It is not easy to find a technique to write adventure stories online.
Most of the advice you may come across tells you the elements that should be in the story, but scarcely how to actually put them there. Or just random traits, such as ‘an adventure needs to take place in the distant past’, but with no explanations as to why.
I’ve already spoken on how to consistently write a story. I have a way that I use to write adventure stories, and if it works for you, then you can have it. So, how to write adventure stories?
To write adventure stories, you must write a story where the main conflict of the story can only be solved through extensive travel, where the characters are built for travel, and the world is designed to accommodate travel stories. The main conflict that can only be solved through travel is a goal that can only be solved through traveling, so you need to make such a goal for the main character. Characters built for travel are characters whose character progress, development, and design indicate travel. Finally, a world that is designed to accommodate travel stories is a world where travel is possible, but it is also not encouraged, for the sake of conflict.
This is a mouthful, I know. In order to untangle it, first we must explain to you just what an adventure story is. When you know what it is, not only will you be able to implement the tips efficiently, but you can augment them to fit your personal style.
WHICH I HEAVILY ADVISE.
All writing tips do is show you how to best express yourself and story. They do not tell you what to write!
What Is An Adventure Story?
An adventure story is a story where the main conflict can only be solved through extensive travel.
The primary difference between genres of writing is scarcely the worlds, or the characters.
Yes, a futuristic story is different from a western story because of the world, and the characters. However, these differences stem from an even deeper difference, and that is the central message of the story.
A futuristic story probably wants to say something about the environment and our technology, while a western story wants to say something about them communities, and towns. Thus, what is the best way to represent the messages in a story?
Through the goals.
The central conflict of a story is the fight between the hero, and the villain to attain a common goal.
As a consequence, this goal needs to be related to travelling in some manner. So it’s message needs to be travel centric. A message like ‘Friendships last a long way, so go far together’ or ‘Imperialism bad’.
Whatever the message, it is shown through the goal.
If the message is ‘friendship lasts a long way, so go fat together’, then the goal could be something like the hero having to attain something from a mountain far away, but they can’t cook, fight, build weapons, use magic, or shoot an arrow.
So they get people who can. And if a message is ‘imperialism bad’, then the goal would be the heroes trying to destroy an imperial artifact.
You see? Simple. Now, let’s get to just how you can go about writing a complete story that properly represents your central conflict (message).
7 Steps To Writing A Great Adventure Story
1. Central Conflict that Encourages Travel
The first step to writing an adventure story is writing a central conflict that can only be solved through travel.
As mentioned, a central conflict is the goal that the hero and the villain are fighting for. There are 2 types of goals that encourage travel; a goal where the hero is being chased, or a goal where the hero is doing the chasing.
A story where the hero is being chased is fairly stragiht forward.
There is some sort of terror that wishes to harm our hero, so they must flee. This could be something that is literally chasing the hero, such as an assassin, or Death like in puss in boots. But sometimes, it can be immaterial.
Such as a horrible disaster like a drought, plague, or zombies. Whatever works. It could even be the heroes responsibilities, or family. As long as it makes the hero try to flee, then it should work.
The second type of goal, a hero trying to chase for something, can slo be simple. You could have a treasure, or something. So the hero has to find it.
Finally, you could fuse the two. The hero is running away from something by going to get something. Maybe a master, or a safe location or whatever.
2. Character That Are Dependent On Travel
The second step to writing an adventure story is to create characters that are dependent on travel.
There are 3 steps of character creation; character progression, character development, and character design. I promise, its all very easy.
All character progression is, is the change the character goes through. it starts with a shy character, and ends with the character being talkative. Or it starts with them arrogant, and ends with them humble.
The internal change of the character.
Character development is the characters names, physical appearance, personality, abilities and backstory. Character design is the characters clothing, appearance, instruments, body language, word choice, silhouette, and color grading.
All these work together.
Your character begins their progress possessing a flaw, which leads to a false belief. In adventure stories, the false belief needs to correlate with travel somehow. Maybe they believe they need glory to be accepted, so they take reckless tasks on.
