Interim Scenes During A Long Journey

When I read about a journey where there’s lots of boring time, I find a journal entry format with action following it can work well. These interludes can be great times to explore inner conflicts, dreams, fears, etc. With a first-person journal entry, we get direct access to that character’s thoughts and full emotional state if the story is from a different point of view.

In the Star Trek shows, during long trips from one planet to another, the writers use a short voice-over with the Captain’s Log that describes some of the interim points (the crew is anxious, we discovered this during research, the gravity failed in the toilets, etc.) and introduces the scene about to happen. When writing about a group of characters on a fantasy-style quest, they could talk about that river one of them fell into the day before, exploring each one’s sense of humor or fear of embarrassment, or the comet a few nights ago and how one may see it as an omen while the other sees it more scientifically, providing the opportunity for an argument or exploration of thought.