Moving On

Have you ever had that moment when in your writing when you finish off one scene, and start the build up to the next? When the traveling, or sleeping, or exposition seems infinitely boring? I know I do. I don't know how many times when I was writing Trust Hole that I finished off some epic match in half an hour, and then spent another hour just struggling through the couple of paragraphs between it and the next major event.
But as I continued to write, I realized something. Maybe none of that in-between isn't all that necessary.
Now, here is what I am NOT saying. DO NOT skip from action sequence to action sequence just because all the middle stuff is plain boring. That does not make a good story. Every tale needs it's quiet moments as well as it's loud moments, it's low times as well as it's high times, it's lulls as well as it's peaks. Some of my favorite scenes to write in Trust Hole were actually the ones with just dialogue, where Alen and Martin, or Mirra, or Brian, or Watson broke out of my mind and started finding their voices.
What I'm talking about is the piddly stuff. The meals, and sleeping, and traveling long distances, and gathering of armies, etc. Where the logistics and practicality of it all drags you down until you're left drowning in the sea of your own boredom. THAT is the stuff it is ok to skip.
But how you do it is just as important as when you do it. For example, let us take my main characters from Feather and Fang: Redpaw, Crestlen, and Daegless. The first two are traveling together, and Daegless is in another part of Quartorlen entirely. Now, a lot of traveling is involved, and the repeated: "Several days later," becomes just as boring as if you had actually described each non-eventful day. So, here's my brilliant idea. Those times are the perfect time to cut to the other group! Leave Redpaw and Crestlen to do their mindless trudging, and go catch up with Daegless, who we left burning some random village. Now he's a week ahead, and there's a trail of destruction behind him. Notice the difference:

Daegless continued his savage path for a week, sowing death and destruction wherever he went. Villages were burned, fields were trampled, and chaos spread throughout Thunderfell. Ahead lay Flamehope, and the untainted land there.

Daegless stood on a hill, overlooking Flamehope. Behind him, a wide swath of black stretched to the north horizon, the smoke of dozens of burning fields and villages marking his trail of death and destruction. Chaos had come to Thunderfell, and now it was poised to strike Flamehope.

Which do you think sounds better? Personally, I like the second one. It strikes deeper into the imagination, leaving the reader to come up with his own atrocities and evil deeds, rather than minutely explaining each one.
As another example, consider the use of skilled swordplay in a battle. A fencer and broadswordsman (I don't think that's a word :P) myself, I appreciate and can understand many of the moves, strokes and parries an author puts in his swordfights. The main problem with this is that it breaks up the intensity and overall feel of the fight. It's hard to feel scared for the main character as he executes a complex maneuver you have to go back and read twice over to get before you can understand what's going on. You get back to the fight, only half as caught up in it as you were before. The same with the piddly stuff. It's hard to stay involved in the desperate nature of the quest or time when you're plodding through the daily rattle of unimportant events.
With that being said, another way of cutting down on piddly in-between stuff is to cut the scene before it's 'done.' One of the pep talks for NaNoWriMo talked about "ending the scene before they walk out the door." Don't put in the character exits, and hallway walks back to their rooms, and getting in bed, and sleeping, and waking up, and coffee, and breakfast... ad nauseam. Just cut, and open back up right in the thick of things the next day.
This is especially helpful when your outline leaves a gap between major scenes, and you've been telling yourself all along that you'll fill it with traveling, minor events, etc. It won't cut it. Trust me, I've tried. Case in point, Trust Hole. The center of the book, as outline in my head, was to be filled with training for Alen, character development, etc. But when I got there, I realized all that didn't matter. So I went right on with the story, bringing in the new bots and all the changes that came with them. No need for filler material. No need for detailed explaining of technology (or magic), or habits of dragons, or meditation is part of your training, or how a pulse cannon works, or how the politics of dwarves run. BORING. (:P I'm poking fun at the Inheritance Series among other things for anyone who didn't get it)

Move the story along, and your pace will thank you. As well as all your readers. And hey, if too much is happening... it's easy to add in some quieter stuff!

Hoping my rant was insightful to you, (it was for me! :P)
Farjag