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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/39417
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I suppose this is more of a question of if its even necessary, but I'll just assume it is. I am currently writing an outline for a fantasy story, and I don't know how to deal with distance. It's unrealistic to assume that all the towns are super close to each other, and that these towns are unaffected by external sources, so there needs to be distance, but I don't know how to measure this distance.

In a story that centers around the idea of people trying to stop them from getting to their destination, it's not a realistic thought to assume that the characters walk for a month without encountering any sort of problems, but I don't feel I should force explanations like "they walked for six moons encountering nothing and they marched into the town". I guess I should get around to the question.

How far away should each town be and what should I talk about while they are journeying and not encountering anything? I wanted to get a hint of realism involved, by actually having distance be a factor, but I looked it up and found it would take months to walk across the United states.

So should I just ignore distance and hope nobody notices or force in explanations? I know I can't be the only one who gets upset when stories have characters walk across entire hemispheres or kingdoms or whatever, and not explain what happens in between.

Original score: 5