The Migril Factor
I've got this major problem that I call the Migril Factor, arising from the bad old days writing the Life of a Falcon trilogy. In LOAF, most of the book consisted of Captain Migril (good-guy cavalry officer) travelling through the endless wilderness and occasionally killing a roving goblin or two. Amazingly, I never got bored with it. I had this insane, delusional vision that LOAF was the best novel ever to be written ... okay, enough of that. If you want that evil story, go read the articles on my main site. Basically, I've coined the term 'the Migril Factor' to describe the opposite of this: the almost paranoic fear of travel in fantasy novels.
In a good many fantasy books, there's always some kind of long-distance travel involved. Twilight is no different, but every time I get to the point where they have to ride across miles of empty country, I freak out. It scares me. So I invent little dodges that mean I don't have to write these boring bits. Twice already they've been captured and transported to their destination by the bad guys (either Irind Triscim's Following or the Imperial Legionnaires), and I've used my handy remote meeting points for long-distance teleport a couple of times, too. This is the Migril Factor; where the author (usually me) invents complicated ways of getting the MCs from A to B in a very short space of time and with minimal boredom involved.
It was the best thing to do the first couple of times. You still get to your destination, and you've got loads of yummy conflict to go with it, such as being beaten up by evil guards or the slight danger of being mashed on a cellular level by the translocation beam. But I've still got long distances that Rhys and co. need to travel, and I've run out of dodges.
Help! Please? Do any other fantasy authors have a decent way of doing this that I haven't thought of yet? I just can't seem to make boring travel interesting.
Edit: By the way, how do you like my new titlebar? I sacrificed some of my writing time last night to make it. I rather like the metal border--kind of the same style as my 'AR' logo.
I've got this major problem that I call the Migril Factor, arising from the bad old days writing the Life of a Falcon trilogy. In LOAF, most of the book consisted of Captain Migril (good-guy cavalry officer) travelling through the endless wilderness and occasionally killing a roving goblin or two. Amazingly, I never got bored with it. I had this insane, delusional vision that LOAF was the best novel ever to be written ... okay, enough of that. If you want that evil story, go read the articles on my main site. Basically, I've coined the term 'the Migril Factor' to describe the opposite of this: the almost paranoic fear of travel in fantasy novels.
In a good many fantasy books, there's always some kind of long-distance travel involved. Twilight is no different, but every time I get to the point where they have to ride across miles of empty country, I freak out. It scares me. So I invent little dodges that mean I don't have to write these boring bits. Twice already they've been captured and transported to their destination by the bad guys (either Irind Triscim's Following or the Imperial Legionnaires), and I've used my handy remote meeting points for long-distance teleport a couple of times, too. This is the Migril Factor; where the author (usually me) invents complicated ways of getting the MCs from A to B in a very short space of time and with minimal boredom involved.
It was the best thing to do the first couple of times. You still get to your destination, and you've got loads of yummy conflict to go with it, such as being beaten up by evil guards or the slight danger of being mashed on a cellular level by the translocation beam. But I've still got long distances that Rhys and co. need to travel, and I've run out of dodges.
Help! Please? Do any other fantasy authors have a decent way of doing this that I haven't thought of yet? I just can't seem to make boring travel interesting.
Edit: By the way, how do you like my new titlebar? I sacrificed some of my writing time last night to make it. I rather like the metal border--kind of the same style as my 'AR' logo.
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