Travelling

[Belial]

At the moment i'm having a little trouble with my writing, so i thought i'd see what you guys thought.

It all has to do with the character travelling you see. When he goes from point A to point B nothing very important to the story happens, although he and his umm "friend" might get more companionable... not sure, but that's beside the point. Pretty much, if i were to write out the traveling, it wouldn't add that much to the storyline, and might end up being fluff.

On the other hand, if i were to skip it, the reader would lose about a month of the character's life, which in a short story can be an awful lot.

So i thought I would ask if you guys have any techniques for character travel. Keep in mind that this is fantasy-fiction, so there won't be any high-tech forms of travel, just feet and horses.

Thank you all in advance.

[blue moon]

As a reader, I say find something important that happens during that month, or skip it.  If I want to read about people rambling along, eating and taking naps, I'll pick up Tolkien.

As a writer, I say write it if you need to.  You might need to take your characters on that journey, even if the whole chapter disappears in the final edit.  Do what works for you.

But if nothing of any importance happens in those pages, don't make us read them.

[Dom]

I agree with blue moon.

If you need to write them to figure things out, that's fine.  But if nothing happens, you may eventually need to cut them.  But that's not a big deal--I do it all the time.  I have an archive of "old scenes" for every single story I have, things I wrote that ended up having to be cut (and I'm still on the first draft of a lot of things).  I keep them around in seperate files so I can mine them for things later on.

[Belial]

Thanks a ton to both of you (sorry Blue Moon, i meant to respond sooner than this), that's more or less what i was thinking, except i've seen writers do it before, and it utterly pissed me off, (i.e. "Wait, what's this about him sailing down the dragon straights? i wanna read about that!") so i wasn't sure if that would be the best route, but as blue moon said, i've also read tolkien, and it does wander too much.

[novium]

you could do what the movies do and only show the important parts of travel- show them leaving, show them arriving, and then having some sort of travelling scene in the middle. Not just, "hey look, another rock"... maybe a little flirting to suggest what you want, or a complaint, or something.

[Blitz]

Tolkien had the traditional "setting" story, in that the focus of his story was more on the world it was set in than on any of the characters.  In a setting story, it makes sense to talk more about where the characters go than what they do, although nowadays setting stories are regarded as Boring with a capital B by many readers.

It sounds like you're either working on a "character" or a "conflict" story.  If the former, don't bother writing the journey if the characters don't develop in any way while they are on it, and if they do, just show that scene or scenes.  If the latter, don't tell any parts of the travelling unless it matters to the development or resolution of the conflict. 

If necessary, you can always just jump ahead to after the travelling and have it come up in conversation, if nothing interesting happened.  My rule of thumb is to keep whatever is important to the kind of story you are telling.  Because that is usually what the reader is reading your book for.

[Darrington]

I'm much in the same boat as everyone else who's chimed in here.  I haven't gotten to really tackle the travelling scenario, but I'm learning a lot about it beforehand from Salvatore and a RPG I play.  If you're really worried about losing the month of your characters' lives, then have something, even if not world-shakingly important, come up.  Maybe they have an argument about something.  Put that in there.  Maybe a raccoon raids their camp and steals their food and they have to go hunting to feed themselves.  Even just minor little character development things would be good to put in, but, as everyone else states, if it's not important... don't include it.  I'm not too good about that myself.  I end up putting a lot of "fluff" in to fill space at times because I have to keep so many characters going along the same space of time.  But anyway.  Hope this adds a bit more to what's already been offered.

[Cathy Clamp]

Well, the QUICKEST way to accomplish this is to begin the journey at the end of a chapter and start the next chapter with the END of the journey. Readers are much more willing to buy lapses of time through conventional means. Or, you can do a scene break (denoted in the ms. with an extra double line with two hash marks--##--at the left margin) and address ONE event in the journey that's like halfway through. Sometimes a lunchtime conversation leads to critical plot development or an action scene (like chasing off a bandit or something.) Since this is during the horse days, you can have them resting the horses or wading them in a stream to cool them off.

The more realistic the details . . . especially regarding animal husbandry, the better your readers will like it.