How to Improve Your Travel Writing Skills

There are people who just want to see the world, and there are those who want to read and write about exciting places they have visited during their way around the globe. Travel writing is a matter of showing your readers that you are passionate and creative and have something unique to offer to them in terms of information and perspective. The tourism writing niche isn’t easy, as the market is saturated with travel enthusiasts. If you want to be a kickass travel writer, here are 5 great tips to improve writing:

Don’t be attached to linear writing

Traveling is exciting and so should be your articles. The linear writing style has a beginning, middle, and end. It is neat and simple but also very boring.  Stories of your wanderings can perfectly begin in en media res (in the middle of the action). An enticing opening line can be: “Losing my way into the foreign land led to discovering the best beer I had ever tasted….” Write an initial draft and then move paragraphs around to find the most exciting way to tell the story about a foreign land you visited. With enough writing practice and dedicated effort, you would be able to evolve a writing style that is unique, interesting and personalized.

Keep a Journal

While it is easy to carry the sensations and experiences from your last memorable journey in your mind, remembering and recalling crucial details like dates, prices, names of people, restaurants and dishes, landmarks, streets, festivals, etc., isn’t easy. That’s why maintaining a small journal during a journey can help you hold on to those tiny but crucial details. There has been one instance when I need someone to write my research paper related to my time in Botswana because I am not familiar with its historical and cultural heritage. Therefore, there are instances when one needs to do some serious research in the historical background of the destination in focus in order to write a convincing and rich piece.

Pay for an Editor
Most writers undermine the role of good editing for many reasons: They either think that their work is in the perfect form and free from errors, or they become too involved in the writing process and are left with no time and energy towards the end to proof and edit their final draft. Either way, the quality of their work suffers. Fatigued editors running tourism magazines and blogs have little patience for errors and disjointed write-ups. If you are submitting your work to a credible magazine, consider hiring a professional editor to assess your work, as the feedback would help you understand how to get better at writing.

Don’t Get Too Fancy

The purpose of writing an article or story about a recent holiday is to share your experience with fellow ramblers rather than trying to impress them with your linguistic skills and the depth of your vocabulary. Your writing style should be intimate, free-flowing, excitable and interesting rather than bland and formal. Fancy and difficult words and complicated imagery are quite likely to confuse and put off your readers. You can go through the articles on credible sites like David’s travel blog to find inspiration and learn stylistics.

Check, Check and Check Your Facts Again

The crux of a good travelogue is helpful facts and interesting details about the place, its people, culture, cuisine, landscape, etc., that can add to your readers’ knowledge and perspective. This means that your work needs to factually accurate; otherwise, its credibility becomes questionable. Double and triple check names, stats, numbers, prices, dates, and events to ensure that all information is correct and up-to-date. Use the internet and credible sources like National Geographic to double check your details.

Mere passion isn’t enough for being a travel writer – you need to be skillful, accurate and persistent. If you have to go the extra mile for penning down a special assignment, do it. The more detailed and factually accurate your write-up is, the more informative and interesting it would be for your readers. If you want your work to get featured in a reputed travel website or a glossy magazine, you have to be patient, as the market is already quite saturated. Breaking into the travelogue writing industry takes lots of practice and time but is not impossible.

Writer’s bio:

Jeff Blaylock is a passionate travel writer and photographer. He was bitten by the wanderlust in his teens, and has been traveling to lands near and far ever since. He has written articles for travel and in-flight magazines, travel blogs and websites. Jeff specializes in the niche of frugal roving and focuses on giving nifty tidbits related to traveling on a budget to his readers.