Skywake Invasion - Jamie Russell

SkyWake Invasion was a book I was really looking forward to and I wasn't disappointed!  It's fast-paced and full of action as well as twists and turns to keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last word!  The idea of a female gamer is such a positive role in my view and very much reminds readers that people shouldn't be judged on their gender.  Casey is strong, brave, determined and a real role-model for readers; yet her fear for her brother (borne out of her family history) makes her very real.  

This is a perfect book for fans of Dan Smith and also for those who enjoyed Jennifer Bell's Wonderscape.  The book will have wide-reaching appeal and I fully believe will encourage more reluctant readers to pick-up the book as well.

I'm now looking forward to seeing how level two of the game plays out!  

I'm privileged to be hosting Jamie on my blog today so read on to find out about how screenwriting helped him to write action scenes:

What I Learned About Writing Action From Being A Screenwriter – Blog Post
By Jamie Russell

I’ve had an eclectic career as a writer. I’ve been a critic, an entertainment journalist, a speechwriter, and an academic. Along the way, I spent several years getting paid to write screenplays. Most of these thrillers and action movies didn’t get made – I once saw a statistic that reckoned only 1 out of every 50,000 scripts actually go into production – but I managed to get three shorts and a feature over the line.

Given those odds, it felt like winning the lottery.

Learning my craft in the film industry proved invaluable while writing my first novel SKYWAKE: INVASION. It’s an action-packed story about a group of gamers fighting off an alien invasion. Writing it I found myself using a lot of the tricks I’d discovered in writing action screenplays.

 

Here are four takeaways:

1. MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT

Screenplays are lean, mean machines. The average middle grade book is 55,000 words, the average 100 minute script is about 20,000 words. Every word is precious. You can’t afford to waste any of them. That’s why the golden rule of screenwriting is: use as few words as possible (I once saw a writer edit her title page so that ‘Screenplay by’ was distilled to just ‘by’. ‘Start as you mean to go on,’ she said).

 

2. IMAGINE YOU’RE BEING CHASED BY THE T-REX FROM JURASSIC PARK

I have a theory that nobody, least of all producers, actually enjoys reading screenplays. So, keeping the reader’s attention is one of the biggest battle screenwriters face. The best solution is to move, move, move! Run like the T-Rex is bearing down on you.

It’s a useful lesson for novelists too. When you’re writing action sequences, make sure things go fast. Don’t dawdle. Don’t pause for a lengthy bout of description or a flashback to the story of how your hero’s pet hamster died when he was 9 years old.

The T-Rex is right behind you! 

Choose verbs with impact (your heroine doesn’t ‘run’, she ‘sprints’, ‘races’, ‘dashes’ ‘darts’) and trim all the fat. A short sentence is impactful.

 

3. WHITE SPACE IS YOUR FRIEND

Every page in a screenplay costs real money. If your movie is budget is £1 million and the screenplay is 100 pages, that’s £10,000 per page!. But that doesn’t mean you need to cram every page with words.

Quite the opposite.

No reader likes being confronted with a huge slab of text. If you hit the return key, you can use white space to draw the reader’s eye along. Help them feel the rhythm of the action in the way you lay out the prose.

Compare, for example, this:

‘Stop…’ Xander pleaded weakly as Pete fled. But Pete didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. He had only one thought in his head. Hide. 

With this:

‘Stop…’ Xander pleaded weakly as Pete fled.
But Pete didn’t stop.
He couldn’t stop.
He had only one thought in his head.
Hide.

 Breaking up the lines gives the moment an internal rhythm and it makes the final decision all the more impactful. This will also keep the action moving. Which will keep the imaginary T-Rex from eating you.

 Result!

4. CHARACTER MAKES ACTION EXPLODE, NOT DYNAMITE

Imagine a scene where a boy is running down a street, pursued by a girl. They’re dodging between cars and pushing past pedestrians as they chase one another. Wow! Lots of action. But do we care if he catches her, or if she gets away?

The scene may be frantic and frenetic, but unless you’re invested in those characters, it has no weight. Now imagine that the girl’s brother has been injected with a slow-acting poison and the boy she’s chasing is the only person with the cure…

Now we care! Now every step she takes is fraught with danger – not just of getting knocked over by a car, but letting her brother die.

 

So these are the lessons I learned. I hope they’re helpful to you as you write action. And if the T-Rex does catch you, just remember: don’t hide in the toilet!

SkyWake Invasion is out today!