  Action/Adventure
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Let Her Live
There are better ways to start an action/adventure than to kill a woman or girl.
A personal pet peeve of mine and sure-fire turn off from any action/adventure, no matter how gripping, is when the inciting incident is the murder of a mother, wife, daughter. Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen action heroes who get into action because a female was murdered in the most heinous way.
Of course, revenge is a motive as good as any to start off a story. On the other hand, why not get revenge on somebody for doing something else besides killing the hero's female life companion to get him off the couch? Is this really who we are as a society that our story tellers who "make it big" got there by killing a fictional woman?
Yes, there are plenty of despicable crimes in the news involving female victims every day. That alone makes it so boring when a fiction writer chooses to take something (unfortunately too common) to build a story around it.
As you plot your next action/adventure story or novel, challenge yourself to come up with an inciting incident that is more imaginative than a dead woman, man, or child. You can do it. Industrial espionage, environmental catastrophe, dangerous animal escape, spaceship landing. Wait. That is Sci-Fi. Nevermind. You get the idea though.
To those action/adventure writers on the site who have a story where nobody dies, send me the link to it via the submission tool below. I will feature it in my next newsletter.
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|  | Wolf (E)
A fight to save his pack from destruction
#1923792 by Shawlyn  |
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Comments I got for my last Action Adventure Newsletter "No Happy Ending for Heroes"
buckman wrote: I tend to disagree with part of your editorial …Doesn't that just kill all suspense for you? It does tone down the peril and lessens my engagement in the story for me… Since story writing first began the hero, or heroin wins in the end. As Campbell said, it is the hero (heroin) journey that engages us. Take Odysseus in the ‘Odyssey’, Jason in ‘The Golden fleece’ or even modern day heroes such as Jim Hawkins in ‘Treasure Island’, Harry Potter, Jack Sparrow, or even Riddick. We automatically assume they will triumph in the end, one way or another, so it is more a question of what we, the author, can put them through before they get there. As god in the little universe you create in the story, you have to put your main character in peril of his or her life throughout the story. You can maim them, scar them, and subject them to countless dire situations big and small and have them figure a way out. To me, it is not a question of if they will survive, that is a forgone conclusion in most cases, but how they are going to get out of the situation you put them in. Herein lies the suspense part that engages your reader, yes, give him (or her) some quirk or other, some deficiency they must overcome, fear of heights, or drowning for instance. In some cases the story will take over the author and dictate where the story will go, and what happens. Sometimes the main character will even talk to the author and say …wait a second here, you didn’t give me the ability to fly up till now, and now you want me to jump off this cliff and fly to that island?... A big no, no. Drawing your main character with words at the beginning of the story is so important, not only to their outward appearance, warts and all, but to their abilities and fears, hopes and dreams. Once you have done that, you can subject them to any number of situations that challenge those abilities and fears. I for one hate a story (or movie) where the main fictional character dies at the end, and always feel cheated somehow, as if the author was to lazy to figure out a way for them to survive, and triumph in the end.. Even the twist at the end of the movie ‘Constantine’ the author figured out one last twist even as the devil was dragging his almost lifeless body to hell. The devil forgot one thing, sacrifice instead of suicide as he thought, thereby preventing the devil taking Constantine’s soul and letting him live.
I get your point. But I did not lobby for the death of the hero. I said don't let his or her happy ending be too perfect. There was mention of a flat tire, a troubling message, or anything that makes it so that while the current adventure is over and won and complete, the hero's life is not obsolete. He still has work to do, whether that work will be written or not.
Matt Bird MSci (Hons) AMRSC wrote: This may sound silly, but my advice is this: tell the story as it really happened. Obviously the story didn't actually happen in reality, but imagine that it did. Follow through the consequences of all the actions your characters make during the course of the story. If your protagonist kills a load of bad guys, how that is going to affect him mentally? Likewise if hid friends all died fighting for his cause what would that mean? In both these cases, even if the protagonist is successful, it is unlikely to feel like much of a happy ending for him.
That bit of advice is not silly at all. It is some of the best advice not only for the Action/Adventure genre, but for all genres since we want to feel our characters, triumph and grieve with them.
monty31802 wrote: OK, Great News Letter but I don't watch serial type movies. I like things with an ending. 
Even serial type movies have to have a proper ending to be complete. Even one-time adventures can end with a hint at more life after the adventure.
penn wrote: I tend to like it more if the hero isn't omnipotent. Make them real sometimes. Let them get beat and let something fail them. Omnipotent heroes need to be tested now an then if a writer wants us to believe.
Agreed 100%!
BIG BAD WOLF is hopping  wrote: Sometimes, you have to give out the hint that a sequel is possible. For instance, in the movie "Drive Angry", staring Nicholas Cage and William Fitchner, Cage stars as an undead murderer who busted out of Hell to avenge the death of his daughter and save his grandchild, with Fitchner being the one sent to send him back. At the end, when everything's all done, Cage's character looks at Fitchner's and says, "If he sends me back in that hole, I'll bust out again." Fitchner's character chuckles at this, and says, "I look forward to it."
As it is, I just wonder about that HUGE gun that Cage used- the case it came in had holders for 5 bullets, but there was only three rounds in the case- so, what happened to the other two? And then, how did the Devil get such a gun made? And, just how did Cage bust out of Hell in the first place? "The Hunt"
This is exactly the type of ending I meant to describe. While the adventure at hand is complete, there are questions unanswered. There is no need for a second movie to fulfill the plot of the first movie, but those who watched it have an incentive to watch it again and see whether they can collect clues toward figuring out those riddles. And, if the writers and studio really want to, they can make a second movie, but they are not obliged to.
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Action/Adventure: May 21, 2014 Issue [#6283]
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