Action and Variety

Do people find they have a favorite type of action or challenge for a scene?

I mean, a given point in the story could be about things as different as fighting, building, persuading, maneuvering, or investigating. Of course it's often easy to see which of these a character wants to use next; charge out to stop the bandit raid, ask around the neighborhood that has the rumors of vampire attacks, but what kind of balance do people use?

--including, of course, how much does a scene start about one and turn into another, or mixes a few?

The deeper question: do people find themselves gravitating to certain things out of habit, or different balances of writing strengths and weaknesses?

I find that more and more of my scenes stretch out their "maneuvering" phases, as the characters sneak through territory or worry about being ambushed or do a chase. It's partly for suspense, but I'm starting to think I'm getting reluctant to dig into some of the other types' specifics; maybe there'd be more research if I bit the bullet and worked out how my library was laid out.

Or it might be related to how the plot is organized; fights are easier to use when I've worked out enough villains (and heroes) so that I can send in one or two of each and still have options to use the loser in and/or replace him. If I'm not as sure of that, I'm reluctant to use filler battles.

So how do people work out their balance of these types? How much do you try to emphasize one for certain kinds of story, or times you think the mix needs something else? What do you wish you could work in more or less of?

 

Of course romance could have car chases. (As I hear it, half the romances out now are love in the shadow of a serial killer, even just the ones without vampires.)

A genre might call for some favorite methods, and an author might deliberately choose or be best at some types. (The war story with its battles-- or the one that's mostly written about the waiting between them.) And a good story of any kind would use some variety to play off that.

What I'm wondering is, have people looked back at their writing and found themselves over- or underusing some types out of habit, or other slips? Either:

• plotting more/fewer scenes one same way than you want?
• rushing or dragging out the same parts of scenes' shifts (eg long arguments let down by short fights)?