How To Write An Action Adventure Novel Lessons
Since I’ve set up my newsletter, I’ve had quite a few emails about when I’ll write more about fiction writing and publishing.
This has surprised me because I’ve always thought my readers were more into the business writing side of things.
Anyway, as I wrote about in the last fiction update, I’ve yet to develop a full-blown system for creating great fiction in a regular fashion. That means that updates are fewer than I’d like.
It also means that I’m always on the lookout for more useful info.
A couple of weeks back, I read this article about a book called “How To Write An Action Adventure Novel.” As a break from the Copywriting Challenge I’ve been doing, I decided to read this book and learn some lessons from it.
This article is a list of those lessons.
Why Read This Book?
People who take a creative writing class and then write a how-to book about it are pretty common. I’ve raced through a lot of kindle books about how to write books that have been written by people who’ve only ever written that single book and think themselves experts.
The advice is disastrous.
So whenever I read a book on fiction now, I make sure the person knows what they’re talking about. In fiction terms, that means finding out how many books they’ve published and whether those books are enough to sustain a career.
You don’t want to take advice from a writer who has written two books, makes their money through being a yoga teacher or whatever and happens to live with a rich husband.
You only want to take advice from people who make a living writing. Luckily, Michael Newton seems to make a living writing. A quick look at his Amazon author page shows fiction, non-fiction, weird quasi-fiction like Bigfoot Encounter Encyclopaedias and other interesting stuff. There are some action-adventure/thriller/horror books too. Those books – according to their Kindle ranks – actually sell copies, so it’s reasonable to assume the guy knows what he’s doing.
(By the way… assuming this author isn’t just farming out the writing to other people, he’s definitely a pulp speed kind-of guy. Awesome.)
So, to recap this section;
- A lot of fiction writing advice is given by people who don’t make a living writing fiction
- If you want to make a living writing fiction, then ignore those people
- Always check that a person knows what they’re talking about before you follow their advice
- Michael Newton appears to walk the walk
With those tips out of the way, let’s move on to some of the interesting things I’ve found in his book about how to write action adventure novels.
Lesson One: Forget Critics
Writing fiction is one of those pastimes where everyone is a critic. And literary critics are pretty vocal. (Allegedly this is because humanities degrees don’t provide you any skills and so all those BA’s are channelled into moaning about stuff on the internet. I think those humanities students should learn copywriting, for what it’s worth.)
If you write action-adventure, literary critics are probably going to hate you.
If you aren’t pushing the boundaries of fiction by writing about a coming-of-age tale in the first narrative of a fourteen year old lesbian struggling to come to terms with her cerebral palsy in the eighteenth century in an alternative universe where America is mostly Urdu speaking, then literary critics are going to hate you anyway; so you might as well write about gun-toting maniacs with fast women and fast cars and a probable addiction to alcohol.
Newton recommends forgetting critics because action-adventure is fun. Fiction is escapism, and most guys want to escape to a world where there are gun-blazing heroes putting bullets in bad guys without any regard for higher ethical decisions – again, with liberal sprinklings of bikini-clad women and loads of scotch.
Providing you can provide the high-octane thrills that guys (I mean, some girls read action adventure, but it’s mostly guys) want to read about, you don’t have to worry about critics.
The moral of the story is that every guy wants to be James Bond, really. There’s a reason guys like Andy McNab and James Patterson sell millions of books every year, and it’s not because they’re competing with Shakespeare.
Lesson Two: That Said… Adventure Is Old
If you’re a high-brow individual, regardless of the above, you can still make some pretty decent adventure literature. You don’t have to appeal to barely-literate thugs in order to be a success as an adventure writer.
In fact you’re better off not doing that. People who pay for books aren’t barely-literate in any case. Some of the best books of all time have been action-adventure novels. Here’s a list from the top of my head:
- The Three Musketeers
- Treasure Island
- Dracula
- The Count of Monte Cristo
- Heart of Darkness
- Robinson Crusoe
- Every single decent pulp novel
- The Lord Of The Rings (Seriously… when you think about it)
All of those books are basically adventure stories in some form. Protagonist gets thrown into a crazy scenario and has to adventure their way out. The scenario is old – arguably as old as storytelling. It encompasses all sorts of places, settings and moral quandaries.
