Getting better at travel writing - Notes from Don George's blog

I read a blog entry this week by Don George that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I'm using this entry to record my notes from his three-part series about travel writing. I found it incredible helpful in getting me to think about how I could better write about my travel experiences.

Here are my notes from his tips:

Plotting your story before you go

1. Where do you want to go and why do you want to go there?
1. Festivals, spiritual sites, historic sites, beliefs, rituals, wildernesses, legacies, characters
• Things that stand out as potential passion points and connections
2. Skeletal itinerary
• Encompasses the history, culture and attractions that define the place
3. Frame the journey in the context of a quest
1. Going to X in search of Y
• Lends a built-in narrative arc

Finding and focusing your story on the road

1. What’s the story?
1. Essence of a place, fundamental characteristics
2. Alluring places, people and experiences – passion points
3. Focus, focus, focus
• Details that capture a taste, a person, an experience
• Use all senses: Sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste, thinking, feeling
• Write Them Down!!

Exercise: set aside half an hour per day to sit somewhere (café, museum, market, etc.) and write about the world around you. (What are you seeing, smelling, hearing, touching, tasting, thinking, and feeling?)

2. Record dialogue as it occurs
1. Rhythm, vocabulary, accent
• Can convey essential information and fill out the character of a place and its people with no explanation
3. Set aside time at the end of every day to write down the most important elements, experiences, and lessons of that day.
1. Quickly jotted notes
2. Key words
4. What am I learning?
1. What is the place and experience revealing to me?
2. What gifts are they bestowing on me?
3. How are they challenging and expanding me?

Re-creating the stepping stones of your journey

1. Write down the:
1. Most memorable experiences
2. Main lessons learned
• Pick one lesson that really inspires passion and offers layers of experience, connection and meaning
• This becomes the principal point of the story
2. How did I learn that lesson? What were the steps that led me to understand it?
1. Identify and write down the steps, tracing the journey to the lesson
2. Pick out a few essential stepping stones
• Recall as vividly as possible the experiences, details and characters involved in each

Additional Notes:

• The story is not about me, it’s about the place.
• Ruthlessly edit the experience, cutting away everything that doesn’t contribute to the reader reaching the same place, the same illumination

To read Don George's posts for the full depth of his insights, visit the following link:

The Quality Quotient: Travel Writing That Matters