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Travelling Description



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Sun Dec 14, 2014 9:58 pm
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FireBird99 says...



Hey! I was just wondering, how do I describe travelling in the Medieval Ages? Let's say my trip to a castle or something is two weeks long, how do I put a filler in to make it seem that long? Or get a few pages of travelling time written?

Your help would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance :P
Fire
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Sun Dec 14, 2014 10:54 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Your question isn't actually that specific to "travel in the middle ages" and more "when do I summarize and when do I scene".

One thing I will say immediately is you don't want to add scenes for the sake of adding scenes. Each scene has to have a purpose, and "making time feel long" is rarely a very good purpose (like everything in writing, you can pull it off under the right circumstances, but you have to be able to pull it off). So if absolutely nothing happens in those two weeks, I'd err on the side of summary.

However, you must then determine the plausibility of that travel actually being uneventful. Ask yourself:

1- Is the person/group on the run from somebody chasing theme?
2- Are there enemies around in general who would attack them?
3- Are there any hardships that could happen (illness, bridges washing out, injury)?
4- Are there any emotional moments while traveling?
5- Are they heading towards enemies who want to stop them?

You still have to ask yourself if those points are worthy of a scene, but each one of them could have a purpose for showing characterization, progressing the plot, or resulting in that two week trip either speeding up or slowing down. Or flat out sidetracked.

Sometimes travel is just travel, nothing happens, and you summarize it all because there are other things going on. But other times, travel has things happen, so you put scenes for those things. But no, you do not pad out travel sequences to make them seem longer. Only put in scenes when those scenes will either reveal character and/or advance the plot.
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Tue Dec 16, 2014 4:13 am
mfoley says...



Send a team of bandits after them three days into the trip. Let them share war stories, or talk about life back home, around the campfire on Day Six. Take away their water on Day Seven. Send a storm on Day Nine.
Just some ideas. Good luck!
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Mon Dec 29, 2014 10:33 am
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Apricity says...



I'm actually going to talk more on the authenticity of the travel. Because I've seen a lot of fantasy novels set in Medieval Ages but their description comes off as utterly inappropriate to the time period.

There are several things you want to take note of whilst describing:

World-building:

Not every world is the same, familiarize yourself with the world your characters are in before describing. Consistency is extremely important here, and make sure you do not include any obvious elements of moderness in your writing. That is everything from mobile phones, cars, clothing that we wear or buildings and plant species that would not have existed then.

Language & content:

If your story is set in Medieval Age, then your respective writing style should also reflect that era. So once again, don't even consider modern slang. Aside from that, is not that hard to write semi-formal language. If you're willing to, you can search up some background information about Medieval Ages. Most of the time, people tend to describe the countryside, the flora and flauna, the villages and its inhabitants. However, you probably want some kind of conflict down the line. Whether it is coming from an external force or between the characters itself.

However, you can also shorten the time period by simply condensing information that doesn't contribute anything to the plot to just a sentence or two. If nothing interesting happens for four days, then just write four days passed peacefully. You get the gist.

Good luck in your writing.
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Mon Dec 29, 2014 10:36 am
Burrow says...



I would say read the inheritance cycle, one they are a good read, two there is a lot of traveling in it, but it isn't written bad. It would help.
“The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless."

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Tue Dec 30, 2014 12:43 am
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Tenyo says...



Filler is ugly, you don't really need it if it's not supposed to be there. Besides, you never know how fast your reader is going to read your novel or how much the filler will entertain them, so using this method to express a time lapse is kind of inefficient.

You could try summarising the journey instead.

Leave it to the imagination
You could skip straight to their condition at the end of two weeks. It'll save time on filler and also help to set up for whatever is coming next. Maybe your characters have stopped talking to each other because they've been arguing the whole time. Maybe they're worn out and covered in bruises from a rickety old. Maybe one of them has suddenly developed an obsession with watermelons due to an incident involving firewood, burned meat and a few too many wines. Leave the details to your readers imagination.

Make it pretty
You can blend all the different scenes together and animate them as if it's a movie collage. You can talk about how quickly the proud heads of the rich fade into the hunched backs of the paupers, or the way black clouds get washed away by clear countryside. It's a great way to world build and it will demonstrate the passing of landscape as well as time.

Delve into introspection
The great thing about travel is that it's often used to represent metaphorical journeys as well as physical ones. When we have lots of time and nothing to do we tend to retreat into our own thoughts, and this is a great chance for your character to reflect over what's happened in the story so far, and for your reader to gain a bit more insight to what things look like in their story.

If all else fails
Continue your novel on. You might find that three quarters of the way in there's a super important detail that you forgot to put in at the beginning, and having a perfectly placed hole there where they could pass by *anything* on their travels, will be really useful.

Hope this helps!
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Tue Jan 20, 2015 5:08 pm
Lefty says...



Hey, there! The trilogy I'm working on had a similar issue. The first time was in my first novel and it was a three day journey on horseback. I just summarized it into a paragraph, stating only the important things that happened on the trip and giving an idea of what it look liked and how it went. (We took our three-day journey through the desert, at the end of the second day we found a lake and were able to get water, I taught so-and-so how to make a fire) or something like that. It was a little prettier in the story. :)

Later, in the second novel, they go on a two-week horseback trip and basically that's what the entire book is about. What happens on their journey.

So, as you can see, there's a couple ways about going about it. If something important happens on the trip or you need to draw something out a bit then showing the trip, or at least part of it, is probably the way you should go. But if it's just something that has to happen to get the characters from point A to point B and it would realistically have to take them a couple weeks, then summarizing it is probably best. Or if there's magic in this Medieval world, then you could cut the trip all together if you wanted to by having them walk through a mirror or something. Anyway, I hope this was helpful! Have a nice day!

-Lefty
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