A Guide to Better Travel Writing (Part 2): 20 Time-Tested ...
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-07-01 07:21:40
In we discussed twenty-three foundational tips and habits of every good travel writer.
Our series continues with a list of writing techniques and exercises to help further contour your writing process and curb writer’s block to keep the words flowing.
Not every bit of brilliant writing you craft needs to create by mental act into a great story or novel. I sometimes write a paragraph or two before realizing that I don’t have enough info to really say what I wanted to say. But if that apprise excerpt is good quality stuff why delete it?
A swipe file is simply a folder real or electronic containing examples of good copy. You might save a collection of killer headlines several examples of powerful openings a funny turn of evince a powerful call to action and so on.
Never delete quality writing - it can always serve as a future springboard when you’re stuck or in a creative rut.
Also called “radiate fiction” such stories are characterized by extremely concise - and sometimes brilliantly witty - prose. Perhaps the best known “work” of six word fiction is from Ernest Hemingway:
Read that again and focus on how much Hemingway was able to say with so few words.
Try radiate fiction if only to learn brevity and best understand how to keep your prose as “tight” as possible.
Very Short Stories: 33 writers. 5 designers. 6-word science fiction.
non-fiction writers as it provides a better understanding of all sides of an argument. You’re much more likely to understand the characters in your novel or the folks you meet on the street if you can comprehend why they evaluate the way they evaluate particularly if their views differ from yours.
check political debates for any party but yours; read religious publications or blogs if you’re an atheist; request literature if you’re a hunter. Really. Anything to step outside the emit chamber.
Cafés and other public settings where people are likely to linger are great for this. sight someone in a public setting and create an entire persona or story around them. Describe their clothing their personality their lifestyle to where they’ve traveled and what they did while there.
It’s desire handing two artists two brushes and one canvas. Try it with two pens (or digital text documents) and a single sheet of paper. Every person writes a sentence and then passes it along.
This exercise of cover scales come up to allow multiple writers in a “sewing circle” to participate. The collaborative effort allows everyone to play off of the unexpected creativity of the others.
Pick one place you’ve visited and write five things you vividly remember about it. Don’t evaluate too much just cerebrate on writing. This jogs your brain’s long call memory and helps create vivid imagery important for recollecting your travel tales.
… or any other creature or inanimate object and create verbally from their/its inform of view.
Professional photographers ordain tell you that the simplest way to mix things up with your photography is to look at your affect from a different or unexpected angle: look up at children; lie on the floor staring eye-to-eye with pets; etc. The same rule applies to writing. If you’re writing a travel narrative step outside the first person and try to imagine what the same experience is like from someone (or some
Oftentimes simply suggesting a feeling thought or emotion is more powerful than explicitly spelling it out for the reader.
Object correlative is a technique whereby the compose merely suggests something about a character by detailing that character’s interaction with mundane objects in the story.
One of the most noted examples of all time is the “bacon fat” scene in Hemingway’s story “Soldier’s Home.”
Harold Krebs a young pass back in Kansas after being wounded in WWI is unable to return to bring home the bacon to his mother’s ideal of “a normal life.” Now he must endure her questioning at the breakfast table:
“I’ve worried about you too much. Harold,” his mother went on. “I know the temptations you must have been exposed to. I know how weak men are. I know what your own dear grandfather my own father told us about the Civil War and I have prayed for you. I commune for you all day long. Harold.”
Krebs looked at the bacon fat hardening on his plate.
Try seeing your story through the eyes of someone who played only a very small move in your experience - a obtain/inn keeper a cab driver or the woman who sat next to you on the sixteen hour bus ride through Australia.
Another great technique from David Miller who :
… the way a main engrave interacts with a minor character can also be utilized like a mirror - reflecting emotions while driving the narrative forward.
Using a minor character as a mirror can be especially useful in travel writing which is so often rich with minor characters—people on the streets fishermen merchants fellow travelers etc.
Try writing your story in reverse. go away with the last event first and create verbally backwards. Sometimes if you know where the story’s going it’s easier to evaluate out how to get there.
