With a great lead, solid structure, a unique angle and absolute accuracy, you’re well on your way toward a winning travel story. Photo by: Charlene N Simmons
A golden rule of writing is to know your story. I learned this from the great travel writer Don George of National Geographic Traveler, and a former colleague of mine at Lonely Planet. He’d tell authors to have a solid sense of the story they’re looking to tell before starting the journey of writing their pieces.
Without a framework in mind, your story may veer off course.
What messages are you delivering to your readers? What outcomes and calls to action will your article generate?
To help keep you and your story on the path to success, keep in mind these four keys to great storytelling, for travel writing, and other genres.
A Great Lead:
Whether you spell it “lead” or “lede”, the truth remains that the beginning sentences and paragraph are the most important parts of any article, long or short. Your lead is your first, maybe only, shot at hooking the reader, and pulling them into the story.
Aim to grab the reader’s attention with an unexpected or timely angle, and set their expectations about the story ahead.
What’s different about your story, eye-catching, outrageous?
Try to envision readers cocking their heads a bit in curiosity, wanting to read more.
One quick tip: Avoid overly wordy or indirect leads. Readers will quickly click or flip the page if not engaged by your article, so don’t beat around the bush.
Structure and Form:
If your lead establishes the direction of your story, the structure keeps it on track. Readers respond to a well-organized story that delivers them where expected.
Think or your story like a bridge over a waterway. Just as the roadway is built upon pillars to hold up the traffic traveling from Point A to Point B and Point C, your story should progress logically.
Journalist John McPhee suggests using an outline to capture the main idea(s) of each paragraph, and connect them in your story. This will help ensure you’re taking your readers on the journey they set out for when they started reading your piece.
For longer narratives, look at ways to break up large blocks of text with subheads, and experiment with article structures so long as they don’t go against the content specifications of your target market.
Watch out for overly linear narratives, which are boring and amateurish: “I went there, I did this. I went there, I did that.”
As cool as that trip may have been to you, with a boring linear narrative, your readers just won’t care.
One approach is to think of your features as having three sections:
- A first third that sets up the action and story proposition, and often ends with a dramatic or funny twist;
- A middle section that steps away from the linear narrative, and focuses on background information that adds context to the current setting;
- A third section that returns readers to where the first section leaves off, and picks the story back up, yet for readers who now have more background than they did earlier in the piece.
For example, if you’re writing about Thai cooking classes in Chiang Mai, set the first third in the kitchen with the writer preparing dishes to present to the class. End the first section with the teacher taking a tentative bite.
Will your cuisine pass the test?
The middle section can include background information like the origins of Thai cooking, key techniques and regional flavors.
After providing this context, resume the story in the final third of the piece, perhaps with the teacher breaking out in a smile and saying “delicious” about your tom kai gai?
This approach lets you break up linear narratives, add drama, and provide readers background info that enriches the overall story.
Unique angles and twists:
What’s different about your hook from others? Provide a specific perspective to the story that’s absent in other coverage.
Personal experience comes in handy here. You live in San Francisco’s Mission District and have hit all its best taquerias. You have hands-on experience studying overseas in Paris or biking New Zealand hills.
Surface-level travel information is free and easily found online, so show the deep details that prove you’ve been to this place, not just the place’s website.
Absolute accuracy:
Check your facts – names, dates, titles, locations – and check them again. Strive to deliver all your copy error-free.
Not all markets will have proofreaders looking at this level of detail. Any mistakes in final articles will reflect poorly upon the writer, so go the extra mile to confirm that what you’re submitting is 100% accurate.
It’s good business, and makes a great impression on editors.
Keep copies of your notes as a backup, and confirm all quotes and attribution.
One final tip: Don’t just rely on spellchecking as your final edit.