Thieves' Gambit, Ep. 8: Action Scenes
Action scenes in a thriller novel need to be fast-paced, but fast-paced means more than lots of really quick actions in a row. Erin and Anne-Marie break down three different kinds of action scenes in Thieves’ Gambit to find tips and tricks for hitting the perfect sweet spot of pacing.
Books we talk about:
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Erin Nuttall: This is page 344 if you want to read along in your book. Did you ever have those when you were little?
[00:00:06] Anne-Marie Strohman: I did.
[00:00:06] Erin Nuttall: Yeah.
[00:00:06] Anne-Marie Strohman: And when you hear the chime ring, you will know it is time to turn the page.
[00:00:11] Erin Nuttall: That’s right. I'm not gonna chime. Sorry, guys.
[Music intro]
[00:00:14] Anne-Marie Strohman: Welcome to season two of the Kid Lit Craft podcast. This season we're doing a deep dive into Kayvion Lewis's YA thriller Thieves’ Gambit. Today we're focusing on writing a powerful action scene. I'm Anne-Marie Strohman and I write for children and young adults and I write some short stories for adults as well.
[00:00:33] Erin Nuttall: Hi, I am Erin Nuttall, and I write mostly for young adults because they are super fun.
[00:00:38] Anne-Marie Strohman: On Kid Lit Craft we look at mentor texts to discover the mechanics of how writers do what they do so we can apply it to our own writing. So Erin, we have some vocabulary today. We're heading into action scenes and action scenes are all about pacing. How do you define pacing?
[00:00:56] Erin Nuttall: In literature in general, I think pacing refers to the speed that the story unfolds. So the rhythm, the flow of the narrative, deciding how fast or how slowly plot points unfold and how quickly or slowly events progress for the reader changing the way that the reader would engage with the story.
So if we're looking at an action book, we want to balance faster action sequences with slower, more introspective moments so that we have a dynamic experience. And, you know, there's different genres and they have different pacing needs and different pacing expectations, and that can be tricky, but if you're writing an action thriller like Thieves’ Gambit, your scenes will look very different than if you're writing a rom com, or a coming of age, or a fantasy.
[00:01:44] Anne-Marie Strohman: And if you're writing something that's not a thriller, you can find some books that are like the kinds of books that you want to write and do this kind of analysis yourself. Look at an action scene and see how it's paced. Or look at whether each scene is fast paced or slow paced. You can do this analysis.
[00:02:00] Erin Nuttall: Oh, for sure. And I really like, we talk about it a little bit in the last episode, but I like figuring out where certain things fall percentage wise in the book and that helps give me a map of where I can possibly put different things. But today we're not looking really at overarching pacing, we're looking at the pacing of action scenes.
Which I think is really important because they can be tricky. How much do you write? How much information do you put in? How much conversation do you put in? And what camera angle do you want the reader to see from?
So I, I'm excited. It'll be fun to chat about that today.
[00:02:41] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yes, and I am sure we will be talking again about setup and how these action scenes get set up because all of that matters so much for then what you are required to put in the scene itself. When I'm thinking about scenes there's this acronym that I was introduced to by the great Rachel Herron called GILGOE.
And I sometimes have it on my computer when I'm writing so that it reminds me to get in late, get out early. Do you use this idea in your writing?
[00:03:13] Erin Nuttall: I did not know there was an acronym, but I do really like that. Yes, I have used this idea for a long time. Someone pointed out to me many years ago about how Collins does action scenes in The Hunger Games, and those are super good to look at if you're interested. But one of the things was, we go straight to my arrow was nocked. Or it may have been, I nocked an arrow, so we skip so much stuff that could be happening right to Katniss is ready to shoot that arrow and so that is something that I think about a lot. Another thing that helps me remember that is if you think about how action scenes are set up in TV shows and movies there is a lot of this GILGOE, which is, don't forget, it has an E on the end. Because it could be just GO. I just want, we're on a podcast here, so…
[00:04:06] Anne-Marie Strohman: Get in late, get out early,
[00:04:08] Erin Nuttall: Yes. So if you watch one on TV or on a movie and you go through beat by beat of what's happening, there is no fat, there's no wandering, they're not like, I wonder what the light looks like over here, or I wonder who's watching this, or, you know, the camera's not going all over, it's sticking really tight. And that's what you want. You don't want excessive description, you don't want, you know, how sweaty Katniss's fingers are. Unless that's gonna cause a problem in your action scene, right?
