  Action/Adventure
This week: Edited by: larryp
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Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man.
John Eldredge, Wild at Heart
For my first guest edit of the Action/Adventure Newsletter, I want to approach adventure from the reader's perspective. Adventure readers desire to be taken from the mundane and into the three uns.
larryp
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| ASIN: 0996254145 |
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Amazon's Price: $ 12.95
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Most of the books I read are in some way related to the adventure genre. As a poet, I write very few short stories, but the majority I do are in the adventure genre. I like adventure. I think adventure is wrapped up in the heart of a man. Even when writing poetry, I often write in the adventure genre.
Adventure confronts the uns – the unfamiliar, the unknowns, and the unexpected. Life can be uneventful without adventure; adventure adds flavor. This is what makes the adventure genre so popular. As writers, we have the opportunity to take a reader into the uns – to visit places they have not been or to experience what they have not yet experienced.
For instance, one of my favorite authors, John Eldredge, writes non-fiction and includes adventure stories in his books to illustrate his points. In his latest book The Way of the Wild at Heart, he relates a time he and his family, with an experienced guide, hiked into Chichagof Island off the coast of Alaska – an island inhabited by grizzly bears.
The meadow was actually more of a bog, a low-lying jungle of brushy groundcover about two feet high, barely supported underneath by another foot of soaked moss and peat. A very difficult place to walk. Our guide led us to a trail of what seemed to be massive footprints, with a stride of about two feet between them, pressed down into the bog and making a path through it. “It’s a marked trail,’ he said. A path created by footprints of bears. “This one is probably centuries old. For as long as the bears have been on this island, they’ve taken this path. The cubs follow their elders, putting their feet exactly where the older bears walk. That’s how they learn to cross this place.”
John Eldredge, The Way of the Wild at Heart
John Eldredge continues by showing how he felt being in this place. He took me to an unknown place and showed me the unfamiliar and the unexpected. What an adventure this would be to take! As writers, we can take our readers to such places. When I read this story, I was sitting on the shores of a nearby lake, but I was immediately transported to Chichagof Island and became part of an adventure. I imagined walking in the tracks the grizzly bears have walked in for many years.
Most people live the majority of life in the mundane. When a reader picks up a book or flips the pages of a magazine to a short story, he wants to leave the mundane temporarily and go to places he has not yet been, to experience things he has not yet experienced.
So, when writing in the adventure/action genre, consider the uns. Take your reader to places he has not seen; help him experience things he may never experience otherwise. The reader may be reading in the comfort of an easy chair, but he wants to experience something different. This is what I love most about reading and writing in the adventure genre. Most likely, I will never see the bear tracks on Chichagof Island, but one Saturday morning, I was there, experiencing the unfamiliar in a place unknown to me.
The place doesn’t need to be an unknown place, just take the reader on an adventure - let the unexpected happen. Release the reader from the mundane, if only for a short time.
Little Billy’s mother was always telling him exactly what he was allowed to do and what he was not allowed to do. All the things he was allowed to do were boring. All the things he was not allowed to do were exciting. One of the things he was NEVER NEVER allowed to do, the most exciting of them all, was to go out through the garden gate all by himself and explore the world beyond.
Raold Dahl, The Minpins
Take the reader past the garden gate into the world beyond!
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Here a few stories of Adventure that take the reader to one of the uns.
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Since I have no feedback, I will ask a question.
When reading a story or novel, how important are the uns - the unfamiliar, the unexpected, and the unknown - to the plot of the story? Do you like to experience the unusual (ha, another un!)  when reading a story?
Remember the importance of the uns when writing your next adventure story. |
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Action/Adventure: April 25, 2007 Issue [#1670]
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