I just finished writing a major action sequence. Dragging myself through the thing was like pulling teeth–I was getting 4 or 5 hundred good words a day, tops.
Just looked at my outline and discovered, yay! now I get to write a couple chapters of dialogue!
I’m not sure what it is that makes me feel that way, besides that dialogue comes fairly naturally to me, and action doesn’t. I think some of it is the pressure to keep up the pace in action sequences–I need to get x amount of information across for the blocking to make sense, I need to plant y and z information as setups for future scenes, I need to describe the setting and the movement in the scene quickly but engagingly, I need the main character to think enough that the reader understands the motivations behind her choices…all while keeping the action hurtling forward at an exciting pace. It’s difficult, and I never get it right on the first try. I rarely have to fully rewrite dialogue scenes. Action…gets gone over many, many times before it all ticks just right.
Still, the scene is written, and while I know I’m going to have to go back and smooth it out, I think all the major pieces are there. This is progress. I can accept that.