See you next time

That’s the end of this lesson. We hope you enjoyed writing an action scene, and mixing it with a bit of cool dialogue.

Notice the environments around you. What kind of cool chase sequence could you stage? How could characters interact with the environment in cool ways

Next time you read an action sequence, slow down and look at how it’s put together. Good action is made up of lots of little details, and it’s not always about the verbs.

Where did the snippet come from?

The snippet in this lesson comes from The Map of Salt and Stars by American-Syrian author Zeyn Joukhadar. It’s a novel originally written for adults but has a big teen audience. The novel tells two parallel stories, each 800 years apart and both about Syrian girls—one a war refugee, the other an adventurer in disguise. This snippet was from the adventurer’s part of the story.

Where did the inspiration images come from?

This image is from Hue Teo, a fantastic Romanian concept artist who does a lot of illustrations of mechs.

Picture of a floating sky city with hot air balloons

This painting is from Sylvain Sarrailh, a game artist who does beautiful, chewy, colourful environments. (It’s the cover art for a boardgame called Welkin.)

Washed up aircraft carrier and weird giant machines in the background

For our first example, we wrote while looking at this haunting image by Antoine Collignon, a VFX designer from Belgium.

Crowded steampunk train station with old timey people and a robot For our second example we took inspiration from this image by Park Pyeongjun, an illustrator from Korea.

That’s it for now. See you next time!

Narrative Basics Project: Making a getaway

See you next time