Examples in Media
Adventure stories have been popular since the first tales around the campfire when storytellers recounted such adventures as the great mammoth hunt, the journey of exploration, fighting other tribes or the gods. Some of the greatest adventure stories are the oldest ones such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid, Dumas’ Three Musketeers, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring series.
The 2009 Star Trek movie offers an excellent example of the Love of Adventure at work in a number of characters, most vividly in that of young James Tiberius Kirk. The first time we see this character (other than as a newborn) he's a cocky ten-year old racing a Corvette across the flat Iowa prairies with a huge space center looming in the background and a motorcycle cop in hot pursuit. The boy runs the ‘Vette to the edge of a cliff, bails out, and watches the vintage car somersault into the deep canyon. This visual expression of derring-do sets the tone for Kirk's bravado and his deep desire to race off into the Final Frontier. The rest of the film is full of Jim Kirk adventures.
A line of dialogue that well expresses this Love of Adventure is inherent in all the Star Treks -- "To boldly go where no one has gone before".
Most of the movies of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks. The James Bond films and other spy stories as well. Pirate books and films.
Sarah Connor in the Terminator movies and in the Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Petra Volare is an 11-year old inventor and adventurer in ancient Crete. The first in the 7-book series is Scroll 1: From the Shadows; in it Icarus’s younger sister creates her own identity and saves her brother.
The award-winning animated film Up is another Love of Adventure story that also includes romantic and familial love. Carl, a widowed septuagenarian, and Russell, a young latchkey Wilderness Scout, take an adventure of a lifetime when the widower attaches thousands of helium balloons onto his old house and heads for Paradise Falls in South America, hoping to fulfill his late wife’s dream of adventure. Like Star Trek, this movie also has a brief line of dialogue that captures the spirit of most of the characters, from Carl and his wife Ellie, to the boy Russell, the disgraced adventurer-once-hero Muntz, and even to the dog Dug and the bird Kevin -- “Adventure is out there!”
And as Buzz Lightyear of the Toy Story series always says, “To infinity and beyond!”.
Examples in Music
"Rocket Man" - Elton John
Space Oddity - Ground Control to Major Tom
“Secret Agent Man” – Johnny Rivers
The many James Bond films theme songs.
Symbols
The Gear - pickax and pitons, the pith helmet, the wetsuit, the parachute, etc. The balloons in UP are an imaginative and colorful representation of hope, perfect for an animated family film. The fact that they are attached to the century-old home that belonged to Carl and his late wife, is the perfect visual pairing to represent the old man’s desire to break free from his grief and to finally fulfill the dream of adventure that he and his wife once shared.
The Leap – launching one’s self out into the void is a huge act of faith and adventure. When Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid leap off the cliff and into that South American river it takes them away from their old lives and into their new ones. Daredevil Evil Kneivel made a career of media adventures and in 2012 Felix Baumgarten set a skydiving record of 128,098 feet up in space down to the earth in 4 minutes and 19 seconds.
The Map or a Globe – shows us the contested territory and how difficult your character’s quest will be. Old adventure movies highlight the hero’s trail across a map. Master and Commander uses this device, as does Romancing the Stone, Raiders of the Lost Arc, and Game of Thrones. The map is a bigger representation of what you see of your environment and often those who are not on the adventure live it vicariously through the map. And in pirate movies “X” marks the spot.
Key Element – The Shining Action
Include scenes where your adventurous character acquires the right gear and using it signals the start of the adventure. In Avatar, Jake Sully mounts the dragon and begins his adventure with the Na’vi. In many stories the dragon, the horse, the aircraft, the automobile are vehicles to carry the protagonist into other territories or alternate universes. Sometimes the device is a word, a wave of a wand, or some magic food -- as when Neo in Matrix and Alice in Wonderland took the blue pill that hurled them into another world.
Show them going through gateways into a new world – be it leaping off a cliff, going through a doorway, jumping out of an airplane, crossing a border, entering a different environment.
Written Descriptions
From the bottoms of the seas to the surface of Mars and beyond, adventurers explore the unknown, the lost, and the yet-to-be found. A poignant example is Rutger Hauer’s dying speech in Blade Runner, “I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
By its very nature a story about the Love of Adventure is big. Wide vistas, far horizons, dangerous heights, gloomy corridors, raucous jungles. The environment is often the object of the protagonist's affections, so its descriptions should be strong and compelling. Using words like "draw in", "vast", "frontier", "vista", "challenge", "breath-taking", "daring", "dangerous", etc. will give your reader a sense of how the characters feel when they are in the settings you describe.
