When we are writing we have to hold two versions of the same story in our heads. Because there is a difference between what happens and what you tell the readers.

You, as the author, need to know how your characters got from A to B. What the motivations of a host of secondary characters are. Whole scenes that happen off page, but who’s effects are going to resonate within your story. But at the same time very little of this information should be in your book.

I have often gotten frustrated with stories where there are long sequences that just exist to connect A to B, they don’t carry the plot forward, or develop the characters, they are boring. Similarly, I don’t want to read pages of backstory for characters that are going to drop out after three chapters. And yet, a lot of new writers, myself included, cant resist putting this stuff in, we worry that the reader will question the jump.

But reading Temeraire really showed me how little this matters.

Novik is incredibly focused with what she includes in her story, and both the extent of the cutting and the way it sharpens the story really jumped out at me.
Take this example:

Chapter 8 ends with Temeraire and his companions being sent to Dover because of urgent war things. It literally ends with the dragons taking off for a long and unexpected flight.

Chapter 9 (which is also the start of part three) opens like this:

The rifle-ball passed so close it stirred Laurence’s hair, …

In the middle of a battle scene. It opens in the battle and stays there. We slowly learn the context and the connecting information over the next few scenes from little throw away comments.

It makes me think, as I struggle with my first draft, do I need to connect everything? Do I need to find my characters something to do in these connecting phases. Or would it be best to just focus on the parts that excite and interest me. To try and stop more and ask does this need to be a scene or can I just explain in a sentence of two what happened to bring us here?