Adventure Plot Type Guide The 9 Plot Types

Alright. Hey everyone. If you want to be great writer and even more, if you wanna write great adventure story, you need to learn how plot types work. Stay with me because in this video we're going to begin journey that will transform how you think about story forever. See what did there? Journey transformation, adventure stories. Pretty good, right? Let's go. If you've ever watched Indiana Jones or National Treasure or read novels like The Hobbit or Alice in Wonderland, you've already experienced an adventure story. But what makes those stories work? And more importantly, what can you learn from what those writers already know about how to write great adventure stories? Today we're looking at one of the oldest and most popular types of stories, the adventure plot. But before we get to this specific plot type, let's review what we know about the types of stories. We did video recently that talked about the nine types of stories and why there are nine types of stories and how they work. and just some reminders. Remember that plot types aren't outlines. They're bigger than genre, although lot of genres rely on plot types. Plot types are like cheat sheet to help you recognize these essential elements that you need to deliver in your story. When it comes to adventure stories. There's always one thing that I'm looking for, and that's McGuffin. What's McGuffin? McGuffin is an old school storytelling term that describes the thing that everyone's trying to get. So Indiana Jones is always good example because there's always something, right? The arc of the covenant, the holy grail, the dial of destiny, but it doesn't just have to be one thing for it to be McGuffin. The Hor Cruxes Harry Potter are McGuffin. There are seven of them. They take whole series of books to deal with. The McGuffin can also be person. So for example, in the film, saving Private Ryan, private Ryan is McGuffin, finding Nemo, okay? You could think of NEMO as McGuffin. You can also sometimes think of McGuffin as place. El Dorado, for example, king Solomon's, mines, Atlantis, even Mount Doom. There's usually still thing associated with that place like gold or treasure or so's ring or something like that. But the place becomes really important part of the McGuffin. Sometimes it could look like an escape from place. Like getting off Mars, for example, in the film and novel The Martian. Sometimes, especially in memoirs or travel books, the McGuffin can kind of an extract concept. Eat, pray, love, for example, is an adventure story. She's searching for three things to learn how to eat, enjoy life, to learn how to pray, to learn how to love. Those are McGuffin. My own memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris was an adventure story. had 10 McGuffin, 10 challenges do accomplish in Paris. So you get what I'm talking about. McGuffin are the driving force of adventure stories and because of that, adventure stories can be really flexible. Right? Sometimes you can associate adventure stories with fantasy, the fantasy genre, and there are lot of fantasy stories with McGuffin for sure. But you can also have literary adventure stories like Moby Dick or The Heart of Darkness, or Life of Pie or Old Man in the Sea. You can have YA coming of age adventures like The Alchemist. You can have Disney adventure stories like Tangled or Moana or up. There are even classics that are adventure stories like the Odyssey or the Aenied. So many stories. Now, another thing about adventure stories and really all plot types is that they live on value scale, and the value scale for adventure stories is life versus death. That means most of the scenes in an adventure story, for it to be considered adventure, need to live scale of life versus death. So for example, in The Hobbit, most of the scenes are about this question about whether Bilbo is going to make it. Is he going to survive all these obstacles? He is gonna get killed by spiders and orcs and trolls and dragons, or is he going to die? That being said, like all plot types, that scale can have lots of gradations. Your adventure story doesn't always have to have life and death stakes in every scene. You might be dealing with comfort versus discomfort, which is kind of lower on that life and death value scale, but it's still part of the same scale, just lower level. That's often how travel memoirs work: Eat, Pray Love, or Wild or Crowdsourcing Paris. They have lower stakes, but there's still this question of are they gonna make it, are they gonna reach the end or are they gonna get stopped by discomfort and all the other obstacles along the way. All adventure plots though, have some kind of threat to the character's physical life. It's an external conflict because it's coming from the outside of the character and it's affecting their life. The stakes can be really high, like death or kind of low like discomfort, but it's all on that external life and death scale. And there are few other conventions that adventure plots usually use, and say usually because conventions aren't really rules. They're just things that often happen in these kinds of stories. Some of the main conventions for adventure stories are: journey of some kind. Usually you have to cover some ground to get to the McGuffin, and that leads characters on physical journey, often some really exotic or unfamiliar places. There's often villain, character or group of characters who are trying to get the McGuffin, and that puts some extra conflict and time pressure on the protagonist. Usually the protagonist has some kind of team, or at least sidekick. You can think of Sancho and Don Quixote or Dory in Finding Nemo or the Dwarves in the Hobbit. Now lot of plot types have sidekicks or teams, but they're especially common and often really important to the plot in adventure stories. Sometimes there are clues in adventure stories about where they're going to find the McGuffin or where their next destination is on their journey to the McGuffin. This can sometimes get them mixed up with thrillers. There are lot of similarities between adventure stories and thrillers. We'll talk about thrillers in another video. And last, while it's not really convention adventure stories are really commonly paired with the coming of age plot type. In fact, the prototypical hero's journey story is just an adventure story mixed with coming of age plot type. And it makes sense, right? Because coming of age is all about expanding your worldview, achieving your potential, and that often happens through kind of questing journey. Anyway, we'll talk more about coming of age stories in the future. Adventure stories usually end with climactic battle over the McGuffin. That's the archetypical climax. And say archetype because plot types are flexible. You don't have to end your story that way. You can, and it's really common to do so for adventure stories, but it can still be an adventure story without that as the climax.. Alright. Hopefully that gives you good overview of how adventure stories work. The driver again, of adventure stories is the McGuffin, that's the inciting incident, the beginning of the quest for the McGuffin in some form. The source of the conflict is external and the value scales life versus death. The climax archetype is battle over the McGuffin. Conventions include journey of some kind, villain, team, and sometimes clues. should also mention that there are some common subtypes, like heist stories. Most heist stories are adventure stories, hero's journey, survival stories, and treasure hunt stories. So there you go. You've now mastered adventure stories. How about you? Does this sound like your story? Are you writing story with character facing life or death situations? Do they go on journey or quest in search of McGuffin? If so, you might be writing an adventure plot. Let me know if you are in the comments. And if you are writing an adventure story, hone in on that. Find some similar stories, get some masterworks to study, and of course. Get to work writing it. Don't miss out on future videos in this nine plot type series. Subscribe, click the like button, maybe even click that little bell to get notified when we publish new videos. And also in the description, we'll link to our nine plot type cheat sheets to help you figure out what your plot type is and how to best write it. We also have free plot type assessment linked there. Until next time, happy writing.