Jul 07 2009
How to make travel-scenes interesting
I'm a former assistant editor with advice about how to write novels, comic books and graphic novels. Most of my content applies to fiction-writing in general, but I also provide articles specifically about superhero stories.
Many novels, particularly fantasies, spend a lot of time on traveling scenes. Here are some suggestions to keep the journeys smooth and interesting.
1. Don’t give the journey more length than the goal merits. If the characters take a 20-page trip through the wilderness to find something minor, readers will probably feel annoyed. In contrast, a journey that is absolutely critical to the plot might span hundreds of pages. For example, if the book is about settlers on the Oregon Trail, then almost all of the book is probably going to be in transit.
2. Make the journey urgent. For example, the characters are running out of time and/or they are in danger. Urgent journeys are usually more interesting. Urgent journeys also go farther to develop how impressive the characters are. Anyone can get around the world, but doing it in 80 days in 1872 is pretty remarkable.
3. Use the trek as an opportunity for character development. A strong journey usually requires chemistry between the characters. Chemistry is hard to pin down, but it generally entails a bit of conflict and style.
4. Show us some new scenery. In a fantasy, this is a great opportunity to use your imagination. Why should travelers should stay away from the Mangled Forest?
5. Stay away from redundancy. For example, if the characters defend themselves from bears one page, it would be pretty boring if they had to fight off wolves or wild zebras or rabid gnomes or whatever a few pages later. Also, don’t spend too much time building the landscapes. Show us just enough to build a mood.
6. A journey depends on effective use of low-intensity pacing. Unlike, say, a car chase, a journey is going to consist of scenes that are mostly unintense. There may be brief intervals of intense action (probably combat), but those will get redundant fairly quickly. In general, suspense and/or spookiness usually go farther than a battle royale rumble through the jungle.
7. If at all possible, just cut out the description of the journey by having the narrator tell us that the characters made it. If you can do that without eviscerating the plot, chances are that the journey isn’t important enough to draw out. Readers will really thank you for glossing over minor, boring details. (For example, see our review of Empire of Ivory).
Also, this article doesn’t really apply to comic books very much. Because of length requirements, most comic books avoid long traveling sequences. Additionally, most comic books are set in modern times where traveling is not very dramatic. (Would you want to read 20 pages of the X-Men traveling from New York to Japan?)
The only exception I can think of is that the protagonist in Y: The Last Man has to travel thousands of miles across a post-apocalyptic United States.
This is cool. Thanks, B. Mac. It will help a lot.
Just finishing up the Dark Tower series, and King does this particularly well, especially in the first two books.
Hmm, I’ll have remember this. I’ve been planning a survival story.
This will help me a lot. At least two of my ideas (it may become one, because I can probably combine them) have lots of travelling in them, because in one the protagonists are trying to cross the country to a place that is safe from the invading army. In the other they are trying to find a diamond that will save the main character’s country from being trapped in crystal for all eternity.
Hello, JM. What do you like about King’s traveling scenes?