If you’re searching for advice and guidance on how to write a good action screenplay, check out the 10 tips below!
1. Make the story thrilling and suspenseful.
How It Helps
An action story is all about keeping the audience on the edge of their seats, wondering if the action scenes will play out in the protagonist’s or the antagonist’s favor. But for the action scenes to make sense, the story itself has to be exciting and engaging, too. This means action scenes are best placed in stories with high intensity plots, like crime heists or espionage films such as the James Bond and The Fast and the Furious series.
How to Include It
Decide what kind of story you are trying to write. There needs to be moments of high suspense and anticipation for you to include action scenes rather than slow discovery moments. If you’re writing primarily a romance story, then an action screenplay might not be the best choice of format.
If you really want to write an action screenplay and a romance, make the conflict of the story that the main couple are escaping from danger together; this both gives them a reason to be in close contact and fall in love while also creating places for plausible action scenes.
2. Craft a protagonist for the audience to believe in.
How It Helps
Because a screenplay is seen rather than imagined, your audience needs to be connected to the protagonist from the start. If not, then they won’t care about what happens to the protagonist when they are involved in those ‘high octane’ action scenes. A good action film will spend the first quarter of the story showing the audience why this particular conflict matters to the protagonist and why the audience should care about whether the protagonist succeeds or not.
How to Include It
Even if you decide to start your screenplay with an action scene, make it less than five minutes long and use it to introduce your protagonist and their essential problem. Give the protagonist a personal reason to be in these high-stakes action scenes, as well as the background to get out of them plausibly. You wouldn’t expect an inexperienced driver to be able to outdrive a trained racecar driver, and neither will the audience.
3. Craft an equally believable antagonist.
How It Helps
Good action scenes come from when the protagonist and antagonist are equally matched, and the audience doesn’t know who will win in a physical fight (or chase scene). While the screenplay doesn’t often develop the antagonist’s story early on in the same way as the protagonist’s, it will, at some point, reveal why the antagonist and protagonist are at odds. This reveal is often at the end of an action scene or leading up to the big climatic action scene towards the end of the screenplay.
How to Include It
Spend some time developing the backstory of your main antagonist and their personal connection to the protagonist or main conflict. Not only will this make the action scenes between the protagonist and antagonist believable but will help you develop the right kind of action scenes, as well. If your antagonist is more of a car person or an experienced driver, there may be more chase scenes than if your antagonist is a bank robber or serial killer.
4. Balance the amount of action to story.
How It Helps
An action screenplay with very little action is more like a crime or espionage thriller. On the other hand, an action screenplay with too many action scenes will bore and frustrate the audience because they won’t be invested in the characters acting them out. Good action screenplays have a balance, usually one action scene every 15 to 20 minutes or so, which keeps the audience engaged but doesn’t forget to develop the plot.
How to Include It
Write out the plot in story form, including places where high intensity action scenes would take place. As you review your plot, identify which areas are devoted to story and which areas are devoted to action.
If there are too many action scenes, then you might consider removing them to make room for more story development. The opposite is also true: ensure there is an action scene every 15 pages of script of script or so to keep the audience engaged.
5. Keep up the stakes in the action scenes.
How It Helps
The chase or fight scenes in an action screenplay are most effective when the protagonist is at risk. In the James Bond movies, for example, the action scenes always occur after Bond has been discovered by the person or group he’s shadowing and is then fighting his way to safety.
This is because the audience’s investment in the action scene is directly related to their investment in the protagonist’s fate. Putting the character at risk in the action scene keeps the scene relevant and the audience engaged throughout.
How to Include It
Look at where you have your action scenes placed in the story. Choose those moments after the protagonist has done or discovered something important to the plot. It is especially important that the climax of the story be an action scene, as well, as that is usually the moment of highest emotion for the audience and would be best played out in action rather than a slow-burning revelation.
6. Use action scenes to reveal surprises or create cliffhangers.
How It Helps
Action scenes can also be effective in leaving the audience in suspense of the protagonist or the fate of the story. They can also be used as a cathartic release for the audience, where you’ve built up all this narrative tension and release it through a big twist revealed at the end of a hard-hitting action sequence. Using an action scene in this way allows the audience to not only ‘ooh and ah’ over the exciting near misses and visual conflict of the scene but take in new information without it feeling forced or unnatural.
