TIPS for Travel Writers
• Write in the first person, past tense (or present if the action really justifies it), and make your story a personal account, interwoven with facts, description and observation.
• Many writers start their piece with a strong – but brief – anecdote that introduces the general feeling, tone and point of the trip and story. Something that grabs the reader's attention and makes them want to read on. Don't start with the journey to the airport – start with something interesting, not what happened first.
• Early on you need to get across the point of the story and trip – where you were, what were you doing there and why. If there is a hook – a new trend, discovery or angle – make that clear within the first few paragraphs.
• Try to come up with a narrative thread that will run throughout the piece, linking the beginning and end; a point you are making. The piece should flow, but don't tell the entire trip chronologically, cherry pick the best bits, anecdotes and descriptions, that will tell the story for you.
• Quotes from people you met can bring the piece to life, give the locals a voice and make a point it would take longer to explain yourself. Quote people accurately and identify them, who are they, where did you meet them?
• Avoid cliches. Try to come up with original descriptions that mean something. Our pet hates include: "bustling markets"... "azure/cobalt sea"... "nestling among" ... "hearty fare" ... "a smorgasbord of...".
• Don't use phrases and words you wouldn't use in speech (such as "eateries" or "abodes"), and don't try to be too clever or formal; the best writing sounds natural and has personality. It should sound like you. Don't try to be "gonzo" or really hilarious, unless you're sure it's working.
• Check your facts! It's good to work in some interesting nuggets of information, perhaps things you've learned from talking to people, or in books or other research, but use reliable sources and double-check they are correct.
• Write economically – don't waste words on sentences that could be condensed. Eg say "there was a..." not "it became apparent to me that in fact there existed a...".
• Moments that affected you personally don't necessarily make interesting reading. Avoid tales of personal mishaps – missed buses, diarrhoea, rain – unless pertinent to the story. Focus on telling the reader something about the place, about an experience that they might have too if they were to repeat the trip.
Andy Pietrasik, head of Guardian Travel
Travel journalism should add to the wealth of information already out there in guidebooks and on websites, so try to seek out the more off-the-beaten-track places to eat, drink, visit – often the places locals might frequent. Revealing a new or different side to a destination will give your story a richness that you won't get with a description of a visit to the tourist cafe in the main square.
Isabel Choat, online travel editor
What sets good travel writing apart is detail, detail, detail. Which cafe, on what street, overlooking what view? You must sweep the reader up and carry them off on the journey with you. Paint an evocation of where you are so we can experience it along with you. Be specific and drop "stunning", "breathtaking" and "fantastic" from your lexicon, otherwise it's just a TripAdvisor entry.
Sally Shalam, Guardian hotel critic
An important rule of creative travel writing is to show, not tell, wherever possible. Readers want to feel as if they're eavesdropping on a conversation, or being shown something secret and magical. People don't like being told what to think. If a child wearing rags made you sad, for example, describe the child, their clothes, the way they carried themselves. Assume readers are sentient. If you write it well, they will "feel" what effect the encounter had on you. This is much more powerful than saying, "I felt sad."
Mike Carter, Guardian contributor and author of One Man and his Bike
My golden rule when writing a piece is to include as much visual description as possible. It's easy to presume a lot, but your readers don't know what you've seen. So explain it as vividly as possible. Don't ever describe something as "characterful" or "beautiful" – this doesn't mean anything to anybody but you. Describe things as if you were explaining them to a blind person. To say a building is "old" isn't good enough; explain the colours, the peeling stucco, the elaborate, angular finishes on windowsills, the cleaning lady in a faded blue smock who was leaning out of a second-storey window with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. There is a thin line between elaborate, colourful, evocative writing and pretentious tosh, but it's better to lean towards the pretentious tosh side of the spectrum than to be dull and presumptuous.
Benji Lanyado, Guardian writer and blogger
ENTRIES 400 words or less
AN ENCOUNTER (as submitted)
• Write in the first person, past tense (or present if the action really justifies it), and make your story a personal account, interwoven with facts, description and observation.
• Many writers start their piece with a strong – but brief – anecdote that introduces the general feeling, tone and point of the trip and story. Something that grabs the reader's attention and makes them want to read on. Don't start with the journey to the airport – start with something interesting, not what happened first.
• Early on you need to get across the point of the story and trip – where you were, what were you doing there and why. If there is a hook – a new trend, discovery or angle – make that clear within the first few paragraphs.
• Try to come up with a narrative thread that will run throughout the piece, linking the beginning and end; a point you are making. The piece should flow, but don't tell the entire trip chronologically, cherry pick the best bits, anecdotes and descriptions, that will tell the story for you.
• Quotes from people you met can bring the piece to life, give the locals a voice and make a point it would take longer to explain yourself. Quote people accurately and identify them, who are they, where did you meet them?
