Try to leave as much to your reader’s imagination as possible. This extends to several different aspects of writing: description, information, detail, dialogue, choreography… all need to be curtailed if your chase scene’s essential drama is to shine through. As such, it’s important to draw some hard limits around your work. Use your limitsįew things sap the life out of dramatic scenes like too much information, and there are few scenes as dramatic as chase scenes. Everything that happens thereafter gains relevance – every route that’s cut off, every turn that’s taken, means something to the reader. Slayground gives its protagonist a lot of time to explore its setting and even set up traps for when the chase begins. The reader needs to understand what every event means, and that’s much, much easier to do naturally when you plan ahead. They inform the likelihood of the chase’s outcome, and that makes them dramatic. The events in your chase – the ramming, the stalling, the tripping, the shortcuts – only matter because they alter the distance between the characters. Your reader needs to know how each event in your chase affects its outcome. Nowadays, Google can give you that kind of information in seconds, so there’s no excuse for not doing your homework. Nothing stymies pace and momentum like a writer who doesn’t know where his characters are going trust me, your reader will know. For the car chase in Moonraker, Ian Fleming sent his stepson out to drive the route and ensure realism. If yours is a breakneck, high-drama chase as opposed to an extended, plot-wide stalking – a car chase maybe, or a cowboy riding down a fugitive across the badlands – make sure to plan your route. You should be asking yourself why this chase matters, what the stakes are, and how it’ll resolve itself – will the cop catch the villain in a straightforward and, frankly, rather boring manner, or will they guess their route, stop on an overpass, and prepare for an almost impossible shot, as in Line of Duty? Keeping your reader on their toes and shifting the dynamics of your chase on the fly can make for some seriously engaging reading. This is also important for crafting a realistic chase – after all, if your gritty action hero hits impossible speeds in his Peugeot, turns down a non-existent road in London, or takes a mathematically impossible jump or turn, you’d better believe someone somewhere is going to snort, roll their eyes, and toss your book aside.Ī good plan also ensures that your chase’s stakes are sufficiently high and that you’re layering in suspense and questions from the get-go. Sorry to start with the boring stuff, but if you’re going to write a tight chase scene that maintains momentum and feels consistently exciting, you’re going to need to plan. Either way, there are some hard-and-fast guidelines you’ll want to keep in mind for when things get dramatic. The humble chase takes many different forms maybe yours is a high-speed car chase like in Moonraker maybe it’s a stop-start, cat-and-mouse game like in Richard Stark’s Slayground or maybe it’s a story-long struggle like in Mad Max: Fury Road. Just ask anyone who’s struggled over a fight scene. Why does one chase scene leave you sweating, your heart in your mouth, while another fails to evoke even a slightly widened eye? Well, excitement is a difficult thing to get right. Chase scenes: you know a good one when you see it, but they can still be difficult to dissect.