[00:04:35] Anne-Marie Strohman: Or you're building tension in some way. That's usually not within the action scene, that's setting it up so that you can move fast in the action. So we're going to focus on a few action scenes in Thieves’ Gambit to look at their pacing. Action is so fun to read, but it definitely requires planning in order to write well, or lots of revision and planning in the revision.
So, Erin, where are we starting?
[00:04:58] Erin Nuttall: I have three different scenes that I want to look at to see how each one functions. A fight scene. There is a scene on a train: no fighting, but quite a bit of action and a lot of attention. And then a car chase. So yeah, I'm excited.
[00:05:12] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yep, sounds exciting already. So let's start with the fight. I was just listening to the audiobook of Thieves’ Gambit, and this scene was so vivid and powerful and perfectly paced. So break it down for us.
[00:05:24] Erin Nuttall: Okay, so we set up this fight scene, and if we want to look at the whole arc of the fight scene I think it's done really well. The kids each have to steal something from this museum, right? Ross has her goods that she stole. So she says, this is on page 90, “as long as I steered clear of heavy footsteps and flashlights it would be a breeze from here to Marseilles and the next phase.”
So she has already succeeded in her mind. She's got her loot and she's ready to go. And you know, famous last words. You should have knocked on wood there. But then she gets caught.
She says, “right as I turn the corner into the main hall, a hand gripped my arm, I froze, feeling a sharp point sink into my neck. I drew a quick breath as my attacker pressed harder, my heart jumped, my brain screamed to use the meteor bracelet, but I knew one wrong move and my throat would be slit. Slowly I put my hands up. This wasn't a guard, and it wasn't Noelia. Who? Keeping a hand on my arm and the sharp blade tight against my neck, the figure moved out of the shadows. A blue blinking earpiece caught my eye. Adra.” So, here she is. She's caught right after she felt success and then she surrenders and you know, she's not happy about it, but she's got this knife at her neck and she is out of options.
[00:06:44] Anne-Marie Strohman: There's so much tension in all that physical description and not knowing who it is and she describes it in a way that she can't see the person so we can't see the person and it's just that physical, ah, like the big turn from feeling successful and just ready to go then to being caught and vulnerable and having all these bodily sensations.
[00:07:03] Erin Nuttall: Right. There's a ton of bodily sensation, grip my arm, I froze, sharp point into my neck, quick breath, heart jumped, brain screamed, throat would be slit, hands up, keeping a hand on my arm, blade tight to my neck. And they are really short and quick and it's very physical.
Then we switch to the surrender, which is about a page and a half of her working out in her mind, is she going to surrender? And that's kind of nice because this fight scene goes over several pages. It's a long scene, or multiple scenes of different fights. As she's trying to steal the piece from the museum and escape.
And so it is nice to have a little breath where she's trying to figure out what to do next. So she surrenders, and what she does is she assesses the situation and then she thinks of a plan, and a plan that the reader doesn't know. So, part of that plan is her fighting, again, to escape and so we have, again, an escape, and then another place where she gets caught, and another place where she escapes, all in this series of scenes that is very action heavy.
So it's super fun because we have multiple fights, one right after another, where she's surrendering is the longest piece of her thinking about what she's gonna do. After that, it tightens up.
So, she thinks of a plan, she doesn't tell the reader, and then she says “Adra turned to catch her partner entering the gallery. Before she could speak, I shoved my palm into her shoulder, then slammed my other hand into her chin. Momentum shot her back. A sliver of a scream slipped out of her. Impressive control, but screw waiting around to commend her and keeping quiet. I bolted down the main corridor. Yeriel’s shadow tensed. She was probably wondering what the hell was going on.
