Adventure: The Story of Movement and Risk

Adventure is the genre of movement and risk. A character wants something, the way is blocked, and the story proceeds by attempts. Its promise is momentum, and its currency is physical: weather, distance, injury, time, the height of a wall. It overlaps freely with every other genre of plot — a historical adventure, a science-fictional one, a romance with a journey in it — and when it does, both promises are in force. Characteristic techniques - An active protagonist who decides things rather than being carried. - Obstacles that escalate instead of repeating. - A goal with a clock on it: a tide, a season, a deadline. - A setback that costs something the character cannot get back. - A resourceful solution prepared earlier in the story and not explained at the moment of use. - A physical world described precisely enough to be dangerous — the cold, the thirst, the weight of the rope. An original example, written for this platform The river had come up in the night and the ford was gone. We had four hours before the light went and one of those hours belonged to the hill on the far side, which we could not see and had been told was steep. My father put the bag on his head and went in first, feeling for the stones with his feet, and I followed him because there was nothing else to do with the morning, and because the water at his waist was a measurement I could use. Halfway across he stopped, which is the moment I have kept: a man standing in a river, at his own waistline, doing arithmetic out loud. How the example works The obstacle is stated in the first sentence, the clock in the second, and the physical fact in the third. The character acts rather than waiting. The water at the father's waist becomes the measurement the narrator uses, which is how adventure keeps its stakes concrete, and the second paragraph ends on the smallest possible image of risk. Practical guidance Write the goal in one sentence and the clock in another before drafting. Keep the geography straight: know where every road, wall and river is and how long each takes. Make the protagonist solve at least one problem with the world's materials rather than with luck. Exercise to try Write a page in which a character must reach a place before dark, is delayed by weather, and solves the problem with something already in their hands. Revision tips Check that the protagonist acts in every scene, because a rescued character ends the adventure. Check that the obstacles escalate and are not the same obstacle three times. Cut every solution that arrives with a new character, since the reader has not been given the pieces. Finally, check the physical facts: distance, cold, injury and time are the genre's honesty.