How to Write Travel Articles - Part 3

Now that you have a serviceable travel article, it's time to turn it into something you'll be proud to have your name attached to.

If you haven't done parts 1 and 2, click here to go back.

Step 8 - Tell a story

In the previous step you established a sequence, but a sequence is only part of a narrative flow. A good narrative flow comes with a goal, a desire to reach that goal, and a logical progression through those steps. Events don't just happen in a story, they happen for a reason. Similarly, a narrative flow in your travel article will be like a story.

With a most basic description, who is the story about? Frequently it will be you, but it might be a future spouse you are showing your old home town to. It might be your children that you are trying to educate about the culture in another country. It might be some legendary explorer whose path you are retracing. The best person to tell the story about would be the person who has the greatest desire to experience the things in your article.

What is the goal of the experience? Are you looking for the world's best BBQ ribs? Trying to find that campground that you visited in your youth? Trying to make a connection with your Japanese host as he shows you around the quiet villages and bustling downtown? Whatever it is, the person must have a goal or the reader has just a list, not a story.

In this story, what is the challenge to overcome? Is there a limited amount of time? Can no one agree on what spot to go to? Are there too many things to sort through and you have to choose based on questionable information? Are you determined to experience everything, but squeamish when it comes to going into that spider-laden cave? Whatever the challenge, it must be a barrier to be overcome before reaching the goal.

What logical, rational steps are taken that should handle the challenge, but end up increasing the need, reducing the options or resources, or making overcoming the final challenge even more difficult? You might stop for lunch at a Parisian street-corner cafe, but that eats up so much of your time that you have to choose between two things you had planned to do. You might take the shortcut, but it results in muddy clothing that prevents you from seeing the inside of a museum. Whatever complications happen, it has to be as a direct result of the choices made.

Now don't take this to mean that your story should be fictionalized. Every decision in life comes with tradeoffs. Most of them come from random events and most have inconsequential side-effects. Ignore those, just tell the parts of the story that are interesting. The fact that you had pretzels on the airplane isn't interesting to the reader unless it caused a real problem later, so just don't bother with it. You saw thousands of trees in the forest, but only certain ones were worth talking about. Stay factual but selective, since your article comes as a testimonial.

Now with that plan in mind, revise your article to tell the story.

Step 9 - Touch the Senses

Tell us how something looks, sounds, tastes, smells, or feels.

Use evocative language. Think of the tools that a poet would use. Similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, and meter all all fair game.

Of course it's possible to do this too often, and you end up with 500 words of what a park bench looked like, but as a rule of thumb you should touch three different senses for each different scene.

When you visit Pawtuxet Village, you would taste the ice cream, smell the spray of the water as it cascades down the collapsed dam, and you'll hear the conversations of the other people enjoying the warm sun as they stroll through the village.

It's tempting to just tell us what things looked like, but it takes three senses makes the scene feel real to the reader.

Step 10 - Polish

This is basic writing craft, but computers have made us think that our first drafts are perfect. They look so final and perfect that we find it hard to imagine needing a second draft.

Every article needs to be revised.

Consider every single sentence and look for passive voice. If you wrote that the congregation is called by the chapel bell, you have a passive voice. Reword it to say that the bell calls the congregation. Always start with who does the action, then the action, then what the action is done to.

Look for "is" "was" "were" and other to-be verbs. Reword those to make the action stronger. "The lion was hungry. It stalked the antelope" could be much stronger to say "The hungry lion stalked the antelope."

Look at every adverb and figure out how to eliminate it. "The lion slowly walked up to the antelope" is better worded with a more detailed verb meaning "slowly walked". "The lion crept up upon the antelope." Sometimes it will be necessary to add a whole new sentence to make an important distinction.

While you are at it, look at every verb and think of what would be the perfect adverb, then use the vivid verb that would replace them both.

Now look at all of the nouns to make sure that you are using the best possible nouns. It is a dog, or is it a mongrel or mutt? Is is a street or is it a boulevard or an alley?

Now with all of that done, check your grammar and spelling.

You now have an article worthy of your byline.

Good job!

Now go write another!