Fill your character’s speeches with awe about where they go and what they see. It could be like Star Trek’s Far Point Station where you look beyond the edge of the known universe. Alien skyscapes such as two moons, a close planet, different coloured land or flora can all signal an alien environment.
Write about the Key Element: putting on the uniform, leaping off the cliff, making the Leap.
Use shorter and shorter paragraphs and sentences to increase tension.
Use different terms to describe objects on the other side of the gates of adventure. On this side they are trees, on the other side they are sentinels. On this side it is a river, on the other side it is a torrent of fate. On this side a mountain, on the other side a challenge.
Cinematic Techniques
The wide environmental shot. Thelma and Louise driving across the US. The airplane in the sky. The man riding the dragon. The ship tossed on the vast sea. Give us the human in the midst of that which embodies the adventure.
The close tight shot of putting on the uniform, picking up the tools. Taking on the mission.
Exploring the Environment. The shot in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence is riding through the desert, stopping at the oasis, and then Shariff riding from the distance up to him. Waterworld also has wide shots of the environment that demands adventure. Cloud Atlas has some great scenes of characters against the environment, particularly in moments of exploration, as when Tom Hanks and Halle Berry scramble up the steep cliffs.
The Leap. Stepping into the unknown. Jumping out of the airplane. Diving into the ocean.
Start close in on the heroine, zoom out to the whole area affected by her actions. Reverse that.
Jerky camera moves and quick cuts do not necessarily say ‘love of adventure’. First you must capture our attention and align us with the heroine’s desires. In his exhilarating sports photography, Warren Miller shows us the majesty of the environment and how humans relate to it. He gives us closeups of the individuals and their personal perspective on what they do. He engages us with their emotions.
Sustained coverage of the huge monstrous processes of nature unfolding before our eyes sucks us into the experience much more effectively than jerky cuts can ever do. The rising tsunami, the encroaching forest fire, the erupting volcano – all deserve long holding shots that make you want to break away and run. It isn’t about the character’s action so much as it is about the overwhelming environment where the love of adventure takes place.
You
could create a montage of Felix Baumgartner jumping from the Red Bull balloon, you cut to Chuck Yaegar falling through space trying to get his helmet off, you have base jumpers, bungee jumpers, a diver falling through the waters...it’s all about Earth’s gravity exerting its pull on us. It can only be expressed by holding the length of the shot.
The love of adventure might well be described as gravity desiring to collect us in its arms.
Conclusion
Love of adventure takes us to other places, opens our minds, moves our hearts.
A story about the Love of Adventure should inspire us to dust off our passports, pack up our pith helmets, and set out for the vast unknown.
Seeing new things, or seeing old things in new ways, is essential for story-tellers.
Certainly for writers, travel is a stimulus to creativity. What we want from creative writers is the imagination to sweep us into new, unexplored realms. Otherwise you are just reporters of the real, documentarians of “what is”.
As most of the surface of the earth becomes accessible via on-the-ground travel or Google Earth, the sense of adventure that started humans out on our great migrations tens of thousands of years ago will always draw us to the extremes, the new ones being off-planet, underground, and beneath the surface of the seas.
“Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms
and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Star Trek
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Exercise #1 – Awareness
What is the most adventurous thing you have heard of in myth, history, media, real-life...or perhaps even an adventure of your own?
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Exercise #2 – Writing
Write a scene where your protagonist is trying to talk a non-adventurer into action but who refuses the challenge. Then write the same scene where the protagonist is talking to a fellow adventurer who accepts the challenge.
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Further Reading
Ana Purna, a Woman’s Place – Arlene Blum
Art of War, The by Sun Tzu - Samuel B. Griffith
Asian Saga, The – James Clavell
Awakened Warrior, The -Rick Fields, Editor
Book of the Five Rings, The - Miyamoto Musashi / Victor Harris
Clive Cussler adventure novels
Collapse – Jared Diamond
“Dysfunctional Families: Doomed or Divine?” – Pamela Jaye Smith
Eastern Approaches – Fitzroy MacLean
Edgar Rice Burroughs – all his works
Eight Feet in the Andes – Durvla Murphy
General George S. Patton, Jr. - books by and about
Heroines - Norma Lorre Goodrich
Inner Drives – Pamela Jaye Smith
Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara
Leadership and the New Science - Margaret J. Wheatley
Lincoln on Leadership - Donald T. Phillips
Lost World, The – Arthur Conan Doyle
Mars trilogy – Kim Stanley Robinson
Outlander series – Diana Gabaldon
Petra Volare: Scroll 1 From the Shadows – Reece Michaelson and Pamela Jaye Smith
Pippi Longstocking – Astrid Lindgren
Power of the Dark Side, The – Pamela Jaye Smith
Seven Pillars of Wisdom – T.E. Lawrence
Spinsters Abroad: Victorian Lady Explorers – Dea Birkett
Symbols.Images.Codes – Pamela Jaye Smith
Women Warriors, A History - David E. Jones
Further Viewing
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
21 Balloons
7 Years in Tibet
Abyss, The
Alien vs. Predator
Around the World in 80 Days
Babylon Five
Battlestar Gallactica
Deep Blue, The
Doctor Who
Gunga Din
Happy Feet
Harriet the Spy
Incredibles, The
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Lost – TV series
Lost World, The
Mountains of the Moon
Predators
Princess Bride
Right Stuff, The
Star Trek - features and series
Star Wars – all
Stargate - features and series
Surfing films: Chasing Mavericks, Big Wednesday, Endless Summer, Point Break, Blue Crush, Surf Nazis Must Die, etc.