The genre doesn’t have to be philosophically intense, but it doesn’t have to be cookie cutter either.
Lesson Three: Adventure/Machismo Is Cyclical
A lot of writers recommend writing to the market. By that, they mean that you should write what’s popular and pump out material until you inevitably have to move on to the next hot trend.
Whilst this is a good idea in some ways, it’s bad in others.
For instance, if you can write a lot of material on a particular subject, then you can make a lot of money writing to trend in a short period.
However, a lot of writers get discouraged when inevitably nobody likes billionaire vampire romances anymore and they have to start writing about biker werewolves instead.
Action-Adventure is a cyclical genre to start with. The sub-genres are even more cyclical. As a good example, you’ll remember (possibly) the late nineties, where action movies, books and the like were at a high point. This was especially true of fiction with a particular theme: Consumerism and the ills of the political elite within. The Matrix, American Psycho, Fight Club and so on. They all share a very similar theme.
Fast forward to the September 11th attacks in 2001, and suddenly rich white guys weren’t the baddies anymore. Now terrorists were the bad guys and heroes were flying to Afghanistan as opposed to dealing with gangsters and banksters in New York.
Fast forward another two or three years and military adventure – and machismo in general – is considered pretty vulgar. People were getting enough bloodshed on the news and writers glorifying the violence were less popular at that point.
If you were a military adventure writer at that point, you’d be tempted to think that the game was up. However, a benefit to the cyclical nature of the genre is that it always comes back.
Lesson Four: You’ll Starve To Death Waiting For a Muse
Michael Newton puts his view on writer’s block and waiting for inspiration in those terms. I like those terms and I clearly agree with the meaning behind them.
If you want to write professionally, then you have to write. There is no other way around it. Too many writers think that if they sit and wait, words will magically come to them.
It’s dangerous and it’s wrong-thinking. Imagine if you were hungry and you walked into your local chip shop, asked for a burger and chips and the guy behind the counter said, “Sorry man… I’m not feeling it today.”
You’d think that was stupid and irritating.
Imagine if you were going in for heart surgery and as the anaesthetic was kicking in, the surgeon came up to you and said, “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do this… I don’t feel right about working today.”
You’d be terrified, and rightly so.
If you’re a writer, you need to write. It doesn’t matter whether you are on top-form all the time: If you’re not writing, then you’re not in any form.
Lesson Five: Use The Real World As Inspiration
I’ve sat in writer’s workshops that were seemingly obsessed with world-building. Whilst people talking about the magical system in their alternative-medieval-reality are no-doubt fascinating for some, I don’t get it.
Why would you want to spend time making up a whole new universe when we live in a fantastic one already?
When it comes to action-adventure, it’s even better! If you just turn on the TV or go to your favourite news site, the work is half-done for you!
Michael Newton goes through some of the stories he found in a newspaper and turns them into pretty decent plot synopses for an action-adventure novel or two.
You can do the same, and you might as well: If media companies are going to obsessively give us bad-news and worst-case scenarios, we might as well turn them into fun and profit.
Also, now is a great time for spy fiction because the media seems hell-bent on creating a new Cold War out of very little (and mostly spurious) evidence.
Final Thoughts
How to Write An Action Adventure Novel by Michael Newton is a great book. It’s about £2 (practically free) and gives great advice.
Despite what critics and literary snobs would say, action and adventure novels are pretty evergreen. Sure, you might have to change the settings or characters, and there’ll be ebbs and flows, but over the course of decades – if not hundreds of years – action adventure novels have proven to be popular.
Essentially, to be an action adventure novelist, you need two things:
- Men who want to escape into fiction
- Men who also don’t mind paying for books (Or, if you want to push the boat out, screenplays and other media)
Whilst there are those two things, you can probably make a living with action adventure fiction. To get the guide on how to do that, click here. Also, if you do give it a go, let me know. I’ll be interested in what you come up with!