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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/529
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I have always had a problem with travel in my stories. Since I'm writing an epic fantasy novel, travel is a big theme as characters often have to move from where they are to where the plot dictates.

However, one of the difficulties I have is that the travel itself is often not important to the plot. In the novel I'm reading now (Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind), there is a huge amount of travel, and the author adds needless encounters with various magical beasts just to keep tension high. The story I'm writing is already large enough in scope without needless extra diversions. I am not a fan of action scenes just for the sake of having something happen; I want everything that happens to advance my main plot.

Additionally, the acts of the characters dealing with innkeepers, staying the night, paying for their food, eating, etc., is boring both to write and to read.

To make my current dilemma even more frustrating, the two characters who are traveling together in this specific instance have just met each other and should be forging their relationship during the travel. So while I don't want to focus too heavily on the travel, I do want to be able to expose their interactions.

How can I gloss over the uninteresting parts while still keeping enough to show this character development?

Original score: 39