  Action/Adventure
This week: Edited by: Legerdemain  
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The purpose of this newsletter is to suggest a few inspiration ideas to the action / adventure author.
This week's Action / Adventure Guest Editor
Legerdemain
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Special Effects
When writing action adventure, some of most important features are special effects. While you can't make your story actually smoke or light on fire, you have to do your utmost to present a vivid and authoritative scene to capture your reader's attention and imagination.
I've found it helpful to imagine my scene as though I was looking through a camera. I see the full panoramic view of the scene and show a general description of the setting. Then like a camera on a dolly, I move closer and show the reader the characters and important details they'll need to know.
Speed and tempo of your words are important. Slow words set up the action, panning from left to right with your mind's eye. Longer descriptive sentences are allowed, letting your reader set the scene in their mind. Then when moving to rising action, shorter words and sentences bring the tempo up like the music in a movie.
Stephen King uses what he calls his "mental eye". "Before beginning to write, I'll take a moment to call up an image of the place, drawing from my memory and filling my mind's eye, an eye whose vision grows sharper the more it is used."
When writing, practice using your mind's eye and showing your readers what you see. Show them a panorama when drawing them in and detail when moving to significant parts of your story. Try using your words like a film, letting your reader imagine the special effects.
Now, if only they made those 3-D glasses more attractive...
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Excerpt: The morning sun poured light through Midori’s window as she held the kimono’s soft fabric against her cheeks. The patterns of shadows and light dancing on the room's walls, the morning sounds, and the excitement she felt, filled her heart with joy.
Excerpt: As Panchito crouched upon the ledge of the rust-colored, stucco hotel, a street lamp popped on. Its stark glow outlined the cobblestones in the front part of the alley forty feet below while the building’s angled shadow sliced the rest into darkness. Cradled in his right elbow, rested his dependable movie camera. Panchito was paparazzi.
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Excerpt: This wasn’t right, this was not the way I was meant to die. Not here in this stone prison were the coldness of the walls seeps into my skin, a warm egg that almost vibrates as it’s heart beats in my hand, and with the giant lizard sniffing it’s cave frantically looking for it’s small young one.
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Excerpt: She was hungry and knew it was going to take a huge act of will not to succumb to the sweet temptation of all those cakes. A glance at the window, stacked high with treats, reinforced this opinion. There were her favourites: éclairs, with their glossy chocolate icing, plump with custard or pastry cream. Tiny pots of crème brulee just waiting for their sugary caramel crusts to be shattered with a teaspoon. Lemon pies with their clouds of meringue topping the tangy, tart custard.
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#1660453 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: It was resting in the shade of a nearby tree, curled against the trunk, its eyes shut—sleeping, presumably. It was a big dog—easily four feet in length—and ugly. Mange ravaged its soot black fur, revealing splotches of scabbed skin. A pronounced rib cage swelled against the ground in sync with its breathing, and scraggly bone-and-skin paws twitched at the air as if in pursuit.
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#1661648 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: He got a distress call at his desk around 1:13am. A woman in her late twenties had been hysterical, claiming someone was in her house and stalking her. She had just barely been able to rasp out her address before her voice jerked and then the line suddenly died.
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#1660982 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Alien worlds are more or less the same -- lots of similarities. We all eat and drink. Females need males. Males need . . . well, you get the picture.
Except when it comes to restrooms. There, things turn gray as five-day old soup scum.
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#1188043 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Norman Wood woke and rubbed his arms against the chill that had seeped into the trailer as he slept. He wondered what hour it was and listened for familiar sounds of the night outside. Almost nothing seemed to be stirring in the world outside. A truck labored down the dark highway a few miles away, but that was only sound he heard.
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#1643254 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: She called me worse / when I came home with stories / of the magician and a pocketful / of beans. My mother retched /
and wailed like a banshee, brandishing / a dull, bent carving knife / like a sea-mad sailor foaming / rabid at the corners of her mouth—
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#1656230 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: I had gone to see him at the nursing home and he no longer knew who dad and I were; or the rest of the family for that matter. Granddad grabbed me by the arm as the orderlies pushed us out and, with great fear and confusion, spoke his last words to me. "The devil is in the details boy, the devil is in the details."
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Since I'm a guest editor in the Action / Adventure newsletter, I don't have feedback to share, but I will leave you with a question.
How do you use your "mind's eye"? |
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Action/Adventure: April 07, 2010 Issue [#3661]
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