That emergency exit was only a couple turns away.” And here she's caught again. “Someone grabbed my jacket.” [Laughter] So, with this fight scene, she's fighting Adra, and one of the things that I notice is there's a lot of alliteration which honestly, I did not expect in a fight scene, right? Like, in the last one we talked about there's a lot of physical sensations, which I totally anticipated.
But here we have shoved, shoulder, slammed, shot, sliver, scream, slipped, impressive, screw. So we have a lot of, of that S. And that's a really strong consonant that really pushes you forward. And we do get a little bit of the physical, but because the physical is happening more to Adra than it is to Ross Lewis doesn't focus on it as much. What's interesting to me as well, is she has the scene where she's doing the fight, and then she has a tiny piece of her thinking, where she says, screw waiting around to commend her for keeping quiet, so it's this tiny breath we see her thoughts and not just her actions, which is a nice little respite for your reader.
[00:10:02] Anne-Marie Strohman: That setup piece is so important, and that is often what happens in those quieter moments, or those waiting moments before the action, and it can sometimes happen in that internal thought. In the scene right before this sequence she's fighting Noelia, and right before that she's waiting and watching.
And she sees the layout and kind of walks through what might happen so that we as readers kind of follow her through that. And then when she gets into the fight with Noelia, we don't have to wonder. Like, we know where we are, we know where the exits are, we know all the details. She doesn't have to get into that in the middle of the fight scene.
And I think that's such a smart thing to do with action is have that setup earlier, have a quiet moment of setup so that we can really stay in the moment, in the action, and we're not pulled out of it to get more information.
[00:10:54] Erin Nuttall: So we know all of the external pieces, and we can imagine where we are, and we're really well grounded. And honestly, grounding the reader in the setting is a hard thing for me. I forget to do it, as you know. Because I want to get to that fight scene, I want to get to that great dialogue, or whatever it is.
But it's not going to be a great fight scene if the reader's like, wait, where is this happening? Or great dialogue if the reader's like, wait, why are they talking about this?
[00:11:24] Anne-Marie Strohman: I love the interiority piece too because it gives us a sense of why this matters or what she's struggling with. This idea of do I surrender or not is, do I give up or not is something that she encounters throughout the book. That she's got to keep going and keep fighting and she has to be smart about it.
And then this idea that the language and the sentence structures, are mimicking the feel of the fight is just beautiful.
[00:11:47] Erin Nuttall: She does such a nice job on it because she doesn't always just use short, choppy sentences like you might think, or you might expect. Because we do know that those shorter sentences tend to propel the reader faster. But, like in this one that I just read they are longer sentences but, the sentences themselves are choppier?
[00:12:08] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah, they're kind of punchy. They have little pauses..
[00:12:10] Erin Nuttall: Punch, that's a better, yeah, punchy. They have some fight in them, if you will.
[Laughter]
[00:12:16] Anne-Marie Strohman: So let's move on to the train. It's a little more intellectual in a way than this fight sequence is. It's a longer sequence of action. The one we just looked at has kind of multiple fights in a row. So there is a long sequence of action, but each one is fairly contained.
And the train one, it feels like it's a longer sequence. It's a different kind of tension. With the fight, we're worried that they're gonna get injured or caught, and here we're just worried they're gonna get caught. And so it's a heisty tension. So how does Lewis pace this section?
[00:12:45] Erin Nuttall: So this one is definitely a different pace. And yes, we're worried that they're going to get caught, or that they're going to lose, because the kids are split up into two different teams for this portion of the gambit. And there’s a phone that has the information that they need on it, and that will help them to win this part of the gambit.
And so it is a long ish scene. It's about five pages and so I'm not going to be able to read the whole thing, but I hope that if you go there if you have the book in front of you, we're on page 165. All of the kids are on the train to their next destination, and like I said, they're split into two groups.
