Telling a Good Canoe and Kayak Adventure Story

Years ago, I took time to analyze the story structure of different types of canoe and kayak adventures that were published in various magazines. I wanted to be able to pitch the types of stories that the editors were buying, and I wanted to be able to do it in the formats they were accepting.

I ended up identify three different types of stories: Trip Reports, Autobiographical Trip Reports Focusing on a Global Issue, and a Biography. There were more types of stories, but these three were the most interesting to me. I outlined each of the different scenes that were used to tell the story. I’ve used these outlines for years to write stories for magazines and tell stories. They work. You can also use these to tell good stories during slideshows.

With the threat of AI overwhelming human writing, I’d love to see more humans use these outlines to tell good paddling stories. Last year, I wanted to see how much of a chance that I had as a human against AI in getting good human info out there, so I used AI to output an article on this website. It shot to Google’s top ten on that search term. I don’t stand a chance based on the results that I saw. Unfortunately, PaddlingLight’s articles have been used to train AI large language models. They never asked my permission to do so. If they had, I would have said, no.

Anyway, here are my outlines. I don’t always use these outlines in these order, but I almost always use these scenes to help tell the story. I also use a conclusion scene, but I haven’t found a formula for it. You have to tie together all the threads created in the individual scenes. It’s much easier if you simplify the story. It also helps if the conclusion is witty.

You don’t need to use all the bullet points under a scene in each scene. Maybe you string that out over a couple of scenes. You story shouldn’t be limited to the bullet points.

These aren’t complete outlines nor do they outline the only possible scenes in a story, they are just outlines of the similarities across most of the stories that I analyzed.

I hope these adventure story outlines are helpful to you.

Trip Report

Scene 1 (Opening): Concreate detail scene that has action sets the scene and location of the trip. Leave on a cliff hanger.

Scene 2 (About): These can be used between action scenes. You need action scenes leading up to these scenes and these scenes act as a break from the action to communicate more information to the reader.

• Getting to the trip’s start.
• Challenges.
• How overcome.
• What is the trip?
• History of the area?
• Weather encountered because of the area
• Concrete challenge from the terrain.
• Details and more details

Scene 3 (Next action): This is the next action scene that shows the terrain and action happening on the trip

• Tie it back to the last action scene.
• Something that happened on the trip that was challenging.
• How it relates to the area
• Educate reader about the area via action
• More concrete details from your senses.

Scene 4 (Transition Detail): Use this scene to add an important area on the trip or detail about the trip. Link it to the end of the trip somehow.

(Auto)biographical Trip Report with Global Issue

Scene 1 (Opening): Action that introduces the characters and the trips

Scene 2 (Details): Nightly or Daily routines

Scene 3 (About): Tell about the trip.

• Where it goes
• Global significance of the route. Global could also be local or regional or an issue. Something that is going on outside of the trip, but that the trip relates to.
• Back to the trip with a concrete event and example of how that relates to the global significance.

Scene 4 (Action): Concrete action scene with example of global significance of the trip and example of the related issue maybe outside of the trip.

Scene 5 (Reflection): This is a scene where you as the author reflection upon what you are doing.

• How the trip feels
• Example of the how the global significance effects the trip
• Reflect on your personal feelings about the global significance

Biography

Telling a complete biography is impossible in a short article so focus on one aspect of the person’s life. If you were writing for PaddlingLight, you’d tell a story about the person’s relationship to paddling.

Scene 1 (Intro): Introduce Character

• How they got involved with paddling or outdoor adventures.
• Description of the challenges in their life style and life related to what they are doing.
• How they overcome the challenges.

Scene 2: Recollection of the past

Scene 3: How the world has changed around them and how did they adapt to it.

Scene 4: Overall impact that they had on the specific topic/aspect of their life.