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“Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place. ” -- Barbara Kingsolver, "The Poisonwood Bible."
"You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."
At some point in the adventure, there are bound to be boring parts. It might be that part where everyone is off on their horses and nothing happens except for the travel to get to the next big place?
Do not write the boring parts. If the next part only encompasses travel from one destination to the next, do not put that on paper. Your reader will quit reading. Your reader might skim through to the next action point - and then the next one.
How do you make it work better? How do you skip over these things that make their characters drag their feet through the mud?
FIrst option - create a transition. You can tell us about how fifteen days passed and they finally got to the forbidden city. Please do not drag me through fifteen sunrises and midday meals and pitching camp. I will not thank you for it.
Second option - create tension. Fifteen days is a long time to get to the forbidden city. What other things can happen to test your characters and their relationships? This is one thing that is great on TV. It's all about throwing another little hiccup in the way. It might be as small as tripping on a root or an unexpected storm. It could be bigger, like pieces of backstory coming out for the characters to react to each other.
Third option - introduce new elements. Here is where the world-building comes into play. It's all about the way to plant seeds for problems to bloom later. One offhand comment from a passerby or between travelers might become a new and different angle to explore.
Kurt Vonnegut suggests that every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action.
I want to read the action. Show me the trampled roses and the smoke from the dragon's nostrils. Burn me from the heat on the cast-iron skillet over the campfire. Make me taste that horrible dinner the cook made and understand that he only has the position because he hasn't actually poisoned someone yet - unlike everyone else in the group. Your readers are there for the action.
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Elfin Dragon-finally published
I love epics taking us through many generations of characters. One of my favorite authors for this is Mercedes Lackey and her works of the Valdemar Series. Each trilogy can stand on their own but when read in proper "eras", as it were, you get a real respect for the timeline and characters in the stories. I'm also enjoying Erin Hunt's Warrior Series. Her characters are cats in this series but it's the same aspect. That is one of the beautiful things about epics.
StephBee
My beta readers are wonderful at pointing out what works and what doesn't work. Some of them offer suggestions, some of them don't. The big thing with using your beta readers is to show them appreciation for those things that don't work well. It's not easy to do a more "constructive" critique because people don't want to hurt feelings. Sounds like you're lucky.
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Action/Adventure: September 23, 2015 Issue [#7225]