It's Ross, Devroe, Mylo, and Kyung-soon, and, versus Noelia, Taiyō, Lucas, and Adra. And they both want the cell phone and right now, Devroe has the cell phone and that kind of starts it off. And again, we have this back and forth between being caught and escaping, winning and losing.
Because the phone switches between the teams quite a bit in this scene. And that adds a lot of tension to what is happening because we don't know what the end result is going to be. Another piece of tension is that the kids had all decided to do a truce on the train.
And then this truce was upended and they weren't able to— they were all kind of looking forward to resting and hanging out just, you know, and just being a little bit more normal and then they were unable to. And the other thing I like is it's intellectual. There's a lot of intellectual action happening.
Okay, so Devroe has the phone and Noelia comes up to him with a guard claiming that Devroe stole her phone. So I thought that was a really interesting choice on Lewis’s part. Noelia is a white girl, Devroe is a black boy, and so to have her be the Karen, if you will I, I thought that was a smart choice, especially for where we are in history.
[00:14:49] Anne-Marie Strohman: And it's not the last time that she uses leverage from authority figures to change the workings of the game.
[00:14:57] Erin Nuttall: Right. And we do know, you know, Noelia is a pretty blonde white girl. And so she uses that and those assumptions that people have, those biases, the racism that they have to her benefit, for sure. Which helps the reader understand that Noelia is, you know, in it for real. She's serious about this.
She could just be a massive jerk. We could also believe that. A massive racist jerk I mean, it could be, and it could be both of those things, right? She could be in it for real and then also. So I was surprised and I thought, I thought it was a nice piece.
So she comes up and he has this phone that she's claiming is hers and here's a guard. And so Ross is like, oh no, this is not going to be good. But she has this idea. She says, “as fast as I could, I shot a text into the group chat. Mylo, back row, floor. I glanced down at the area under the seats.
Like seats on a bus or a plane, there was space underneath all of them. More than enough space for the phone to slide through. Hopefully, Devroe got the message. Devroe shifted in his seat. I hoped he was dropping the phone onto the carpet and kicking it right to Milo's combat boots. I held my breath.
Milo met my gaze and winked. If it wasn't totally uncool and wouldn't have given anything away, I would have fist bumped the air.” Which was really cute and a reminder that they're teenagers. Um, but, so this is interesting because this is where we get a really good visual. This is part of the setup. So even though the action has started we're getting a little piece of the setup that's going to be important to the rest of the scene.
And because this isn't like the, you know, the pow, pow, pow, pow, way fast kind of action scene I think that having the setup right here, right as the action is beginning, is a great place to put it. So then Devroe was able to be like, hey, pat me down, whatever, man, I'm innocent, and Noelia all of a sudden was like this isn't what I intended.
She says, “just as Deveraux was rising from his seat for a pat down, a voice chimed over the car speakers, reminding everyone that we were ten minutes out of the Paris station.” Oh, here we are. Here is a ticking clock. So that is helpful. And then the guard tilts his head and he's listening, apparently listening to an earpiece.
And so the next thing we know is in ten minutes when they get to Paris then the police are going to come on board. And so that ups the stakes for not getting caught with this phone, right? And so we have, some of this where the other team is now getting frisked, because now everybody is getting frisked looking for the phone.
“And then a text from Devroe drops into the group chat back to me.” So now the phone slides from Mylo back to Devroe, because he'd already been searched and now he was safe. And we get some more of Noelia being a Karen. But poor Devroe does not actually get the phone because as Mylo kicks it back to him, Lucas, who is on Noelia's team, intercepts it.
And then I will say what is kind of interesting here is that Ross makes a comment about how he was so quick with his feet, it was like he played soccer all the time. And then she says, “And Mom didn't think sports would have helped me be a better thief.” So, we get a little bit of humor. We get a callback to Mom.
