scenes entertaining, they highlight the differences between two of the characters and explain why one of them can manage life as he does. Tim Powers told us that every scene we write should do more than one thing. Because of how the action is written, it's always doing quite a few things. That's what action should be like. It should always have a purpose. All of it should have a purpose.
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