They could even believe that they are too weak, and be too scared of taking responsibility.
This belief is reflected in their design (clothing, appearance, word choices, body language and having abilities tied to travel, such as sailing, map reading, fighting with a special spear etc) and in their development, (traumatic backstory led to this belief).
The story then ends with them having overcome this flaw, so this should show on their design too. Their clothing, body language, word choice, and abilities show they’ve grown. e.g. Luke going from wearing white with an energetic stance, to wearing back with a calm, collected stance.
3. World That Is Conducive To The Story
The third step to creating an adventure story is to make a world that is conducive to traveling stories.
There are two things there ‘Travel’ and ‘Stories’.
A world that is conducive to travel is a world that accommodates, and allows travel. If you were to try and travel around today, it would be hard to get far. You have to pay when crossing borders, and you are constantly surveillance by cameras.
If you were to get into a bar fight, you will be caught immediately.
So you need to create a world with lax borders, and a weak governmental force. This is why people tend to pick medieval Europe for adventure stories, or Elizabethan England.
These were eras where nation states did not exist, nor did countries. You left one land, and entered another man’s kingdom, rather than a country. So, there was a lot of freedom.
A world that is conducive to ‘stories’ is a world that has conflict. Meaning that the world should give some sort of push back to the heroes, whether natural, or human.
Human push back is something like knights, bandits, or any group of people that our heroes need to be wary of as they travel. A natural push back is going to be weather, animals, weird ecological things like fiery lakes, or man eating plants.
Combine these two elements, and you have a world that definitely accomodates a travelling story.
4. Extra Characters That Are Travel Centric
The fourth thing you could do to make an adventure story is create the supporting cast that is supportive to travel.
In a story, there are more characters than the hero and the villain. There is also the allies of the hero, and the opposition, who are allies of the villain. Then, there are characters such as the supporters, who are the characters who work the jobs that allow the heroes to travel. These are characters like farmers, the armor forgers, the inn keepers, etc.
Your story needs a set of extra characters who support travel.
This means that you should try and populate your world with characters who propel your lead character’s adventure.
5. Give A Single Theme To Unite it
The fifth step to writing an adventure story is to create a single unifying theme.
Now, I think that writing a theme is not something most writers consider.
Instead, the theme probably comes about the writer works on the story. However, themes are extremely important for adventure stories. The reason for this is that adventure stories tend to travel over wide separate areas, and have such diverse events happening.
It could be easy for an adventure story to feel haphazard, and random, even with a unifying plot tread. But with a unifying theme, this changes everything.
I already wrote an article on how to find a theme. Check that one out on a more practical step by step process. One of the points I was trying to get across there is that the theme of the story is a problem that reemerges in the story.
If the characters tend to have a problem with people refusing to help them, then the theme is something to do with that. To write an adventure story, you need to select a theme that improves on
6. Go Over The Story Outline For Set Ups
The sixth step to writing an adventure story is to try and make a lot of set ups.
The importance of this can be understated, but I will say it again.
Adventure stories can feel random and disjointed. You do not want that to be your story. in order to do this, you can just use a lot of foreshadowing, and set ups.
You can create set-ups with either dialogue, or with props. If you use dialogue, then your characters could be speaking about a certain situation. Then later in the story, the situation comes to fruition for real, and it does not feel random.
If you choose a prop, then it could be that the character stumbles upon an instrument, then they keep it. Later, as they are in trouble, they pull out the instrument, and they use it to deal with the situation.
7. Consume Great Adventure Stories
The seventh step to creating a great adventure story is to consume great adventure stories.
This is a step that you should implement an hour before your writing.
Open a book, or watch a movie that is an adventure movie, and really watch it. Ask what you enjoy about the movie, or the story. Then, ask if you are properly portraying your story as efficiently as the story you are reading is portraying theirs.
When you have your answer, you will have taken a great dive to mastering mastery.