With that callback to Mom, we're reminded of the stakes that the mom is kidnapped, right? And that Ross really needs this. So we have some more interaction with the guard, more interaction with the kids. And the phone is sliding around. she finally says, “I drop kicked the phone Devroe’s way, pretending to relace my kicks, and I watched it slide right under his heel. No one else attempted to stop it.” And she said, “more sus.” Because before this, Taiyō’s been acting a little sus. And so now they, Taiyō just, he doesn't try to interfere with, when the phone's sliding back to her.
So, we've added a piece of tension there, into this phone zigzagging around the train and the kids trying to be all like, nothing's going on here, officer and then also that bigger tension of who's going to win this gambit, which team is going to win this piece of the gambit.
[00:19:19] Anne-Marie Strohman: Her action is so detailed in here, and the descriptions of movement are so precise, like I never questioned where we were, or where things were, and she gives us hints like the wink from Mylo, letting her know that it's there, we don't actually see the phone get there, and then if Ross doesn't know, like we are always in Ross's perspective and to have it be so clear from first person I think is a real feat that we can follow this.
[00:19:47] Erin Nuttall: Right? We see the phone where we know where the phone is all the time, even when Ross is tracking a number of different things. And so, yeah. It's fantastic for the reader. I, I can totally imagine it happening. And there are lots of tension points and she keeps ratcheting up the tension. The train conductor, the police, the opposite team members, the way that those team members are behaving with the train conductor and the police and with the team we're rooting for. Like, there's a lot for us to figure out what's going on in addition to where the phone is and where it needs to go next.
[00:20:22] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah, we've talked a lot about how good Lewis is with theme and character And it's really fun to look closely at how good she is with the physicality of the story as well Within these scenes and the action within these scenes and just the right amount of interiority in these scenes. It reads like it was effortless to write, and I know it wasn't.
[00:20:43] Erin Nuttall: It does read effortless. I think one of the things that she does to help the reader keep track of everything is the movement of the phone. And anytime that you are writing something, whether you want to keep track of a big group conversation or maybe something big that's happening in a classroom or on a soccer field or a phone and a train in France. If you have an item that you can follow back and forth between who has it, so when we're following the phone, it's like the phone is the camera almost, as a reader, we're able to track where it goes and then what is happening around it. She does it really well, really seamlessly but that's like a little tip if you're writing something where you're worried that the reader's not going to be able to track what's going on.
[00:21:32] Anne-Marie Strohman: Right. Yeah. It gives us an object to follow. It draws our attention and focuses our attention on that space or the person who has it. I think about it a bit: Ross is the camera, but she's pointed at the phone. And so that the camera is just following the phone around and seeing what's around it.
[00:21:51] Anne-Marie Strohman: So take us to the car chase scene, as is usual with Lewis, as we move through the story, the stakes get higher, which creates more tension for the reader. So where do we start with the car chase?
[00:22:03] Erin Nuttall: So, in the car chase, we have had a lot of things happen. We have the Noelia and Ross alliance that is happening. And Noelia has done something that really has helped Ross build her trust in Noelia, and that is: she has involved her younger brother in solving some of the issues that are going on around someone who she really loves, but also who is in danger.
And so everybody's supposed to be on their own. Nobody knows that Devroe, Noelia and Ross are working together. And Ross has decided that she is going to start by saving Noelia's brother, Nikolai. And she's saving him from Taiyō. Because they're all assigned to kidnap someone.
Sorry, I told you there were going to be spoilers. I was trying to work around it, but there's no way. Okay, so I'm going to read a quote, but I want you, while I'm reading it, like think about what you can see visually, like what kind of ideas pop into your head from the way she describes things. Pay attention to the alliteration. Pay attention to how she uses different sentences. How danger is brought in. How she uses similes. And then also where she grounds you in the scene. And we'll talk about those ideas but this is like a page and a little bit that I'm going to read here. So Taiyō is in a car and Ross is in another car. And she is chasing him because Taiyō has kidnapped Noelia's brother Nikolai.
Okay, so. Here we go. This is page 344 if you want to read along in your book. Did you ever have those when you were little?
