To and fro

[spectre]

Every fantasy novel I have ever read just about, has required characters to travel to destinations near and far. My novel is no exception, I expect there will be a good bit of travel, but I was wondering what you guys thought on this; do you think the story would feel stagnant if in the earlier chapters of the story the characters have to travel back to their original location, and then head back out again (someone forgot the reins to the wagon)?

It almost seemed trivial to me, but I thought of how tricky it could be to use material that isn't giving the story away, while at the same time I don't want to simply have them here one moment and there the next.

 

[CupofJoe]

For me, there is no problem if they comeback to the starting location [everyone deserves a home life...], as long as the plot [and the characters] have moved on and developed...
D&L Eddings did pretty much this in The Elenium Trilogy... there is lots of moving between cities and back again as they find clues and answers... Each journey was another piece of the story, plot or character wise...

 

[Claire]

If it is literally just because someone forgot something, is that important to the story? Does it move the plot forward, or reveal important character information? Is it interesting? If yes, go with it.

In general, there are ways to "skip" over travel parts, if what happens during travel isn't important to the story. You can skip ahead in time, as long as you indicate that you've done so. "They traveled for several days..." or whatever. So if you just need to move characters around, but nothing important really happens in between, you can move forward and get to where the story picks up again. Of course, if the travel is part of the story, or something important happens along the way, that's different.

 

[cupiscent]

I agree with Claire - unless the travel itself is important, and has important events occurring along the way, and is interesting to read, just skip over it. (I'm sure heaps of books do this well, but the one that always springs to mind for me is Retribution Falls, the first Ketty Jay book, where just about every chapter ends with a "So we need to go to place x and do thing y" and then the next chapter starts at place x, usually deep in trouble already.)

I also agree with CupofJoe - there's nothing wrong and often a lot of narrative satisfaction in returning to the same place with characters and story changed by everything that's happened in between. (Hobbits returning to the Shire, as well.)

 

[spectre]

@Claire lol thanks all, I debated this point in my head, I guess ultimately I didn't want to do it, but I like the path it's taking on.

 

[wordwalker]

Fantasy seems to be obsessed with distance and travel, doesn't it? I think it's the medieval sense that no distance is easy to cross; plus so much of the story's "pressure of history," so that if the disgraced soldier hadn't left the kingdom or the Dragon Sword hidden in a distant mountain, they would have to have already met and settled all their conflicts with the rest of the plot elements nearby. (I think the main exceptions are intrigue, where everything's nearby but hidden, and stories over time, where the points haven't all taken shape yet.)

But I think travel's a classic example of the old rule that any part of a story could be fast-forwarded. (I wrote a bit about this at Travel Scenes.) You could trim it, or anything, but the question is are the things you could show during it as interesting (and useful for the story later) as what you could do be speeding ahead a little, or a lot.