  Action/Adventure
This week: A vivid engaging adventure~set the scene Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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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.
Welcome to this week's Action/Adventure Newsletter, where we explore (action) adventures to create for our characters, our readers, ourselves.
Just because you know it all, you don't have to show it all. You must have at some point heard (or said) "That's more than I needed to know." |
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Greetings, fellow Adventurers ~
I saw a bit of action the past couple of weeks. Some explosions, people running scared down a main street, and images of a series of explosions roiling with thick black smoke. Okay, this vivid imagery was make-believe as The Avengers movie background is being filmed in my city. Cars flipped over with minor explosions, upside-down delivery trucks, and yes, the people running down the street (local extras and walk-ons) in the city vied with the with thick black smoke of explosions in a suburb and some action in Germantown, where both stars and stunt doubles showed up in the evening to deal with a crushed car in front of some temporary marquees (in front of Public Square, which was also where we saw Santa say. "You'll shoot your eye out" in The Christmas Story).
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 events present opportunities to draw the reader into the adventurer's life and surroundings.
I did spend one lunch hour up on East 9th, which was the setting for the running people, and some smoky explosions with New York Fire Department and New York Police and the upturned delivery vehicle. We grabbed a hotdog and soda from a street vendor (real) and stood on the corner of Ninth and Euclid restrained by the police tape (real) trying to catch an explosion (set for the film) at the edge of 42nd Street (illusion) for about an hour. We saw cranes moving filters to change shadows in the 90+ degree heat and for an hour. Too bad I didn't have a friend working in one of the office buildings on Ninth, who had birds' eye views of the 'action' ongoing.
I did get a first-hand view of the process of setting an action film. The director moved vehicles, had car doors opened and then closed, had overhead boom cameras shift from one side of the street to the other for a different angle. Actors, extras, stunt doubles, responded to command and during the whole hour we watched, we didn't see a 'boom.' The setting had to be just right .
I take from that experience the lesson that, no matter how well I can see what's happening in my adventure story, how well I can envision the action, I need to create that vivid, tactile image for others, that readers can enter the image I've created. The adventure then becomes as real to them as in my mind's eye. I want to give them an idea of what to expect, a setting which is vivid yet not obvious to make them see what I see, and give them some idea of the obstacles the adventurer faces and where he/she is going. .
So, how do I do this in a story or poem. I don't need 'a thousand words' to paint my picture . What I believe I need, and what I've found in adventures I've read, that draw me into the action and make me want to continue the adventure, consist of vivid, tactile images of the action; transitions that take me from one place to another; a quest that has imminent importance not only to the adventurer, but others who need him/her to undertake the adventure and attain the quest; and yes, some 'bad guys' who try to keep him/her from succeeding in the quest.
Then, with vivid imagery, but without long descriptions and by avoiding cliches like the crush of rush hour traffic or office workers running pell-mell down the street (a couple here worthy of some vivid rewriting, I'm sure you agree), show the action so that readers can see and feel and hear it.
Create as well the atmosphere to show the overall feeling of the place, be it threatening, welcoming, etc. The filming of the battle with Loki was at twilight and later, not because most of the office workers and other gawkers would be gone, but because that is the sense the writers wanted to convey, the threat of darkness adding to the threat of loss in battle . Strong nouns and vivid verbs, rather than adjective and adverbs, achieve this effect in print.
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 and when does the adventure begin, continue and resolve? Take the reader into the action from an office building, a jail, in Cleveland or New York or Moscow or Antarctica.... Is it daytime, night, raining or a heat-shimmering day?
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, but let it evolve throught the action.
. 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, atop an office tower, up 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.
Now, I'm not giving away any secrets here, but this is a spoiler, so move on to the featured items (some good reads to come ) if you like. When you see people running down 42nd Street in New York, or a car being flipped, you're really seeing East Ninth between Euclid and Prospect in Cleveland, Ohio. And Germantown is on Public Square's southwest quadrant and those explosions with the thick black smoke are really in Parma, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland). So have fun with the knowledge ~ you're one up on your friends.
Fellow Adventurers! Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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See how some members of our Community may know it all, but show just what you need to know to engage in an active (sometimes explosire) adventure
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| |  | It Had to Happen (ASR)
A spoof of James Bond's ilk: villains, weapons, evil plots, and more! (Honorable Mention)
#1152876 by LeeReay  |
Now, how about jumping in an adventure - show what you know, give just enough detail to get yourself (your character) through it
| |  | In the movies (18+)
You enter your favorite movie, and do whatever you want! Please rate, review, and add.
#1556456 by evil dude |
Still a couple spots left in this challenge, as well as a chance to show your skills in perception (review)
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Thank you for sharing this exploration. May you show just what your readers need to know and, yes, set them up
May the adventures you pen in prose or in verse
be a thrilling and vivid joy to write and read ~
as we celebrate Writing.Com's Eleven Years.
 Happy Birthday Writing.Com
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Action/Adventure: August 31, 2011 Issue [#4581]
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