[00:23:47] Anne-Marie Strohman: I did. Yeah. And when you hear the chime ring…
[00:23:50] Erin Nuttall: Yes, or when Tinkerbell rings her chime.
[00:23:53] Anne-Marie Strohman: You will know it is time—you will know it is time to turn the page.
[00:24:05] Erin Nuttall: Thats right. I'm not gonna chime. Sorry, guys. Okay, so she says, “I was approaching Taiyō’s tail. He jerked from side to side like this was Mario Kart, and he wasn't gonna let me take the lead. The sight of a one lane bridge up ahead seemed to calm him down. No way was I gonna edge around him there. And he was right, but I didn't want to pass. My engine revved. I pushed the car to its limits and pulled up to the side of Taiyō’s car. The lanes were tightening into one. The bridge's concrete railing was ahead.
I needed to merge. I had seconds before I was going to collide head on with the railing. Using my bracelet, I smashed the back window and threw the bottle in and slammed the brakes into screaming. The steering wheel shook violently as I swerved back to the single lane.
My chest dug into my seatbelt. The smell of burnt rubber clogged my nose. Taiyō continued across the bridge at full throttle. I'd miss the railing by inches, if that. Through the rearview, I saw a few pedestrians running my way. I whipped into a U-turn and skidded away before they could slow me down with their concern.
I knew the path Taiyō was going and that there was a faster route. As long as I sped like my life depended on it, I could get to that sharp turn outside the city limits before him. Wind shrieked through my open window blowing back my braids. My tires screeched around every turn. The wheel juddered. Like the car, too, was running on adrenaline instead of gasoline.
It was a miracle I didn't run into any police. The buildings started to dwindle. Soon fields and farmhouses took their place. I looked to the side where I knew a lonely road toward the hangar was waiting. I couldn't see any headlights or taillights through the grass. I flicked off my own lights, trusting moonlight and memory to guide me as I drove.
Halfway to the intersection and between my path and Taiyō’s, the shimmer of headlights flickered in the distance. I was ahead of him. I skidded across the intersection. Dust kicked up around me as I jerked to a stop. The curve in the road sat maybe 20 yards ahead and passed out the outline of a far-off hangar.
My breath came slow and shaky while Taiyō’s headlights sped nearer. This had to be timed perfectly. The rush of Taiyō’s tires over the pavement swelled into a roar. Seconds before his SUV ripped past mine, right before he slowed around the curve I flashed my light twice. Come on don't cave Nikki. One of the back doors flipped open. Nikki dove out of the car, rolling into the dirt. Taiyō’s brake lights blared.
I flipped my lights on. Nikolai stumbled up, huffing and gripping his shoulder. Taiyō was rushing into a U-turn. I sped into a stop next to Nikolai, and flung the passenger door open.”
So that was kind of, I know, that was kind of a long thing to read, but it was very exciting. There was a lot going on so if we look at the visuals, we have the one lane road that's coming up, the bridge, right we have the idea of Mario Kart and the swerving that goes to similes as well and I feel like the way she describes this, it's really easy to picture. She involves a lot of senses. The brakes are screaming. The steering wheel is shaking. When she slams on the brakes, there's the smell of burning rubber. So we have a lot of physical sensations happening. Obviously, there's a lot of danger. They're speeding on this, little road that is going to mostly disappear soon. And so we have that danger.
We have, is Taiyō going to escape with Nikolai? And what's going to happen to Nikolai if he does? We have the grounding in the scene. So here we have, this car chase that's happening, and then she starts talking about the buildings dwindling. She's in the fields. So we kind of understand that they're now outside of the town where they had been.
And it gives you a little break as a reader before you go back into the high paced pulsing of the action. And then again with the action, a lot of alliteration. Shook, swerved, single, seatbelt, smell, missed, skidded, slow, sped, sharp, shrieked, skidded, slow, shaky and then sped to a stop. And then also a few B's, blow back my braids, brake lights blared.
