Action makes things happen in your story. Without action, characters do nothing, objects go nowhere, settings don’t matter, and events don’t take place. Actions are the wires that connect characters, objects, settings, and events together. Characters make people care about the action, action keeps them interested.
If you haven’t found the action to drive the story forward, you haven’t really got a story at all. You’ve got a collection of information waiting to become a story. The Write Words requires that at least one action must be present before the round is over and a story can be formed.
To help you get started with your action, The Write Words starter decks offer 10 different choices: predicts, attacks, hides, questions, kills, takes, follows, carries, tricks, and spies. These choices ensure a wide variety of kinds of stories can be told. Change tenses as needed to make the story you’ve put together work for you. As expansion packs are created, we’ll be adding more actions to the list.
If you have a list of actions you would like to suggest, you can send them to brandy at 40daywriter dot com. Not all actions are created equal. Remember, your goal is not to put your potential reader or listener into snooze mode. Your goal is to get the story moving forward – and movement requires momentum. Momentum doesn’t happen while you’re sitting or thinking or reading. Momentum happens when the body is moving. That’s why action and the right action matters even more!