Adventure Story Ideas

Adventure premises with a clear goal and obstacle. Pick a line, kit your heroes badly, and write the journey one turn at a time.

1. A retired explorer's grandchildren find her unfinished expedition diary.
2. A treasure map is sold at a car boot sale and three buyers want the same field.
3. A river guide is paid in advance to take a client somewhere she has never heard of.
4. A pilot crash-lands on an island that isn't on any chart.
5. Two rival climbers arrive at base camp to find a third tent has been there for weeks.
6. The submarine surfaces in a cave covered in writing.
7. An old woman walks into a hostel and asks for help finding a city she left in 1947.
8. The compass starts pointing at one of the travellers.
9. A balloonist drifts into a country that has banned the sky.
10. A team of cavers find a working telephone underground.
11. A backpacker is given a parcel and a 24-hour head start.
12. Two cousins inherit a yacht and a feud.
13. A retired courier is asked to deliver one last package, by hand, across a country.
14. A children's adventure club discovers their map is being drawn one square ahead of them.
15. An archaeologist finds an inscription with her own name on it.
16. Two friends walking the Pennine Way are joined by a third who claims to live on the path.
17. A retired captain is offered the wheel of a ship she sank in 1973.
18. A village is selected to take part in a navigation race nobody applied for.
19. A diver finds a postbox at the bottom of a lake.
20. A walking tour group's guide has been missing for two days but the tour is still happening.