So we have that. And then, oh, I skipped similes. We have a lot of things like Mario Kart, the brake light's blaring, there's the car running on adrenaline. There's just a lot of ideas that help really immerse you into that moment. I just love this car scene. I think car scenes can be tricky in movies, and even more so in books.
Like, I hate it when you're like, what's even happening? Where are they going? Where is the bad guy compared to the good guy, right? And I did not feel this at all in this page and a half.
[00:28:32] Anne-Marie Strohman: I think my favorite line is when she says, this has to be timed perfectly.
Like we know what her concerns are, but that sets us up for more tension that we're wanting it to be perfectly timed too. We don't quite know what that means, but we know that she has to beat him to a certain place and then when she stops, it's like, oh, no.What's happening now? So we, she's constantly building that tension through the scene.
[00:28:58] Erin Nuttall: And earlier, I didn't read this part, she writes a note to Nikolai and wraps it around the water bottle. Two flashes then jump. And as the reader we're still like, I'm not sure what that means. And then she breaks Taiyō’s window with her meteor bracelet. And throws the water bottle in. But we don't know if Nikolai's gonna do it.
And we're still not 100 percent on how that's gonna work. We still have these questions.
[00:29:24] Anne-Marie Strohman: And it's an example too, of creating suspense for us, right? We know what's supposed to happen. So we're waiting, for those two blinks.
[00:29:32] Erin Nuttall: Right.
[00:29:33] Anne-Marie Strohman: And then we're waiting to see what happens. And that, just increases the tension so much. That increases the suspense when we're waiting for something in particular to happen.
[00:29:41] Erin Nuttall: Right. And. I think it's done doubly well because we're waiting for something to happen and so we know that it might happen, right, and like you're talking about, but then we don't fully know what exactly is going to happen and so it's helpful because we're like, okay, so he jumps and then what, right?
[00:30:04] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah. Oof. So smart. Okay, Erin. What are you taking away from today?
[00:30:10] Erin Nuttall: I am taking away…what am I taking away? There was just a lot that I learned tearing apart these different scenes. And I think that the thing that really surprised me the most was how much alliteration there was and how much it really helped sell the scene. And I think we tend to think of those tools as ones for the beautiful language parts of writing and maybe not as much for the action scenes, which obviously I was wrong about.
It worked really well and it really helped immerse me in the scenes. so for you, Anne-Marie, what are you taking away?
[00:30:49] Anne-Marie Strohman: I am taking away something that kind of came up in the last episode too that happened again in this episode is how well Lewis has a first person narrative where we don't get to know everything. Ross holds some stuff back, but it feels organic. I never felt like, oh, she's cheating,
[00:31:08] Erin Nuttall: Right.
[00:31:09] Anne-Marie Strohman: Right. She's not talking to anybody and explaining this plan with the water bottle. She just does the water bottle.
[00:31:14] Erin Nuttall: Well, she's in the middle of it, right? She doesn't have time to tell us. She's gotta go and save Nikolai and…
[00:31:20] Anne-Marie Strohman: Right, and this happened in the sarcophagus plan we were talking about with the cool gadget section last time that she's like, I'm forming a plan and then Mylo says we should wait to talk to everybody about it.
And she's like, I want it to fully cook before I explain it. And so she just delays and defers, but it feels really organic. And so I don't know where that will be useful in my own writing, but I think that, that strategy of, yes, giving information so that it creates suspense, but not giving all the information. I feel like I can work on that.
[00:31:56] Erin Nuttall: I think that, yeah, that is a really interesting concept, and I think what helps it feel organic is that there's so much going on. We really do feel like Ross doesn't have time to tell us all of her thoughts. Right?
[00:32:10] Anne-Marie Strohman: Mm hmm.
[00:32:10] Erin Nuttall: Yeah, I'll be interested to see you write an action scene. I would love to see it.
[00:32:16] Anne-Marie Strohman: We'll see. Someday. Someday.
[00:32:18] Erin Nuttall: So, Anne-Marie, what is the Cool Gadget for this episode?
