Drawing from the Well
Queries Sent: 0
Total Queries: 6
Scenes Arranged: 0
Total Scenes: 214
No progress yesterday, but that’s no surprise since we had a wedding. Today is a new day and a new week and we are back to it!
Filling the Well
That Hideous Strength: 89%
Elegy: Page 40 of 89
No progress here for mostly the same reasons. Let’s change that.
Polishing the Well
Like I said above, we had a wedding yesterday, but we weren’t there all day like we normally are. It was a short one for us which was just fine. The couple was so kind and the guests were mostly great. We had a great time. Now it’s back to the grind…and my birthday Wednesday! Yay! The big 3-5 is here. Probably won’t feel any different. 😛
Well Chat
Enhancing or Deleting Travel in Fantasy
A big fantasy trope is cross-continental questing. You see it in Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, and even Harry Potter in some of the books. I think this trope began as equal parts world-building and creating a faraway place by literally having the characters GO to a faraway place. If it’s foreign to the characters, it MUST be foreign to the readers. There’s a problem, though.
Have you ever traveled? Car trip? Plane ride? Biking to a friend’s house? Does much happen? Everyone knows (or has participated in) the classic question “Are we there yet?” Kids don’t ask that because the act of traveling is exciting. It is, but the journey is often a waiting game. Flat out, it’s boring. That’s why you bring books and music and play games. You entertain yourself to distract from the fact that you’re not yet where you’re headed.
So why would authors, especially fantasy authors, be so quick to include it? And what do you do about it being boring?
What I’ve found through reading and writing fantasy is that there are two options when it comes to travel when writing: cut it or add into it. Yes, those are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but hear me out. If the travel is boring and it isn’t terribly long, cut it. If your character is walking down the street or going from the pub home and nothing exciting needs to happen between those two set pieces, let it fall off the page. Trust me, you don’t need it. A couple sentences are all that’s needed to inform the reader that they went from here to there.
The other option is to add to it. If it’s a long journey, things are going to happen. Fights will break out. Relevant conversations will occur. Curiosities will spike. Secrets will leak out. It’s important. In fantasy especially, fantastic things tend to happen in the wilderness. Ringwraiths attack (repeatedly), hobbits teach about second breakfast, Dwarven homelands are revealed, Dementors suck off your face, friends leave, friends die. In my first book, the entire plot is one big journey and LOTS of stuff happens. Bad guys big and small attack, relics are tested, grief is explored. It’s a lot.
And that is a corollary to real life. Lots of things happen on a car ride. When I was a kid, every summer we took a trip to the family reunion. We got into arguments, we learned old songs, we had trivia contests, but sometimes we slept. One of my favorite stories growing up happened on one of these very car trips. We still tell it to this day.
Your writing should emulate life, so let it. Either sleep through the travel and skip ahead when you can or infuse it with action and, especially, character development. Your novel will be better for it.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG