THE SLIDE I LOVE

Jule Selbo

When the mystery starts to unravel and the  ‘getting to the reasons, the persons, the end’ of the story is within reach this image comes to mind. I am perched on top of the playground slide and now I must push off, wind through the final curves and reach the bottom (hopefully landing on my feet and not awkwardly on my rump in the dirt). It’s an exhilarating  and daunting feeling.

Well, at least for me.

I stop using excuses to avoid my computer – like ‘I have to shop and cook for my family’ or ‘I gotta get a haircut’ or ‘gotta watch the end of this tv show’ or ‘I gotta do research for my brother regarding his trip to the Galapagos’ or ‘I must dust or sweep’ or ‘must search out bread that does go bad, bread that will mold, so I know I’m not eating bad preservatives and other additives’….

When I’ve climbed up the slide and am at the top and the only way down is in front of me, I wake up with a new excitement – I know it’s gonna be tough-going, but at least I know there’s a single exit to where I am going.

For my Dee Rommel thriller series, it usually means a big action sequence. I am wrapping up 6 DAYS (fifth in the series).

Sometimes I wish I was writing a screenplay.  During my years in Hollywood, I was told over and over that the ‘big action sequences’ could be/should be written like this: Crazy action push and pull in (pick location) that includes cars, trucks, planes and ends inside (location) finally with a face to face confrontation…

Of course, I would write it a bit more eloquently and more exciting-ly for the characters of the story – but the specific delineating kicks and slaps and head-on collisions and blood spurting etc. that prose writers need to describe – I didn’t have to write them because the director/producer wouldn’t make fight scene decisions until the exact location was chosen. Then the fight coordinator would design the fight/action sequence in that location and it would be his/hers (writer be damned).

I am being too general here, of course screenwriters suggest culverts and dams breaking and rushing waters or the bad guy getting skewered on a hook in a butcher’s freezer, but again – the precise movements – the kicks and slaps and turns and ducking and blood gushes etc. are not appreciated – or needed.

We novelists don’t have fight coordinators to design our action scenes.  But IMO, we should still keep brevity in mind: It is rarely important if the protagonist or antagonists uses their right hand or left leg or spins to the right or left or sucker punches two inches below the solar plexus or twists a specific elbow (you get it). We can get lost getting TOO specific. Pacing is important. Too many tiny details slow stories and trajectory down. Let the reader fill in a lot of the blanks, they have “a camera going in their heads”. IMO, keep the emotions going, keep the stakes high, know who has the upper hand at what point – and keep it potent, and relatively short.  IMO, action scenes with too many physical turns or trips that go on and on are usually SKIMMED by the reader and if you are (as in IMO, a writer should) using the climax as a final reveal of plot or motivation – don’t get bogged in specifics of body movements in a fight.

I am ready to push off the top the playground slide. It’s the climax, the story is moving towards a huge confrontation. So, I am writing this to remind myself to get to the bottom  – to enjoy the curves of the slide, but to pass through them with some alacrity and continue on at a good pace – and, hopefully,  land on my feet.