7 Tips For Writing Action Adventure Thrillers With J.F. Penn The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers

What are the tropes of action adventure thrillers? How can you please readers and sell more books? J.F. Penn shares her own tips and also features excerpts from interviews with other thriller writers.















J.F. Penn is the award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the ARKANE action-adventure thrillers, the Mapwalker fantasy adventures, and the Brooke & Daniel crime thrillers, as well as horror, travel memoir, and short stories.







You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 







Show Notes









* Put your characters in difficult and dangerous situations







* Writing fight scenes







* Include a ticking clock and high stakes







* What is a MacGuffin and how is it used?







* Research into places and experiences







* Trust your writing instinct and have fun!







* Help your readers escape to exciting places







* Using quotes, and source citation







* Write a series









If you love action adventure thrillers, check out the ARKANE series by J.F. Penn. Spear of Destiny, book 13, is out now on Kickstarter with special edition signed exclusive cover hardbacks, plus paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook, and bundle deals in all formats.













You can find J.F. Penn at www.jfpenn.com, buy books direct at www.JFPennBooks.com, and read the blog or listen to the Books and Travel Podcast at BooksAndTravel.page.







7 Tips for Writing Action Adventure Thrillers with J.F. Penn







I’m an action adventure thriller fan from way back, but what are the hallmarks of the action adventure genre?







Clive Cussler said,









“Adventure is just putting characters in settings and locales that are unfamiliar to the reader and then as the writer, having fun with what happens.”









I’ve always loved adventure stories. As a child I read The Hardy Boys, and King Solomon’s Mines, and I remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books where you would flick to a new page as you made your choice of action.







I loved Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series and read a lot of marine biology books, as I thought I might be able to join NUMA or something like it. I was able to meet Clive before he died at Thrillerfest in New York in 2015 and have a selfie which really made my trip.







J.F. Penn and Clive Cussler (Thrillerfest, 2015)





I discovered Wilbur Smith’s African and ancient Egyptian adventures, then Michael Crichton, Matthew Reilly, and James Rollins, who also combined the religious aspects I enjoyed into his books.







I love the Pendergast series from Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, with its crossover into occult and supernatural. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code came out in 2003, and I jumped into that as soon as it launched. I had previously enjoyed Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose,