: Re: Phrasing to balance immense speed with boredom Through much of my novel the protagonist spends considerable time cruising over various landscapes at speeds exceeding 500 km/h. To you or me this

@Sue2132873

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I have a few pilots in my book and they are blasé about flying at high speeds but never about flying itself. They are passionate about this task they have and that the jets they fly are somewhat enhanced is a matter of course. I mention things they see while flying, the shape of clouds ahead and the information they glean about the winds from the shapes they see. One person might look at a cloud and see a running dog - they see wind shear or a change in wind speed that they factor into their calculations and adapt to circumstances before they happen.

If the MC is blasé about it, perhaps there is another character for whom this is bright and new, less jaded by experience.

The skill of my pilots is something remarked upon by other characters, like Amadeus’ marksman and the pilots are rather amused by this as this is their normal and it takes other things to thrill them.

If the MC is a passenger, he might just expect travel from New York to Paris to take x hours and any deviation from that norm irks him. If your MC is a pilot, maybe they yearn to be flying for pleasure in a glider rather than carting strangers to their destinations just to pay the bills.

The contrasts between the peace and silence of gliders and the noise of the plane he must fly can come into play. The sounds of the plane would be something the pilot will heed constantly as they are cues to whether all is well that are more reliable than the alarms that may or may not be working depending on when it was last maintained - and by whom. The whistle would have a particular pitch that would tell him how fast they were travelling.

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