Adventure writing isn’t entirely like story writing. At least, I hope not; I try to prepare scenarios and campaigns so that I will be surprised how they turn out, too.
However, adventure writing isn’t entirely unlike story writing either. Many of the same considerations that go into story writing are still applicable to adventure writing.
Chuck Wendig provides an immense amount of advice to writers via TERRIBLEMINDS: Chuck Wendig, Freelance Penmonkey (and a few books published on the same topic).
I’ll be maintaining a list here of my favorites, or at least the ones I find most applicable to what I do.
- Shot Through The Heart: Your Story’s Throughline doesn’t necessarily apply directly to adventure writing in that the way I prepare things, I have no expectation whatsoever of linear presentation. However, considering how various story elements can turn up, their frequency and impact based on story priority is a worthwhile activity. I’ve seen campaigns become derailed because the clues and other information received was imbalanced against the actual events. In a story sense, a subplot buried the actual plot because there was more cool stuff regarding the subplot.