Adventure

Adventure is the genre of movement through a world. Its hero leaves, travels, and is changed by the leaving. The destination matters less than the road, the map, the companions, the setbacks — the accumulated texture of a journey that could not have happened at home.

It overlaps with fantasy, action and science fiction, but keeps its own heart: adventure is fundamentally optimistic. It believes the world is big enough and interesting enough to be worth the trouble of crossing. That belief is the whole engine.

Use it for: the epic you want to live inside for two hours, the family-friendly quest, the swashbuckler that makes you want to go outside. Don't expect it for: interiority — adventure is about the outside world, and that is exactly the point.

The great adventures are maps. You come back from them with a slightly larger sense of what "somewhere else" could be.