• Avoid cliches. Try to come up with original descriptions that mean something. Our pet hates include: "bustling markets"... "azure/cobalt sea"... "nestling among" ... "hearty fare" ... "a smorgasbord of...".
• Don't use phrases and words you wouldn't use in speech (such as "eateries" or "abodes"), and don't try to be too clever or formal; the best writing sounds natural and has personality. It should sound like you. Don't try to be "gonzo" or really hilarious, unless you're sure it's working.
• Check your facts! It's good to work in some interesting nuggets of information, perhaps things you've learned from talking to people, or in books or other research, but use reliable sources and double-check they are correct.
• Write economically – don't waste words on sentences that could be condensed. Eg say "there was a..." not "it became apparent to me that in fact there existed a...".
• Moments that affected you personally don't necessarily make interesting reading. Avoid tales of personal mishaps – missed buses, diarrhoea, rain – unless pertinent to the story. Focus on telling the reader something about the place, about an experience that they might have too if they were to repeat the trip.
Five more tips from Guardian travel writers
Author Giles Foden says he always feels travel writing benefits from a cinematic approach, in that you need to vary the focus – wide lens for setting and landscape; medium lens for context and colour; zoom lens for detail and narrative – and switch between the views in a piece. It may sound a bit precious, but it's a very handy tip for varying the pace of an article.Andy Pietrasik, head of Guardian Travel
Travel journalism should add to the wealth of information already out there in guidebooks and on websites, so try to seek out the more off-the-beaten-track places to eat, drink, visit – often the places locals might frequent. Revealing a new or different side to a destination will give your story a richness that you won't get with a description of a visit to the tourist cafe in the main square.
Isabel Choat, online travel editor
What sets good travel writing apart is detail, detail, detail. Which cafe, on what street, overlooking what view? You must sweep the reader up and carry them off on the journey with you. Paint an evocation of where you are so we can experience it along with you. Be specific and drop "stunning", "breathtaking" and "fantastic" from your lexicon, otherwise it's just a TripAdvisor entry.
Sally Shalam, Guardian hotel critic
An important rule of creative travel writing is to show, not tell, wherever possible. Readers want to feel as if they're eavesdropping on a conversation, or being shown something secret and magical. People don't like being told what to think. If a child wearing rags made you sad, for example, describe the child, their clothes, the way they carried themselves. Assume readers are sentient. If you write it well, they will "feel" what effect the encounter had on you. This is much more powerful than saying, "I felt sad."
Mike Carter, Guardian contributor and author of One Man and his Bike
My golden rule when writing a piece is to include as much visual description as possible. It's easy to presume a lot, but your readers don't know what you've seen. So explain it as vividly as possible. Don't ever describe something as "characterful" or "beautiful" – this doesn't mean anything to anybody but you. Describe things as if you were explaining them to a blind person. To say a building is "old" isn't good enough; explain the colours, the peeling stucco, the elaborate, angular finishes on windowsills, the cleaning lady in a faded blue smock who was leaning out of a second-storey window with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. There is a thin line between elaborate, colourful, evocative writing and pretentious tosh, but it's better to lean towards the pretentious tosh side of the spectrum than to be dull and presumptuous.
Benji Lanyado, Guardian writer and blogger
ENTRIES 400 words or less
AN ENCOUNTER (as submitted)
Just two weeks retired, just over sixty, our first morning ever
in Sumatra. Juliater, a dark skinned student with
brilliant white teeth wearing a peaked baseball cap and white T-shirt joined us
at the back of a crowded bus.
‘I’m Christian’, he announced proudly.
We walked together around Brastagi and chose a room in a
lovely Dutch wooden house, with a veranda overlooking the mountains. Juliater took
us to his own village, a wedding and much more.
Lingga retained several traditional wooden houses with tall steep
thatched roofs. Eight families would have lived in the single room split into
quarters around four central fireplaces. At the king’s impressively decorated house
he explained the Batak view of a world divided into three kingdoms, the Earth,
the Middle and the Sky. A stepladder and low doorway led to the Middle (the living
quarters) forcing one to bow on entry. Outside was the birthing stool where the
village king’s children were born in full sight of the villagers, a proof of
origin. Their elected headman sold our memento, a hollow cane receptacle for
blessing medicine, carved with heads of the three mythical kings.
That animism lived on was confirmed by cigarettes left alight
in forked sticks around the sulphurous summit of the 2000m volcano, offerings
to calm its God.
