Getting to the point

When it comes to reviews of my books, one consistent point that comes up, regardless of whether it's a positive or negative review, is that my books don’t take too long to get to the action. It’s very common for books to drag their feet before any action or adventure starts. This would frustrate me whenever I read a book that’s supposed to be “action-packed” or feature an “epic adventure.” Some books work through their slow beginnings with interesting worldbuilding and interesting setup. Many others just had fluff and very little substance plot-wise.

So why would my books “getting to the point quickly” be a positive point? As a gamer, I prefer it when video games get to the exciting bits as soon as possible. In Call of Duty 4, it takes less than five minutes to get to a mission where you start fighting bad guys. Mass Effect 2 and 3 had bombastic openings that let you get into the action right away. Movies like The Raid Redemption, Predator, and Rush Hour get to the action relatively quickly. The reason why “getting to the point” is seen as a good thing because it fulfills the premise of a story offering an engaging ride. If you buy a sci-fi book that promises tense ship battles, then you’d expect the book to have plenty of ship battles. If you buy a mystery movie, you’d expect the characters to spend most of the film solving a mystery. If you buy a shooter game, you’d expect to be shooting enemies throughout most of the game. If the shooting didn’t start until 40% through the game, you’d likely be frustrated. I’ve read books that promised a high-stakes plot, but that plot only showed up in the last 20%-40% of the book. The majority of said book would either be contrived drama with soap opera style writing or characters doing errands that amounted to nothing.

Throughout all my years of writing, I have always gotten to the point quickly. This is something I value deeply because when I read a book, I want to be hooked in right away and not wait too long for the good parts. I figured this was a universal value, which surprises me whenever I see a review praising one of my books for doing so. I don’t know why it’s a common trend to “beat around the bush” when it comes to books. The books that I enjoyed that had “slow beginnings” were ones with great worldbuilding, great characters to get attached to, and good set-ups that paid off later on.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the story and how effectively you tell it. Slow moments can be rewarding if they help develop the main plot and/or develop characters. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, filler action scenes don’t add anything to the story and can be boring as well. The best action scenes add to the plot and/or increase stakes. I have been seeing this worrying trend throughout different mediums where there would be no plotline and the characters just do busy work the whole time. There wouldn’t be any meaningful character development either. Imagine Star Wars: A New Hope where Luke Skywalker spends the whole movie hanging out with R2-D2 and C-3PO and never fights the Empire. I highly doubt that would be a better version than the original movie. I promise I will never write an Armored Piercing book where Sipho Morgess and the gang just hang out and get drunk on Petrenko’s vodka.