How to Include It
If you want to have a surprise twist, like in a murder mystery story or crime thriller, include a chase scene where the protagonist is running down the killer, only for them to discover it’s not who they thought it was at the end. This can also work for a heist film, where, after a hard, high action escape from the law, one of the heist members is revealed to be working against the team the whole time.
The action scene will have left the audience in anticipation of a resolved ending and the twist will be that much more surprising.
7. Keep action scenes short and fast-paced.
How It Helps
Action scenes aren’t generally longer than five minutes of screentime. Audiences can’t hold a high level of anticipation for much longer than that before getting bored with the scene. Action scenes are also often fast-paced to keep the audience in a ‘heart-pounding’ level of suspense, wondering what’s going to happen next.
Think about it like this: a chase scene wouldn’t be a true ‘chase’ if it took 20 minutes and everybody was going the speed limit. The same goes for a fight scene: if the fighters were slow enough in their attacks that the other side knew how to defend, it wouldn’t be much of a fight and would likely never end.
Action scenes need to be hard, fast, and punchy so that the audience is hit with the same feelings of fear and anticipation that the characters are living the scene.
How to Include It
Since it’s generally accepted that one page in a screenplay equals one minute of screentime, keep your action scenes limited to 7 pages or less. This will allow you the space to include relevant dialogue but also keep the scene active and with a high intensity.
8. When writing the script, use the present tense and lots of descriptive detail.
How It Helps
When reading an action screenplay, the director needs to be able to imagine how the scene looks so they know what camera angles and speeds to use. Using the present tense and descriptive details keep the action in-the-moment for the director and helps them when drawing up their storyboards (the shot-by-shot plan of each scene) during the pre-production process.
How to Include It
Avoid boring being verbs like ‘is’ or ‘are.’ You want to use those vivid action verbs that describe how your characters move and react.
For example, instead of writing “The protagonist is running away as the helicopter is falling to the ground,” describe the scene as “Protagonist sprints away as the helicopter plummets to the ground close behind the protagonist.”
The first one tells the director what is supposed to happen. The second example shows them the intensity with which it should happen to keep the audience engaged with the story.
9. Don’t go overboard with the description.
How It Helps
The pages of a screenplay are often filled with lots of white space in that there isn’t a lot written out so that the directors and actors can make their own decisions about how the story should look on screen. So, while action scenes should be described with lots of active verbs and some description, they are often limited to short, pointed sentences aimed at conveying only what needs to happen to keep the story moving.
How to Include It
Don’t put paragraphs of description in your action scenes. Treat action sequences the same as you would scenes with lots of dialogue: every new development should be on its own line on the page.
For example:
“Protagonist sprints away as the helicopter plummets to the ground close behind the protagonist.
Protagonist trips and stumbles to the ground, then turns and looks at the helicopter blades spinning two feet from his face.
From inside the helicopter, the antagonist calls out. Protagonist rushes to the side of the helicopter as oil from under the helicopter drips dangerously close to a small flame.”
In the example above, each change in tempo or focus is on its own line of the page, representing a change for the audience. There is still space for the director to choose camera shots and angles, but they also know what story elements need to be present for the scene (and later parts of the story) to work.
10. Remember your slug lines but forget camera shots.
How It Helps
Slug lines are those directions which identify the location of the scene, the time of day, and whether it is an internal or external scene. These are necessary for a director because knowing where and when the scene takes place will help them identify fitting shooting locations and craft the look of the scene on the screen.
Camera shots, however, are entirely the director’s area of input because it’s their vision that will bring the story to the screen. They will often have multiple cameras recording the same scene and will decide in the editing room which looks right for the overall feel of the film or TV show, rather than just go with what you’ve dictated in the screenplay.
How to Include It
At the start of the scene, be sure to include (EXT) for ‘external’ or (INT) for ‘internal,’ then state the location (i.e. ‘Clifftop’) and the general time of day (i.e. ‘morning’). You should also do this if you shift between inside and outside within the action scene.
Try not to get too specific because the director may make changes to the script for clarity and consistency with what else has been filmed. They may also be limited by what is available to them in terms of location and budget.
You can make some suggestions about camera shots (such as “Protagonist runs towards the camera”) but keep them very limited and only when you think a particular shot adds to the overall feel the scene.