Journal With Impact: Travel Voice

Workshop: Six Conversations for Writing Creative Journals

“Good travel writing is always in demand.” Diana Tonnessen

Your presentation will depend on your audience, your purpose, and your focus. If you have decided to try out the travel magazine markets, then you will need to study their style as to whether to develop essays or articles, and a specific voice. If you are developing chapters for your own personal memoir then an essay or a story vignette might be a better fit. Or perhaps as a memoir, or a mini adventure to family members only, a series of letters might be more appropriate.

Magazine editor Tonnessen recommends, “Tell me something I don’t know.

Take me with you when you go. Tell me a story I can’t put down.” That advice applies whether your audience is private or public.

And if you are a fiction writer, your research on locations and settings can do double duty as an article for a magazine, or an essay for your blog, as you build your reading audience.

Go over the above suggestions and categories and note which style you prefer to read yourself. That will most likely be the style you are most comfortable writing.

Walk through the different styles of travel books or magazines you enjoy and outline a few articles that appeal to you and see how they were set up. What stood out? How might your content be adapted to that format? How can you give it a personal voice?

All articles will have an opening hook, but have a variety of methods, and will give a focus indication of the main area of interest: museum, seaport, bookstores, restaurants, landmarks to name a few. Usually there are three to five paragraphs to explore the subject and then a closing summary that returns to the opening lead.

It sounds very much like the sharing we automatically do with friends and family when we are excited about a trip we’ve just taken, or a new restaurant we tried out, or a wonderful family day with young children, or teen children, or as a couple.

Action Steps:

1. Take one specific episode of your trip and write it up three ways: as a letter, as an essay, and as an article with each answering Tonnessen’s requested details.

Share: Which style did you write most naturally? Were you surprised?

Read deep, marcy