  Action/Adventure
This week: When Inspiration Is Lacking Edited by: Kit  
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You want to write a thrilling story. An epic quest. Where to find inspiration for your masterpiece?
This week's Action/Adventure Newsletter is all about the familiar and the new, and where to find it.
Kit |
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It’s not easy, writing an action/adventure piece. If you’ve written in this genre you will no doubt know this to be true. It may even be an understatement. Sometimes, it feels like everything’s been done before.
And it’s not like we can write from a whole lot of experience – at least, most of us can’t. I know that I’ve never been involved in a car chase, crashing through an inconvenient truck that just happened to be in the way. Explosions don’t tend to happen around me. Everyone knows you don’t come to me to solve complicated puzzles. And much as I would like to end up in a different reality with elves and dragons and dwarves, called upon to defeat some great evil, whatever forces are responsible for those types of journeys must have deemed me completely unqualified. My life’s much like most people’s lives, where my day-to-day existence is pretty predictable.
How, then, to find the inspiration for a piece of this nature? I’m guessing here that you’ll have watched a good amount of movies and read a good amount of novels in the genre, and that is an excellent starting point. It’ll teach you what you like and dislike, and what worked for you and what didn’t. You may read a novel and think you’d have done something in a different way, and you can go down that road with your own characters.
It is true, though, that a lot has been done before and that you’ll easily find yourself in a position pondering on how, exactly, your story would stand out. And here’s where I am going to say something potentially controversial – a sense of familiarity is not necessarily a bad thing.
If you’re going to write an adventure piece set in a world with humans and elves and dwarves and halflings, that’s fine. There will always be readers who are into that. If you’re going to have a character who lives a life much like our own suddenly caught up in a mad event that may or may not involve chases and explosions, that is fine, too. There’s a reason why novels of that nature keep on being written, and why movies of that kind keep on being produced. People like them. They like the thrill, the excitement, perhaps because the character’s doing things and experiencing things that we never will, and we can come along for the ride from the safety of our own environment.
Don’t be shy, then, to use elements that you enjoyed as a reader/viewer. As creative people we tend to borrow from others. The line is between taking inspiration from others and being a copycat, the latter being a bad thing. The world doesn’t need another story about a halfling who needs to destroy a certain ring, nor do we need another movie on a robot from the future coming to destroy/protect a woman/kid – sorry, Arnie.
Look at the world around you. What’s going on in your country? In other countries? What are the big issues of the day? Where do you think we’re headed? From reality, you can then apply a what if. You can even turn it upside-down completely.
Look at the mundane, and consider what it would be like if it became something unusual. How would you react? How would the people you know react? How do you think the wider population would react? The government?
How would you respond if you suddenly discovered a big secret? What if you, or your partner, or your friend, or your child, witnessed something that sounds impossible? What would you do if you accidentally made a discovery that could change everything?
Most of all, what kind of adventure would you like to go on? Because you’ve got to have fun sharing it with others, and if you’re enjoying yourself, the likelihood is all the greater that they will, too.
I wish you lots of inspiration,
Kit
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Here are some contests and activities that might inspire you:
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The Action/Adventure Newsletter Team welcomes any and all questions, suggestions, thoughts and feedback, so please don't hesitate to write in! 
Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Action/Adventure Newsletter Team
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Action/Adventure: February 08, 2017 Issue [#8121]
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