: Re: How to make travel scenes interesting without adding needless plot diversions? I have always had a problem with travel in my stories. Since I'm writing an epic fantasy novel, travel is a big

@Lengel543

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While there is something to be said for cutting the travel if it doesn't add to the plot, instant travel makes the world feel small. If you want to paint a large world, you need to pay the price for getting from A to B.

As an alternative, you can take inspiration from stories that are entirely contained within a journey. Stories like Murder on the Orient Express, Stand by Me, Titanic or even Snakes on a Plane.

The key to these stories is not that stuff has to happen to the characters to make things interesting, but the constraints and the tedium of travel drives them together, and forces character development. A train or a plane is fantastic, of course, because you're putting everybody in one small box, and even the simplest activity becomes a challenge and therefore more interesting. But even if the journey is by foot, or bike or car:

Your characters are stuck with each other. Breaking away from the group is very dramatic thing to do, and usually quite risky.
There's no communication with the outside world. Whatever happens between them, they have to sort it out.
There's a very clear direction to the story. They're going to X, and they're going to do Y when they get there. The longer you make the journey last, the more tension you build (if Y is promising to be dramatic). Or you can change all the character relations during the journey, so that the whole picture has changed when they arrive: A was going to to Vegas with B to stop C's marriage, but on the way realizes that he loves B instead, and ends up giving C away when her father doesn't show up.

Of course, if absolutely nothing happens, the whole thing will feel like a Star Trek bottle episode, so some things will have to happen. But in good travel stories, it's not these things themselves that are interesting, it's how the constraints of the journey force the consequences to play out. In Murder on the Orient Express, it's not the murder itself that is interesting (we don't even see it), it's how the fact that there's been a murder plays out: the passengers knowing one of them is the killer and Poirot exposing all the latent tension, while they're all trapped in a fast moving box, that's what makes the story interesting.

This is why the many magical beast attacks feel so tedious in your example; they're pointless action interludes after which everything continues. If instead you create a simple event that has consequences throughout the whole journey (somebody faints, but they can't leave them behind, there's a stowaway, the car turns out to be stolen, x finds out that y cheated on him, but they're stuck together) you only need a small event to generate a lot more interesting drama.

Translating this to your setting, some tricks to employ to make a long journey intersting:

Make sure something interesting is going to happen when the characters arrive.
Build some latent tension into the character relations before the set off.
Have something relatively insignificant happen that normally would be easily resolved, but because of the specifics of the journey massively complicates things.
Make either the event or the consequences related to the larger plot. A large wolf stalking the troupe may be interesting but distracts from the whole point of the journey, making the reader forget about the payoff you're supposed to be building up.
Avoid things that remove the constraints of the journey. Don't stop the train. Don't let the troupe stay in villages, don't let them easily send messages back home. Make small things challenging and show us how they cope with the challenges.

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