  Action/Adventure
This week: Put your Adventurer in His/Her Place Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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Greetings! Welcome to this week's edition of the WDC Action & Adventure Newsletter
Each day is a blank page, an adventure to be written, action and re-action ~ be pro-active. Writing itself is action ~ creating an adventure for your readers to embrace in prose or verse. I'm back again in search of adventure and hope you will share with me this exploration and maybe create one of your own in prose or verse.
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Greetings, fellow Adventurers ~
Your Adventurer in story or verse has a life, and that life takes place somewhere. That 'somewhere', where the inciting action takes place, as well as the 'somewhere's' the Adventurer must pass through, arrive at, leave from, each have an impact on the Adventurer. Yes, I'm talking setting the adventure. Effective use of setting, including props, can facilitate later events in your story, inciting action.
Today, most readers want to get into the action right away, but the setting of the precipitating presents an opportunity to to draw the reader into the adventurer's life, have some empathy, if not always sympathy, for the adventurer's need to act. Consider how much information you get from settings in your everyday life! When you go to a job interview at a place you've never been, you're a bit nervous. As you walk into the building, address the receptionist, you notice the surroundings. What kind of pictures adorn the walls, are the plants healthy or droopy, what type of furnishings greet visitors, are workers shouting through shut doors or laughing in open doorways. Does the receptionist smile at you or point to a chair without looking up from his desk. By the time you enter the boss's office, you already have a much better idea of what to expect, just from a fairly unconscious assessment of the setting. It makes you a bit more comfortable, just having some idea of where you're going. And setting does the same thing for readers of a story.
Be careful of runaway adjectives and adverbs when introducing the setting. Instead, use strong, specific nouns and verbs whenever possible.
Be wary also of cliches, which like a multiplicity of very long descriptions will dull your reader's senses. They've already seen the book-lined study, and the golden stretch of beach out the window no longer elicits a desire to walk in the sand, because they've already been there, more often than not. Note ~ I've used a 'multiplicity' of cliches in this paragraph - make my point??
Atmosphere shows the overall feeling of a place, be it threatening, welcoming, etc. - and it depends largely on your word choice, as a room with "oppressive low ceilings and blood-red draperies" feels much different to a reader than a room with "cozy low ceilings and cheerful red curtains." (Note: The atmosphere would still differ if the ceiling "loomed above their heads" or "cradled them like a womb," and you'd have used strong nouns and verbs to achieve the effect, rather than adjectives.)
The type of information you share with your setting is simple, but important to providing a reason for the adventure and allowing your reader to empathize with your adventurer. And remember to use all your adventurer's senses to interact with the setting, so your readers also can enter the adventurer's world.
 Where is the adventure to begin? An office building, a jail? in Cleveland, or Moscow? on earth or outer space?
When are we engaging our adventure? Is it the 21st century? the 13th century? an imagined future?
Is it winter? Is it hot, cold, wet, dry, raining?
You don't want to offer all this in the opening, or even in every story, just give enough details, let your readers see, hear, smell, taste, touch what they need to engage in the adventure. You don't need to excite all five of your audience's senses in every story, but if you're only describing what things look like, then your setting - and your adventure - will not feel as real as it could.
We don't see or hear or sense everything when we enter a room. We walk through the room, or across the lawn, or through the lobby, or across the rooftop. Movement makes things more interesting. Don't put everything in one place, give your characters a reason to move around. This is very effective in adventure stories, by placing crucial items in a difficult to access place: a locked drawer, a far-away country, high in a tree, etc., the adventurer (and reader) are compelled to take action.
Setting can also move the plot by raising questions and expectations in your reader's mind. Use setting to capture your audience's imagination, to make them want to learn more, engage in the action.
The setting can also provide insight into the Adventurer's life, motivation and reason for taking the action to engage in the adventure. Again, avoid the stereotyped 'fortune hunter' or 'scruffy absent-minded professor' or 'gun-toting veteran of a foreign war' and instead provide an item or two to make the reader look at and want to engage the adventurer.
If we weave elements of the setting(s) into the story or poem from the start, providing depth to the adventurer and engaging the reader's empathy for the adventure itself, both will engage the action and want to see it through to its believable, but not foreseen, resolution.
Fellow Adventurers! Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Check out a few insightful adventures in prose and verse ~ how do they draw you in? make you want to engage in the aventure? ~ I hope you take a moment to let the writer know your thoughts{e:smile
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A college student studying abroad in Europe gets more adventure than he ever anticipated.
#1736118 by mfernandez  |
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I thank you for sharing this exploration with me and invite you to create an adventure that engages the senses and incites the action, along with the reader, to engage in the adventure.
Until we next meet,
Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Action/Adventure: January 19, 2011 Issue [#4141]
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