On genre: adventure stories

[StillStunned]

This is another of those genres that's probably hard to define. I'll rule out fantasy and sci-fi, plus their various subgenres. Even so, adventure stories extend into loads of other genres: historical, Western, mystery, Gothic and YA, to mention only the ones that come to my mind immediately. So maybe we can consider them as a Venn diagram: sure, this story might be set in the Old West, but it's also an adventure, while this tale involves ghosts and vampires, but has the tone of an adventure story.

So anyway. These are some of my favourites. Even without venturing into fantasy and sci-fi, I like a story that's strongly plot-driven with regular excitement, characters that are interesting but only in support of the plot, a bit of romance perhaps, and basically a happy outcome. These are stories that get my imagination working, preferably if they're set in strange locales around the world and feature a bickering hero and heroine, a sly villain and a mysterious McGuffin.

I've recently been rereading some of Elizabeth Peters's novels. While they involve mysteries and hints of the supernatural (which are almost always debunked), they're pretty solidly in the adventure genre. Never for an instant do you truly believe that the hero will be shot, that the heroine will actually be ravished by the bad guy. But you keep reading, because you buy into the fiction of the fiction, as it were.

Robert E. Howard wrote loads of non-fantasy adventure stories as well. "The Shadow of the Vulture" might be the best-known, because it features a proto-Red Sonja, but he also had stories about medieval knights and 19th century soldiers. Those stories are more likely to leave secondary characters dead, but even so there's a notion that the hero is invincible.

C.S. Forester's "Hornblower" books are also adventure tales, albeit with a strong basis in history and military/naval fiction. The same with George Macdonald Fraser's "Flashman Papers", which have added boobies and bits. Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" series too.

(Actually, I'm tempted to include sci-fi and fantasy after all, because things like Barsoom and the Stainless Steel Rat are at least half adventure story.)

Let's hear your thoughts. Do you agree that these stories are often characterised by a lighter tone? Does that make them shallower, or less meaningful? What are your favourites?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Ignoring wholly supernatural adventures - of which I have written many - I guess my gender-swapped Indiana Jones and disguised Lara Croft novella is pretty much pure adventure, with calls out to both the movies and the games (which I know vicariously through my SO, though I’ve watched the different TR movies). It’s certainly got a lighter tone, even when one of the FMCs apparently dies.

 

[StillStunned]

It’s certainly got a lighter tone, even when one of the FMCs apparently dies.

Like I mentioned in my OP, I think it's a staple that the reader isn't really expected to believe that bad things will happen to important characters. If you look at movies like "Indiana Jones" or "Romancing the Stone"/"The Jewel of the Nile", do you really expect Indy or Jack Colton to actually die?

On that note: last time I watched "Romancing the Stone", I was inspired to write an adventure story like that. It's still sitting in my WIP folder at a little over 5k words.

 

[SimonDoom]

Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove comes to mind right away as one of my favorite adventure novels. Every character in the story has his or her own adventure, against the harsh backdrop of the American West. It's a great yarn, but it's also beautifully written.

The Patrick O'Brian Jack Aubrey novels are great adventure. Lots of derring-do, but the writing is always top notch, too. One learns a lot about sailing ships.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Like I mentioned in my OP, I think it's a staple that the reader isn't really expected to believe that bad things will happen to important characters. If you look at movies like "Indiana Jones" or "Romancing the Stone"/"The Jewel of the Nile", do you really expect Indy or Jack Colton to actually die?

On that note: last time I watched "Romancing the Stone", I was inspired to write an adventure story like that. It's still sitting in my WIP folder at a little over 5k words.

Precisely - it’s kinda low stakes from that POV.

 

[StillStunned]

Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove comes to mind right away as one of my favorite adventure novels. Every character in the story has his or her own adventure, against the harsh backdrop of the American West. It's a great yarn, but it's also beautifully written.

I'm not sure I'd classify it as an adventure story. I listened to the audiobook earlier this year, and I think the main focus is gritty realism and the characters' personal journeys. It's epic, though, no doubt.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I'm not sure I'd classify it as an adventure story. I listened to the audiobook earlier this year, and I think the main focus is gritty realism and the characters' personal journeys. It's epic, though, no doubt.

I strongly disagree.

All the relationships exist within the adventure of getting the cattle from Texas to Montana. The "gritty realism" is thematic to the adventure, and the personal journeys sub-plots to it.

 

[NotWise]

I had a yen to write a swashbuckling adventure, and that gave rise to Escape from Cimarron. I like the story, but it's one of my lower-scoring stories. Comments suggest that the swashbuckling part was too much of a distraction for a lot of readers who picked it up for its T/I content. I probably won't do that again.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

This is another of those genres that's probably hard to define. I'll rule out fantasy and sci-fi, plus their various subgenres. Even so, adventure stories extend into loads of other genres: historical, Western, mystery, Gothic and YA, to mention only the ones that come to my mind immediately. So maybe we can consider them as a Venn diagram: sure, this story might be set in the Old West, but it's also an adventure, while this tale involves ghosts and vampires, but has the tone of an adventure story.

So anyway. These are some of my favourites. Even without venturing into fantasy and sci-fi, I like a story that's strongly plot-driven with regular excitement, characters that are interesting but only in support of the plot, a bit of romance perhaps, and basically a happy outcome. These are stories that get my imagination working, preferably if they're set in strange locales around the world and feature a bickering hero and heroine, a sly villain and a mysterious McGuffin.

I've recently been rereading some of Elizabeth Peters's novels. While they involve mysteries and hints of the supernatural (which are almost always debunked), they're pretty solidly in the adventure genre. Never for an instant do you truly believe that the hero will be shot, that the heroine will actually be ravished by the bad guy. But you keep reading, because you buy into the fiction of the fiction, as it were.

