Author Don Winslow’s Secret To Crafting An Epic Action Novel

Don Winslow’s latest work, “Broken,” breaks away from the genre of crime and mystery novels for which he is most known for. He breaks down his personal process of setting up an action narrative.

Video Transcript

RICKY CAMILLERI: I feel like you are incredible at writing action climaxes, both with "Broken" and with Ben and Chon's story. What is it-- how do you-- how do you craft those? How do you set those up? Are you just writing from beginning to end? Or are you thinking about where this can go, how this can happen, and sort of crafting it on a board of some kind with notes?

DON WINSLOW: No, I never do that. I never board it out. I never write outlines-- rarely. Every once in a while with the more complicated drug books, I'll have a very rough sort of outline of here are the broad moves. But with this these stories, no. I wrote them beginning to end. And I didn't know what was going to happen, to tell you the truth.

Now, with the action sequences that you kindly alluded to, that's a matter of rewriting. I think with action sequences-- for me, it's different for everyone, of course-- but for me, it's a matter of writing them on the first draft very fast like the action's just happening in real time. Do you know what I mean? Bah bah bah bah bah bah. Then when I have it down, then I take another or several really hard looks at it. And then it's a matter of crafting it-- literally down to the syllable level to get the right rhythms and the right beats-- and by the way, the right moments of silence.