Swiss Family Robinson
Toy Story
Treasure Island
Under Fire
Wall-E
Warren Miller’s sports movies http://www.skinet.com/warrenmiller/videos/warren-millers-flow-state-teaser
Young Indian Jones – TV series
Weblinks
Alpha Babe Academy http://alphababeacademy.com/
China Exploration and Research Society http://www.cers.org.hk
First Earth Battalion http://www.firstearthbattalion.com/
Joseph Campbell Foundation www.jcf.org
Institute of Noetic Sciences www.noetic.org
MYTHWORKS www.mythworks.net
CHAPTER EIGHT
Love of Death & Destruction
Mankind is composed of two sorts of men –
those who love and create,
and those who hate and destroy.
Jose Marti
Life is a mystery because of death. Life springs up from seeming nothingness, thrives, and then returns to seeming nothingness.
Life is precariously fragile yet also stubbornly persistent. People have survived rebar rods into their brains and signposts completely through the chest. Yet swallow the wrong way or slip on a pickle at the burger joint and it’s all over.
From the individual human to the seasons of the year, to the existence of an entire species to the birth and death of stars, and even to the whole of the universe itself -- death comes to all forms. Substance, however, has more longevity: just think of melting down metal to make something new. Same substance, different form.
Our fascination with death and destruction may just be part of our fascination with existence itself. The drive to know how things work, the desire to change things to our will, and the desire to control things can lead to willful acts of death and destruction.
For stories with any of that in them, it is important for you to give us characters and situations that make sense psychologically and philosophically, as well as plot-wise. The more we understand, the more we can write engaging characters and stories – especially on the Dark Side with deadly antagonists.
The Defining Myths
Shiva is the Hindu god of destruction and transformation. After all, if you want an omelet you have to break some eggs. If you want a new world you have to destroy and deconstruct the old one. When Shiva dances the world is destroyed. No coincidence that some weapons have been named Shiva, including a giant laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Kali is the Hindu goddess of death and time. She carries a bloody scythe and wears a necklace of gore-dripping human heads as she tramples on a mere mortal.
Both these deities have other attributes as well, signifying that death and destruction are also essential for change and growth, for transformation and transfiguration.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb” said about it, quoting from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.,.. “ He also later quoted, perhaps in warning and perhaps in regret, from the Gitas, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
Exemplar Movie
Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.
Why it exists (evolutionary back-story)
Life is cyclic. Birth, growth, death, decay. Any observation of life quickly reveals death and decay as part of the pro
cess. Just as some astrological signs are aligned with death and endings, so too do cultures large enough for division of labor assign some people the task of dealing with the dead, sometimes just physically or spiritually, sometimes both together. After all, you can’t just leave dead bodies lying around. Those specialists typically learned a lot about anatomy that could help the tribe in other ways. Today we call those specialists coroners and medical examiners and have entire TV series about them.
Blood lust is a survival instinct that can overcome all sense of reason during a fight-to-the-death. A throwback to our animal nature, it can be a dramatic and really scary character moment as the body just takes over and does what it does, regardless. This is often called going “berserk” or running “amok”.
Genocide may be a holdover from very early days when a village’s immune system was vulnerable to strangers. Just look what happened to the inhabitants of the Americas and the Pacific Islands when disease-bearing Europeans arrived on their shores. Anyone seen as “other” posed a real danger to one’s own people so eliminating them was a means of survival, not just a hot fit of pique or cold vengeance. History and current events show us that this evolutionary survival tool can get really out of hand – one of those cases of an evil being a “good that was held onto too long”.
How it works (physiology & psychology)
Show Me the Love! Page 9