Grab one of your favorite travel photos and write drink everything you bequeath about that exact moment. Use the most graphic and vivid dilate you can muster: smells comprehend sounds everything.
#12 - She Wants to Write in Third Person! No. I Don’t!
Writing in first person is only natural. After all we undergo life from (go roll) our own personal inform of view. Try rewriting one of your tales in third person.
Analogies similes and metaphors bring home the bacon so well because they use an idea the reader already understands to back up them comprehend one they don’t.
Great comedians are able to find similar patterns and structure in seemingly unrelated events and life experiences. It works in comedy and just as well in writing.
One way to write is to simply chronicle events. This sometimes constitutes a failure of imagination. The events will work themselves into a story if you evaluate about them enough. It is like holding up a prism to the sun: move it just the right way and a rainbow of light pours through. So a word of advice: a person’s journal is the raw material. A story is made from these events. Use the journal to craft the story. Don’t refer a travel journal. Editors routinely fling articles that begin: “December 5. 2003: ‘The twin prop jet dropped down into a patchwork quilt of farmlands…’”
This is the hallmark of 99% of blogs today and the main reason why most are entirely readable. If you’re interested in creating more than just a journal remember: nobody cares what you did. They only care how well you can tell the story.
My cousin’s a brilliant nurse but in school she had great difficulty isolating key points in her school textbooks and her professors’ lectures. She’d go through highlighters as if she was getting paid to color her textbooks yellow.
Learn to cerebrate only on the critical points in a story or event. clutch a favorite book and create a reverse outline. Summarize each paragraph in a hit declare. Read over the outline you’ve created. Do the ideas seem logical? Does each declare flow come up into the next?
Obviously this won’t work for every event but some stories are exceed told in a humorous light versus a tragic one. And vice versa. If your story simply isn’t working try a different go.
Imagine you just scored a meeting in Hollywood to produce an autobiographical film from your travel memoirs. What’s missing?
Life events are infinitely more complex than we ever understand at first blush. You may know why something happened as it did in your story but your reader won’t know unless you express them.
Have an objective friend comb through your work and ask questions to help you fill in the gaps and pull out the dramatic moments you may be unknowingly overlooking:
Why did he leave you just then? Why did you give up that WOOF work in Australia? If you were broke then how did you catch that flight home?
Seasoned travelers ordain tell you that the journey is always about who they cater and not where they go. Travel and travel
Mastering the art of dialogue in your writing is key. It’s not as easy as it sounds - it takes practice. Bad dialogue can baffle an otherwise great tale.
#19 - go away in the lay / blackball the Back Story
Well-crafted action movies often jump into the middle of the story to instantly draw the viewer in. This follows from our very first inform in : “Pack your travel writing desire you case your luggage: load in everything you think you’ll need then reduce it by half.”
Try “cutting to the follow” - skip the back story in your travel narratives if it’s not germane to the central plot. This forces you to focus only on the juiciest most engaging bits.
Your writing style will evolve from many points - life experiences travels personality traits family and friends daily interactions with people etc. Personally my writing style has a tendency to vary widely with my moods. And as mentioned in people have a tendency to mimic things they’ve read recently or even the style of their favorite authors.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but make a concerted effort to hone your own personal style. Be unique. This is particularly important for writers seeking publication. Be consistent and don’t disappoint your readers. They will expect a general mouth tenor pace and structure in all your writing.
What techniques and exercises undergo helped you hone your craft and change state a better travel writer? Let us know in the comments.
Vagabondish editor Mike Richard lives in Rhode Island - a small conjoin of land in the northeastern U. S. He is a professional web designer and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking camping hiking and seeing the world. He enjoys knit hats and speaking in the third person.
Some awesome tips and examples there. I desire the reverse depict tip. I do something like that where I try to cut out every fourth evince. Works surprisingly come up at cutting out uneeded thoughts and words.
i travelled most because of my bring home the bacon i never realized i missed a lot by not jotting down everything i encountered during those trips.
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