An action story has three obligatory elements:
- a hero (James Bond)
- a victim (humanity, or maybe a damsel)
- a villain (rotating)
This sounds childishly simple, and it is. But it's also very easy for authors of thrillers to forget the triangle because it's not something you even notice in a well-crafted action story. But all three need to be fleshed out to the extent that the audience cares about them.
The difference between an action story and a thriller is that in a thriller, the victim and hero are the same character. For example, Stephen King's Misery is a thriller because the hero is the victim. Action stories often involve the hero's facing death, but it's done to save the victim.
Something else that's easy to forget is the human value at stake in an action story: life and death. James Bond is always on the edge of being killed, even when in extracurricular persuits. If Bond doesn't succeed, the victim is toast, and the stranger that death is, the better. At the end of the story, there's no doubt which way it went.
This is why good action stories are page-turners, or as Fleming writes:
> "You have to get the reader to turn over the page."
Humans are hardwired to pay attention when death is a possible outcome. That's why rubbernecking is a thing even though people complain about it. It's also one reason cited for the popularity of NASCAR. Death can come at any time even though the action is quite repetitive.
More than that, the scenes in an action story tend to turn on life and death. That's one place where action story authors can get into trouble: writing too many scenes that turn on a value other than life-death, or don't turn on anything. It's shockingly easy to write scenes that offer nothing more than information. One or two of them is all it takes for the reader to yawn and quit.