[00:32:23] Anne-Marie Strohman: Well, since we were in a fight scene today, I wanted to highlight a cool gadget that turns into a dangerous weapon. And this is from the scene just before the fight scene that we looked at with Adra. This is Noelia's cutter. So we see it in chapter 10 as Ross is watching Noelia try to get this ring from the museum.
And here is what it says. “From her blazer pocket, she retrieved what looked like a thin silver credit card with an edge so sharp I might cut my eyes just looking at it. I frowned. Was she going to do a shave job? It was safer than the shatter job I was planning. Cutting a clean line through the top of the case let you put the box back together no one the wiser, but it also took too long. Why did I get the feeling it wasn't going to take her that long?
She slid her blade along the glass like a hot knife through butter. Plan B gone too, on to Plan C.” So we see the cutter in action. We see its power. And we have that great sentence I might cut my eyes just looking at it, which will come back later. So Ross, she's up in a vent watching all this, so this is an opportunity for her to show the lay of the land for us before this confrontation with Noelia.
So Ross jumps down, she swipes the ring, the guard comes by, Ross taunts Noelia, and at the very end of chapter 10 it says, “She slipped her hand back into her blazer, retrieving the blade she'd used to trim through the glass case. Game on.” And then in the next chapter, they start fighting and Noelia is using this blade as a weapon.
“Her blade swiped inches from my eye, too close. I needed to disarm her. On my next attack, instead of going for the ring, I snapped my bracelet around her wrist and yanked it between two of the beams. My foot slammed into her torso, then into her hand. Her blade flew up and across the room. No more slicing and dicing for her.” So this is another very exciting fight scene, and it's a gadget that does double duty. So, Ross spends a fair amount of time in that first part of chapter 10, focusing on the cutter. And so we know it's more than just a knife. It cuts glass like it's nothing. And then when the cutter becomes a weapon, we have extra tension because it's not just a blade. It's this super blade. And of course, it's all in this perfectly paced package.
[00:34:38] Erin Nuttall: In addition, I love that it looks like a thin, silver credit card. Because it is not something that someone is going to frisk Noelia and be like, oh, you brought a knife to the museum, or whatever, right? So I love that. And yes, that callback to swiped inches from my eye, too close, that was awesome. And I will say, I did not notice that on the first read through. But it is one of the benefits of looking at things really in depth because then you can see the hidden pieces that you consciously don't notice, but your subconscious is like, oh yeah, that's right. I also really love Ross's voice with the whole no more slicing and dicing for her. It's super fun. That's a fun gadget.
[00:35:26] Anne-Marie Strohman: Yeah. And it…You know, these are dangerous scenes, and yet there's this humor and levity that keeps it in that fun mode, but doesn't destroy the tension of these high stakes life or death situations.
[00:35:41] Erin Nuttall: Which is a trick. It is really hard to pull off being funny and, and keeping your stakes high. So kudos. Again, we say it every, we say it every episode. Good job, Kayvion Lewis!
[00:35:57] Anne-Marie Strohman: Woo!
[Music outro]
[00:36:00] Anne-Marie Strohman: So that's it for today. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more content like this at kidlitcraft.com. Find us on social media at @KidLitCraft, and you can support this podcast on Patreon. We also have t-shirts and drinkware and phone cases. You can find that at Cotton Bureau, and we'll have a link in the show notes.
Also, you can register for our Ask the author book club. We have four events this spring. We've already had Stacey Lee. Michael Leali may or may not have happened by the time this comes out and then we've got Randy Ribay and Lindsay Lackey coming up this spring. We hope you'll join us for those.
[00:36:37] Erin Nuttall: I know I am looking forward to them, and I really hope that you want to join us for those. Our discussion with Stacey Lee was super fun, and I know I learned a lot. And it was just fun! Please download episodes; like, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen; and let your writer friends know about the podcast, about Ask the Author events, and classes with Anne-Marie.
We cannot wait to nerd out with you.
[00:37:04] Anne-Marie Strohman: Thanks for joining us. See you next time.
[00:37:06] Erin Nuttall: Bye.
