Here’s a problem every writer in deep first person eventually runs into. Your narrator gets ambushed. Or jumped. Or shot at. Suddenly the camera is locked inside a person who can’t pull back, can’t pan, can’t see around the corner — and who, if we’re being honest, can barely see what’s directly in front of them, because their pulse is hammering and the windshield just took two rounds and there’s a hand on the back of their seat trying to tell them to do something they can’t quite parse.
How do you write that scene? How do you write a fight, a chase, an ambush — when your point of view is locked inside the head of someone who is, by definition, not in a position to narrate?
That’s the craft problem today. And I’m going to read you a scene from Book Two of “Another Past,” where my protagonist Paul Taylor — wealthy, well-protected, comfortable in his own life — gets reminded, mid-Friday afternoon, that competent enemies do not care how comfortable you are.
CONTEXT
Quick setup. Paul has spent the morning fighting with the Air Force over a leaked materials contract. He’s angry, distracted, and being driven home by Tiffany — his security lead’s most senior agent — through Salt Lake afternoon traffic. He thinks his biggest problem today is the federal government. He’s about to find out his biggest problem is the people who staged a car wreck two intersections ahead.
Excerpt from “Another Past,” Book 2, Chapter 3
Anger turned to fear, on the second to last day of spring break. Tiffany was driving me back from the University of Utah after a meeting with Professor Brighton. Traffic was heavy. We chalked it up to an early rush hour on a Friday afternoon. We were a couple of lights away from the highway, and an easy drive home, when the car in front of us ran a red light and was T-boned by oncoming traffic.
Tiffany stepped on the brakes, and I undid my seatbelt to get out and help. Suddenly, we were hit from behind and my head smacked into the back of the front seat.
“Shit! Hang on!” Tiffany stomped on the accelerator and swerved right to go around the accident in front of us.
“Paul, activate your alarm,” Tiffany commanded as she reached for the radio. High-pitched static squelched her signal as she keyed the mic.
I activated my alarm and looked behind us. The rear window had two small starbursts directly behind the driver. Two men stood behind a car at the intersection. A gun flashed.
“Shit, they’re shooting at us!”
Tiffany spun the wheel to get out of the line of fire.
“Get your seatbelt back on,” she commanded. I managed to get buckled in as she swerved down another street and then cut back toward the on-ramp for the highway.
“Are you okay?” Tiffany asked as she kept her eyes scanning the traffic around us while ignoring all the posted speed limits and any stop signs.
“Yes. Shaken up a little.”
She took the on-ramp at speed, and accelerated further once we were on the highway.
“Check yourself over. Make sure nothing got through.”
I checked myself as the radio squelch died. Tiffany grabbed the microphone again.
“This is Romeo-one, sierra foxtrot. I say again, this is Romeo-one, sierra foxtrot, over.”
There was a little crackle on the radio.
“Romeo-one, this is Romeo-castle. What’s your status? Over.”
“Romeo-one in transit. No pursuit evident.”
“Roger. Romeo Castle is calling a code. All other packages are in the castle. Romeo-two will meet you at fly-point one, over.”
She dropped the mic onto the seat and pushed the accelerator down further as we started the steeper climb up Parley’s Canyon.
“Okay, Paul. There is a pistol in the case under the seat. Get it out, check the safety and make sure you have a round chambered.” I did as I was told as she continued to talk. “Sanford will be meeting us in the parking lot just off the exit. I’ll pull up next to him. As soon as I stop, you get out of here and in with him. Keep the gun in your pocket. He’ll take you back to the house.”
CRAFT BREAKDOWN
So. A few things I want to pull out of that.
The first thing I want you to notice is what’s not there. There’s no description of the gunmen. No description of the second car. No camera-angle establishing shot of the intersection — no ten-yard view of where Paul is in relation to the threat. The narrator can’t see any of that, so you don’t get any of it. The only thing he sees of the actual attack is “two small starbursts directly behind the driver” and “a gun flashed.” Two visual fragments. That’s the whole gunfight.
That’s the craft move. In deep first person, you don’t widen the camera when chaos hits. You narrow it further. The reader’s instinct, your instinct — show me what’s happening — is wrong. Showing what’s happening dilutes the experience. What you want is to show what the narrator can actually perceive, which under threat is almost nothing, and let the reader fill the rest in.
The second thing. Watch what carries the scene once the bullets start flying. It’s not Paul. It’s Tiffany. Every line that moves the action forward is hers. Hang on. Activate your alarm. Get your seatbelt back on. Check yourself over. There’s a pistol in the case under the seat. Paul is reduced to two functions — I did and I checked — and the occasional terrified observation. The action is being narrated to him, not by him.
This is the trick I want every writer to take away. When your first-person narrator is in over their head, give them a competent ally and let that ally drive the prose. The reader doesn’t need the protagonist to know what’s happening. The reader needs someone in the scene to know — and the protagonist’s job is to react to that someone. Tiffany becomes the reader’s compass. Paul becomes the reader’s body. Together they can carry a scene that neither of them could carry alone.
The third thing. Look at the sentence rhythm. Tiffany stepped on the brakes. I undid my seatbelt. Suddenly, we were hit from behind. My head smacked. These are short. Subject-verb-object. There are almost no subordinate clauses in the action sequence — and the few there are show up only when the danger has receded, when Paul has time to think again. When the threat is acute, the prose gets blunt. When the threat lifts, the sentences breathe out. The pulse of the scene is in the syntax.
Here’s the thing I’m still not sure about. There’s a real risk in handing off the action to a competent NPC — your protagonist can come across as passive, even cowardly. I think it works here because Paul is supposed to be out of his depth. He’s a graduate student with a billion-dollar company; he’s never been shot at. The competent ally is the realistic answer. But if you tried this with a protagonist who’s supposed to be the most dangerous person in the room, the same technique would gut your character. So this isn’t a universal law. It’s a tool that fits a specific shape of story.
Here’s the diagnostic. Open whatever fight or chase or ambush you’re working on. Count two things. One: how many sentences run over ten words. Two: how many of the action verbs belong to your POV character versus someone else in the scene.
If too many sentences run long, the prose is moving slower than the events. Cut. If your POV character is doing all the verbs, your scene is probably too clean — too rehearsed, too in-control for what’s happening. Hand half of those verbs to someone else. Let the protagonist receive instructions, react, fail to keep up. Then read it aloud. If your mouth gets ahead of your eyes, you’re close.
The fantasy of the action scene is the protagonist who sees everything, knows everything, moves perfectly. That’s a movie’s job. On the page, in deep first person, the more honest scene is the one where your narrator can barely keep up. Where the windshield takes two rounds before they understand what they’re looking at. Where a calmer voice has to tell them what to do next.
When the bullets are real, your narrator doesn’t get to be the hero of the prose. They just get to live through it. And that’s almost always the better scene.
Next time, we’ll talk about the opposite problem — the moment everyone in the book has been waiting for, where the outcome is inevitable, and the only question is whether the prose can carry the weight of arrival.
Until next time, thanks for listening.
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