This week: Location, Location, Location Edited by: Lilli 🧿 ☕ More Newsletters By This Editor
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Can you have an adventure story that is not in an exotic location?
Yes! Yes, you can!
An adventure forces action from the main character in response to the peril in the story, and the action must then affect the story -- so the story affects the main character and the main character affects the story. If BOTH things happen, you certainly have a working adventure story and the setting is more of a backdrop to the actual adventure.
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What makes a great adventure story?
Protagonist:
The main character (protagonist) of an action-adventure story will most often start out as an ordinary person before they embark on their adventure. The character should be presented with a problem they need to solve. This quest will ignite the plot with a series of events that create the storyline.
Antagonist:
As a protagonist is on their journey, there are almost always bad guys in pursuit. Antagonists increase the stakes for the main character and heighten the tension.
Setting:
The protagonist’s journey will take them from their familiar, everyday surroundings to a new, unfamiliar environment. This unfamiliar terrain will create conflict, like character versus nature or character versus the supernatural. Being in a strange land should create greater risks for the main character that will increase tension. Oftentimes these settings start out in the most ordinary of places and evolve through the imagination of the character, as in Where the Wild Things Are. The main character, Max, is sent to his room for misbehaving and his adventure begins there and through his imagination.
Risks and Transformation:
A character faces danger and challenges throughout an adventure story. Their quest forces them to make decisions that put their lives, or the lives of others, at risk. The transformation the main character experiences while on the journey puts them through a metamorphosis from an ordinary person to a hero.
Okay...now more on Setting:
Stories can have a realistic setting—a place and time that exists or has existed—or they can be set in a completely made-up place or time. For most stories, the setting is an important element.
The aspects of Setting:
'Place' is the geographical location where the story happens.
The place can be real or imagined.
'Time' is where the story happens; past or present.
The culture of the characters—how they dress and speak, and what is acceptable behavior for the time—can also be explained by the setting.
Many times the setting highlights the elements of the plot. For instance, if you begin reading a story that takes place in a remote spot in the desert, you know that most likely you’re not going to be reading about attending a fancy party or a sports game at a crowded stadium. You can make predictions as you read. Some of those predictions may be easy to make because of the setting. You might find mystery in the lonely desert. The story might be about animals and people who live in remote places, or the story might be about the beauty of a remote desert. In The Three Little Pigs, one setting—the rickety houses of two of the pigs—supports the plot that the pigs aren’t safe from the big bad wolf. It’s not until the setting changes to the brick house built by the third pig that we see the pigs are safe.
When the setting is created by the imagination of your character, the writer has greater leeway and the reader can then expect the unexpected, a surprise at every turn.
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