Adventure is a genre that never gets old. No matter how many releases there are, the adventure will keep the reader engaged and determined to learn and know about the story until the end. You can make anything possible when it comes to writing an adventure story. Adventure books pair up with several sub-genres, such as Lord of the Rings, a classic fantasy novel with a load of adventure. The trick here is to create a strong adventure story structure and then add your sub-genre to it to amplify it.

Here, we have gathered the best tips and tricks for choosing your own adventure story and providing you with adventure story ideas that will spark your creativity and help you with your first or next writing project! So, let’s get right into it!

What are Great Adventure Books?

Adventure is a creative genre where your imagination can go wild. The writer can take readers to a whole new world of extraordinary worlds filled with excitement, discovery, and thrill. Great adventure books successfully take readers to a whole new world, providing a feeling of escapism from reality. Adventure can be paired with another sub-genre, which can range from classical novels to self-discovery mysteries to partial romance or fiction.

With adventure, you can add almost anything and turn it into a magical reality for readers to enjoy. Adventure books cater to a wide range of tastes. Whether it be discovering new territories, escaping an island, or facing unforeseen challenges, adventure story ideas are endless and can never go wrong.

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Main Elements of Great Adventure Books

Here, we will discuss the important elements that great adventure books have included in them. Some of these points are obvious, and writers can miss them, which is natural. Writer’s block happens, so here is a list to help you stay in check of your story.

1. The Quest

The quest of your adventure story, or the overall plot/the action part, is where the protagonist of the main character you create for the quest will have to solve. Your quest can be about anything from finding missing treasure, hunting down villains, or solving a tough case or puzzle. Once you figure out a solid quest, you can shape your main character with a more developed personality matching the story’s plot. This makes the whole adventure narrative fall into one solid place.

2. The Protagonist

Now that your quest is figured out, you can better create your protagonist. This means your protagonist or hero will best fit into the story’s quest and underlying issues or causes. You can form their strong points and shortcomings more easily. However, you can either make your protagonist a superhuman from the start or create a character development journey for them where they learn things along the way while solving the quest. Whatever path you take, you must ensure that your protagonist is “fit” for the quest you created.

3. Create an Unfamiliar Path

Without an unfamiliar path, there will be no discovery, and when there is no discovery, where is the adventure? This comes as part of the quest. The hero’s journey will compel them to leave their physical comfort zone (their familiar surroundings) and enter a new, unfamiliar, and sometimes difficult environment. This undiscovered territory will give rise to conflicts, such as character vs. supernatural or character vs. nature. Being in this unfamiliar terrain will expose the hero to greater risks and elevate the tension in the storyline.

4. The Risk

What risks and sacrifices does the protagonist have to make? What causes these risks, what decisions were made on their own and what decisions were made by the protagonist? Try answering these questions to come up with realistic solutions according to your quest. The risk you choose should be able to be solved. If the risk seems too much to handle in your adventure story, then you should consider changing it.

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5. The Villain

There has to be a villain in your adventure story, and this will help your protagonist stand out even more from the adventure story. While it is unnecessary to include a main villain while choosing our adventure story, it can add that extra touch to the overall plot.

6. The Transformation

As the journey goes on, say that your character lacks something that they learn later after achieving a major task, defeating the villain, saving lives, or so on. Say your protagonist has some shortcomings, so after this long, tiring adventure, your protagonist has a major character development where they learn the best of their potential and their purpose in the story.

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10 Tips for Writing a Great Adventure Story

If you’re writing an adventure story, use these tips to build suspense, develop your hero, and take readers on an exciting journey. Here are helpful tips for writing a great adventure story:

1. Read Adventure Novels

If this is your first time writing an adventure novel, or you are planning to add more ideas to your mind, this is the best tip to begin with. Lots and lots of reading. Reading other adventure novels with different sub-genres will help you understand what an adventure novel is all about.

