How to write travel

If what happens on the journey is important to the story, show what happens that's important, in as much detail as its importance merits. If the journey is just the space between story point 1 and story point 2, skip it: ""After 5 weeks of travel, Our Heroes arrived at TribePlace." If the details of the journey aren't important, no one will miss them is they're not there.

Rule of thumb: don't waste your time or ours on things that don't matter. (Keeping in mind that "action" is only one of a variety of things that may matter.) You're writing a story, not a travelogue, so keep your eye on the story.

Does anything interesting happen while they're traveling?

If the answer is no, skip ahead to when they reach their destination.

Adding on to the above, things you should ask yourself:

* What can go wrong on this trip? (In a fantasy world which suggests that the travel will be long, rough and likely , the short answer is "a lot" and the next question is "can any of it serve the story?")

* If introducing a disaster would derail the plot too much, are there opportunities for character and setting development you can create?

I probably wouldn't just go "five weeks later, they arrive" because chances are it would be a missed opportunity. Don't sweat the unimportant details, but do look harder for important ones.

(I have a long-ish travel section in my current WIP that is probably going to need rigorous editing but most of what I did is focus on my MC getting the crash course in magic she needs for the next part and developing the relationship between her and her teacher that is going to need to pay off later.)

Making things more difficult during the travel part of a journey is how a novelette turned into a novel for me. YMMV.

In addition to what everyone else said...if you decide to write about some events that happen on that journey, then make sure those events not only contribute to the overall plot, but also help reveal new layers to your characters. IOW, make those events matter. At least one thing should change because of them.

Stuff has to happen on the journey. It needs to be part of the story, or there's no point in putting in any detail.

caw

I do not like writing about travel. Sometimes I put it down in the span of a few short sentences. I find it can be mentioned in other relevant ways in retrospect which impact the present story - Character was exhausted and sore from ten days on horseback. Something like that.

But go ahead and write it if it helps you pace it out. Something huge might end up fitting into that time frame that you would have missed if you skipped it. I go back and look at every scene when I'm done and do the "if I remove this from the story, do I remove anything pertinent?" test. More often than not, traveling scenes are axed under that metric.

Travel can be full of Exciting, Plot Altering Moments [SUP]TM[/SUP].

Travel can also be dull as hell. Decide what happens when they travel. Not every trip is going to be full of derring do, but you can usually get some interesting things going when you see how the interactions change between the characters as they travel together (especially if they've never done so before). You could also use the travel scene to build tension about their feelings towards the new tribe--are they excited? Anxious? Sharpening their axes?

Worst comes to worst is hitting delete when you edit.

I think travel can be an opportunity to develop your characters. Just don't overdo it by showing every little thing that happens.

Just as an example, the novelette that turned into a novel had the following things happen while traveling.

MC learned more about her abilities.
MC learned more about her family history.
MC realized she was more than just friends with her mentor.
Both MC and Mentor had to come to grips with the idea that neither of them were comfortable with the other one taking on physical risk to save the other.
MC found out Mentor had a hidden past.
MC learned more about how her brother had escaped death several years before.
MC learned that the fellow trying to kill her was related to her Mentor.

Each of those things built on other events and needed the length of time of the journey to unfold all of them. But there were a few parts where they were simply on the road for a few days in between the plot-relevant events, and those I usually summarized at the beginning of the next chapter that had a plot-relevant event.

My story is a questing story, and as such, you guessed it...traveling. I actually spend a lot of time of traveling sections, not because I write copious details about what that tree looks like (although it is a pretty tree), but because I only skip ahead if I am switching to one of my other POV characters that are not with that traveling group of adventurers. I might skip a few days here and there, but I think its important to at least give the reader a "picture" of what those days looked like. If you don't, the reader doesn't know what happened during those days. What that does (IMO) is it pulls the reader out of that story of the MC/POV character.

Also, have you ever gone on a road trip with someone? Its such a great way to get to know one another a develop a relationship. This is great for character relationship development. Also, as others have pointed out, throw some road blocks in along the way. That can help drive the plot. I think it is important to give the reader enough details so that they know what the land the characters are traveling through looks like, but not so many details that the story becomes about the land. It needs to stay on your characters. Just give a few chapters of LOTR a read and you will see, that while we love LOTR, the writing for this day and age is kind of...boring. I say that with extreme caution because I love LOTR. LOVE it. But that's because of the escapism appeal and depth of the world, not because I found the writing to be extremely engaging.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents.

I've nothing new to add here, as I agree with most of what's said. If important things happen on the journey, things that change the direction of the story or effect a change in the main character, it's a good idea to show its details. Otherwise, it's better to skip over it or summarize. Of course it's also possible to show whatever parts of the journey are important in more detail and skip over the rest.

ie. The first two days passed uneventfully, though Sue collected a florid assortment of insect bites. On the evening of the third day, she tossed and turned in her sleeping roll, too hot and itchy to fall asleep quickly. Just when she was starting to feel drowsy, one of the horses snorted and a bubbling scream echoed through the...

If its appropriate, you could always change perspectives from one character to another to "skip" any travel that may not have anything important to show the reader. Cut to a side character to expound on stuff related to the plot that's happening elsewhere. Then, when you cut back to MC, just show them arriving or close to their destination and them stretching or sitting down at a pub or whatever, complaining about the long, boring journey

I like to use travel as a means to establish the setting and stuff. But nothing in detail. Not the whole trip, unless characters have an important conversation or encounter along the way.