Robert E. Howard wrote loads of non-fantasy adventure stories as well. "The Shadow of the Vulture" might be the best-known, because it features a proto-Red Sonja, but he also had stories about medieval knights and 19th century soldiers. Those stories are more likely to leave secondary characters dead, but even so there's a notion that the hero is invincible.

C.S. Forester's "Hornblower" books are also adventure tales, albeit with a strong basis in history and military/naval fiction. The same with George Macdonald Fraser's "Flashman Papers", which have added boobies and bits. Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" series too.

(Actually, I'm tempted to include sci-fi and fantasy after all, because things like Barsoom and the Stainless Steel Rat are at least half adventure story.)

Let's hear your thoughts. Do you agree that these stories are often characterised by a lighter tone? Does that make them shallower, or less meaningful? What are your favourites?

If a relationship between two people isn't an adventure, I have no interest in it.

 

[Britva415]

Do you agree that these stories are often characterised by a lighter tone?

Yes, "lighter" in the sense that one trusts the story to not go (too) dark or kill the darlings. If this sense isn't present, I don't know if it's adventure.

Does that make them shallower, or less meaningful?

The lightness isn't what makes the story deep or shallow, meaningful or empty. The height of the stakes - which could range from "get treasure" to "homesickness" to "apocalyptic" - isn't, either.

An adventure story can explore weighty themes. One can include dark content as long as it doesn't stain the protags. It can touch / affect them, but not pervert or suborn them. An adventure story can forfend grim outcomes without papering over the grimness. They don't always or often go there, but they can.

I think I would also say that the ones which do go there tend to cross into other genres while preserving the adventure genre's features: Energetic storytelling impetus, a rather static protagonist who remains more-or-less unsullied by events, geographic journeys, environmental obstacles, etc.

For example, C. Buehlman's Between Two Fires essentially "ends well" even though it's set in a nearly literal hellscape. What saves it from just becoming out-and-out horror is basically a deus ex machina device. It subverts both horror and adventure genres by mixing them, but it's still horror and adventure too.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Yes, "lighter" in the sense that one trusts the story to not go (too) dark or kill the darlings. If this sense isn't present, I don't know if it's adventure.


The lightness isn't what makes the story deep or shallow, meaningful or empty. The height of the stakes - which could range from "get treasure" to "homesickness" to "apocalyptic" - isn't, either.

An adventure story can explore weighty themes. One can include dark content as long as it doesn't stain the protags. It can touch / affect them, but not pervert or suborn them. An adventure story can forfend grim outcomes without papering over the grimness. They don't always or often go there, but they can.

I think I would also say that the ones which do go there tend to cross into other genres while preserving the adventure genre's features: Energetic storytelling impetus, a rather static protagonist who remains more-or-less unsullied by events, geographic journeys, environmental obstacles, etc.

For example, C. Buehlman's Between Two Fires essentially "ends well" even though it's set in a nearly literal hellscape. What saves it from just becoming out-and-out horror is basically a deus ex machina device. It subverts both horror and adventure genres by mixing them, but it's still horror and adventure too.

Moby Dick is an adventure story.

 

[Britva415]

Moby Dick is an adventure story.

Not to Moby Dick it ain't!

Or Ahab, for that matter

 

[Callum_M]

I agree that adventure is such a massively broad genre. So many stories can be classified as adventure yet can look wildly different from one another.

I first saw Indiana Jones when I was 3 and that set the standard in many ways. I have wanted to be pirate since I was 4, and absolutely reveled in the 90s bringing back the swashbuckler. (I may or may not own a lot of swords.)

To me, what makes a good adventure is the hero saving the day. I want to see heroes win. But that doesn’t mean the story is light and or the stakes feel low because I’m expecting them to win. The hero can die, they could fail to save the love interest, or they are somehow damaged along the way. The world is saved, but maybe their world is crushed.

I often expect the hero to ride off into the sunset, but the tone and feel of that sunset may not always be bright and hopeful.

 

[Britva415]

London's The Sea-Wolf is an adventure story which is not light in tone or theme, and not shallow in terms of ambition and intent. It was intended to satirize and criticize Nietzsche.

 

[StillStunned]

I recall some adventure books I read as a kid. Not just things like the Famous Five and Winnetou, but several that I can't remember much about. But - and these were books in my primary school library - they involved regular firefights between the boys who were the heroes and various pirates, indigenous tribes and assorted baddies. And they were written and set in the post-WW2 era. Pretty astonishing, looking back now.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Define adventure...
For an agoraphobic, a stroll to the corner dairy could be an adventure....

 

[EmilyMiller]

Define adventure...
For an agoraphobic, a stroll to the corner dairy could be an adventure....

 

[StillStunned]

Define adventure...
For an agoraphobic, a stroll to the corner dairy could be an adventure....

Sounds closer to the horror genre.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Sounds closer to the horror genre.

Perhaps, in which case. Define adventure... Does it require fast cars... Guns, espionage, travel... what exactly is required to be described as adventure?

 

[StillStunned]

Perhaps, in which case. Define adventure... Does it require fast cars... Guns, espionage, travel... what exactly is required to be described as adventure?

Well, that's part of the question in this thread, isn't it? I don't think it requires fast cars, guns or espionage, because there are plenty of adventure stories set in historical times.

Travel seems to feature a lot, though. Maybe not foreign travel, or even long-distance travel. But at the minimum an unknown locale, or some form of physical, emotional or mental journey from the protagonist's usual (and comfortable) existence.

There should be danger, and a desired outcome - survival, a treasure, accomplishing a goal.

And I still say that lightheartedness is what sets these stories apart from thrillers, dramas and murder mysteries.