While movies and novels both tell stories, it’s important to remember that they do this in very different ways. They are two very different mediums.

Movies can get away with being action-driven because they are visual. (And boy, do modern superhero flicks and other modern films try to pull this off!)

An action movie can have fight scene after chase scene after fight scene, with little focus on character development, because the visuals of the action are so intense. It all takes place before the viewer’s eyes. The audience is drawn in that way, or can be.

Novels are different.

I would say what follows here is a matter of opinion, at least to a degree. But I think the best novels are CHARACTER-driven. The medium of the page lends itself to that much more than to an action-driven story.

Even when a scene with a lot of action unfolds in a novel, the focus is generally just as much on what the point of view character is thinking or feeling as it is on what he is DOING and what is happening around him.

This is what a written story lends itself to: character. Psychology. Thought processes. You can get direct access to a character’s mind via the written word in a way you never could on-screen.

The best movies also highlight character-development and a real advancement of plot, of course. My point is that, a movie can focus much more on pure action for action’s sake and get away with it.

A novel can’t. If your characters don’t grow, or the readers don’t get to know them, your novel is going to fail. The written page is not going to prop your story up in the way a camera might (somewhat).

My focus as a writer is always on my characters: getting to know them, challenging them, watching them learn and mature. Letting them come into their own.

It’s less about the action (even though the first installment of my trilogy is certainly action-packed in its way).