Days later we were welcomed by women in extra-wide highly
coloured hats to a large Christian wedding party. The guests sat on the floor,
divided into close family, guests of the bridegroom’s auntie, responsible by
tradition for the food; we were guests of his uncle. We ate well with the awkward
fingers of our right hands then rinsed them in the finger bowls provided. The
women wore tops and skirts displaying every vivid colour of the rainbow, particularly
memorable were the laughing smiles of those with lips and teeth freshly crimson
from chewing Betel.
The bride and groom sat side by side on a ceremonial sofa wearing
headdresses and tops of red and gold. There were serious speeches, not the
jokey kind we had enjoyed years earlier at our own wedding. We had purchased a ‘long
cloth’ (kain panjang) from a local
market stall and now wound it around the couple as a symbol of union and pushed
bank notes between the extended fingers of a collector.
Two months later we left mostly Muslim Sumatra full of
unforgettable encounters with friendly, fun loving, Indonesians.
AN ENCOUNTER (not submitted)
Just retired, just over sixty, just setting out on a new
life globe trotting. A young university student started practising his English
on the bus. Then Juliater, so named because he was born in July, rudely muscled
in. On reaching Brastagi he walked with us looking for accommodation. Much to
his surprise we selected not the hotel but a room in a lovely colonial wooden
house.
Next day Juliater arrived after breakfast, such lads do not
to let the chance of a tip pass by, and took us to Linga his tiny Christian
village. At the chief’s painted wooden house on stilts a guide explained the
Batak view of a world divided into three kingdoms, the Underworld, the Middle
where the family lived in a single room, and the Sky. We were shown the birthing
stool where the chief’s children were born in full sight of the villagers, a
proof of origin.
Days later he took us to a large Batak wedding where we were
welcomed by the colourful crowd, highlighted by the crimson lips and teeth of
Betel eating women. That rude young man had become our friend. We kept
infrequent contact by email whilst he continued his teacher training at Medan. The Asian
Financial Crisis hit a year later and their Rupiah devalued by a factor of four.
His people were starving, no longer even able to afford rice. We sent him money
to allow him to complete his last year of training. We had become his friend.
Tired of his pupil’s lack of enthusiasm for learning he left
for Bali, Indonesia’s only tourist
destination, 1500 miles away. Seemingly in no time he had found his feet
working in an English owned school. Just ten years ago the first terrorist bomb
exploded leaving over 200 visitors dead and the school closed for lack of
business. He now has his own school, teaching outsiders Indonesian, the money
spinner, and locals English, the community service.
Juliater visited Europe twice as a backpacker, we met up in Amsterdam and Paris, in
between we celebrated our Golden Wedding in two months travelling around Bali
and Lombok. This year he married a girl from eastern
Sumatra who is now pregnant. His own father deserted
leaving the mother he idolises to labour in the fields. I can see we will be wheelie-bagging
in Bali once more to see the great dad and
baby.
A JOURNEY as submitted
The fishing village
of Amed is as east as one can get in Bali. Wooden hulled outriggers spend the day unused on
the beach, but leave at dusk for a night’s fishing. Every morning vivid multicoloured
sails glinted in the early sun heralding their safe return. Out of sight but
further east lay Lombok. Just off its northern
coast the idyllic sounding Gili islands ban motor vehicles, and dogs. Island
hopping was called for, but a journey by scheduled ferry would involve a long
tiresome detour.
‘You could sail direct to Gili Trawangan’, suggested Putu, the
boatman taking us to snorkel over a coral reef.
The idea germinated and within hours of landing we had shaken
hands on a deal with another local fisherman who spoke no English.
‘I should have persisted’ said Putu later. Sorry he hadn’t
expected an old couple to be up for it.
Next morning a boat beached stern first outside the hotel. The
hull was sturdy with plenty of freeboard, but only 12ft long and barely 2ft
wide, the two outriggers like the gaff were longer than the hull. The tiny helmsman
hoisted our luggage over his head, waded through the surf, and placed it in the
bow. We sat in the middle facing each other, our man stood at the stern, tiller
in hand.
Off we sailed, stiff wind abeam, showered with warm spray each
time the outrigger dug into a wave. The sail made a wonderful sight with its
bold stripes of red, black and blue. It hung from a near vertical bamboo gaff, lashed
to the bow, propped by the short mast, bending as the sails filled. He steered without
compass by keeping Agung Bali’s
highest mountain directly astern, trailing as ever his 100ft line of 100 hooks.
Soon we were out of sight of land, the now invisible peak betrayed only by a
tiny cloud. We crossed the imaginary Wallace
line which separates the ecosystems of Australasia and Asia.
It was hard to forget that a young couple had drifted in these seas for days,
saved only by a text to the UK
from a mobile they had dismissed as useless. After four hours under sail we beached
on the golden sands of Trawangan, without having caught a single fish.
Two days later he was back with another human catch;
grinning widely as he pointed to his haul of gleaming fish.