Consider “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer, a clever nonfiction novel about a climbing season on Mt. Everest. Reading other adventure authors will improve your own writing.

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2. Structure the Story

The hero’s journey framework includes all the elements needed to tell an exciting tale of adventure within the basic adventure story framework. Follow the step-by-step framework and story structure to create your story, but add your own twist to the basic structure with unique characters, settings, and plot.

3. Create a Strong Character

What made Indiana Jones such an interesting hero? He was brave, but he had weaknesses. For instance, his paralyzing fear of snakes was a severe obstacle when he was in the middle of the jungle.

It is important to create a main character your readers can enjoy but one that still has flaws to create inner conflict, making the character more relatable. Line the external conflicts they are facing on their journey. Make them relatable and likable so that the readers can root for them. This also helps to reveal why they have been chosen for the mission.

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4. Create a Catalyst

Come up with a strong catalyst that sparks the hero’s adventure, whether it’s a mystery that needs to be cracked or a hunt for an artifact. The catalyst should push the plot, be strong enough to start the protagonist’s change and create risk.

5. Create a Supporting Character

In many adventure stories, the hero is not alone. A trusty helper, friend, or sidekick boosting them on their journey is a great way to add interest to the story and the characters. Hermione and Ron in the Harry Potter books are good examples of this. They serve as Harry’s sounding board during the most pivotal and dangerous moments.

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6. Elevate Your Setting at Risk Level

In an adventure story, a character is typically moved from a familiar setting to a new environment. For example, if your character lives in a city, consider placing them in a starkly different setting, like a desolate wilderness. To add an extra boost of excitement, you can throw in the challenge of not having a map.

If you prefer to keep the characters in their familiar environment, then consider introducing a supernatural power or force of nature that transforms the surroundings into a dangerous and treacherous landscape.

7. Create a Steady Pace

A victorious adventure novel keeps the readers on the edge of their seats with endless suspense. Be sure to keep the story moving, even between surprising plot points. When you have finished your first draft, go back and read it thoroughly to identify any pacing issues and fix anything that is too descriptive and may slow the story down.

8. Increase the Risk Levels if Needed

Make sure your protagonist feels unsettled throughout your story. There should always be something putting their safety at risk, which could be the antagonist closing in or an environmental element creating danger. Your hero must face and overcome many obstacles and setbacks. Enjoy stacking the odds against your hero, as this will lead to a bigger payoff at the climax and make the quest worth their huge risk.

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9. Create a Timescale

Racing against time puts tension on the main character. Increase the stakes by giving your hero a finish point to reach their goal. If they don’t meet the deadline, something horrible will happen. One way to approach this is to create an antagonist on the same quest as your hero, so they are racing one another.

10. Protagonist Character Development

Readers want to see how the main character changes, overcomes challenges, and reveals their true self. From the moment your readers learn about your character, they want to see whether there is room for further improvement in their overall development.

For example, if your character is quite sarcastic and tends to hurt people’s feelings after a certain climax, struggle, or introduction to a new character that supports this development stage, do they learn the art of being humble and down-to-earth?

From the moment you introduce your readers to your hero until the climax, your hero will transform and emerge as a changed person. The obstacles and risks they endure will give them a new perspective on the world.

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Make Your Own Adventure Books with BookCreating

Now that you know what makes great adventure books, it is time to put that into action. It is important to remember that writing a book from scratch can be difficult since the editing process and further improvements and changes take time. But that does not mean it is unachievable. The world knows that the best of the best authors hire professional ghostwriters; there’s no secret to this.

Taking advantage of this opportunity to create your adventure book with an affordable and creative team at Book Creating is essential. We provide a wide range of eBook writing services that will elevate your story writing to a whole new level. Crafting a book is enjoyable and exhilarating, but it can lead to writer’s block and various errors, repetitions, and jumbled story structures. You can always rely on our professionals to assist with adventure story ideas and more.