#The book of travels themes how to#
#The book of travels themes professional#

#The book of travels themes professional#

This is why it’s crucial to edit yourself and get edited by professional readers. I’m one of those weirdos who believes there’s no such thing as a mundane story, just a mundane way of telling it. Whether you go with a popular memoir theme like self-discovery, coping with loss, or coming of age, your theme will help you connect with readers who identify with your struggles. The meaning of your book is tied to its theme. It’s harder to write about what you learned from the trip. It’s relatively easy to write about the events you experienced on your trip. Those two types of journeys involved in your travel memoir are the physical journey and the emotional one. To do this effectively, you’ll need to take the reader on two separate but parallel journeys. It’s the literary equivalent to showing slide show pictures of your vacation.īut if you dig underneath the surface and discuss not only what happened but what you learned from what happened, you’ll forge a stronger connection with the reader.įind the universal takeaway that any human over the age of 12 can understand. Creating a travel log of what happened and when it happened is boring.

This advice applies to any memoir, by the way. The most important part of your travel memoir is the takeaway, or the moral of the story. Check out this post for a thorough guide on finding your writer’s voice. Your voice will impact how the reader experiences your memoir, so choose a voice that carries the sentiment you’re hoping to convey. You can be aloof, formal, or matter-of-fact. Many travel memoirists choose a voice that’s either friendly, self-deprecating, or conversational, however remember that you’re not bound to this type of voice. The way you choose to tell the story (i.e.The type of language and cadence you use when writing your story.Your voice is a combination of the following: When crafting a memoir of any type, you must define your voice. Like me, you may be the type of writer who understands their thoughts while writing, but it’s still important for subconscious processing to give yourself space after an event and before writing. Realize how the experience has changed you, and then write from that informed perspective. To write with self-awareness, let it settle. The best stories emerge after they’ve had an opportunity to breathe and you’ve gained much needed self-awareness. Although I’d love to write about it one day, I’m still parsing through the experience and figuring out what I’ve learned. This past summer, I went on a month long adventure to the American West. However, a memoir must have a deeper meaning that’s only evident after you’ve come to the end of your journey.īefore writing your memoir, you must take time to reflect on your travels and to contemplate your story’s overarching theme. At best, you’re writing field notes or a travel journal. You can’t write a travel memoir while you’re actually on the journey. So, unless you’re being sponsored by the visitor’s bureau to write a marketing pamphlet on the destination, your travel memoir should be intimate, honest, and focused on the emotional takeaway. It’s a written documentation of the author’s awakening or evolution. A travel memoir isn’t just a list of experiences in a unique location. On the other hand, a reader isn’t likely to curl up with a non-narrative guide book.īlogging, guide books, tutorials, and other forms of travel writing certainly have their place, but they aren’t the same as a memoir.

The only true requirement for a travel memoir is a good story. A travel memoir may appeal to the reader with wanderlust, but a love of and a desire to travel is not a requirement. While the latter two may provide the travel-minded tourist hopeful with generic advice on what to see and do, the travel memoir is focused on the writer’s experience and takeaway.

#The book of travels themes how to#

Let’s draw an important distinction right away: A travel memoir is not the same as writing a guide book or a generic book on how to travel. Travel Writing Isn’t The Same As a Travel Memoir