Words & Pictures in your Travel Journal
I read an article recently from the Matador Network that listed the 7 fundamentals for documenting your travels. What the list boiled down to was 6 travel writing tips to capture your travels in words and pictures, with one over-arching principle of “Share”.
The three perspectives for capturing words:
- Keep a Notebook – for capturing notes, names, details etc.
- Keep a Scrapbook – for collecting cards, flyers, leaflets, tickets etc.
- Keep a Journal – for reflecting on the emotional side of what you’ve encountered
The three perspectives for capturing pictures:
- Capture a sense of place – photos to provide an overall sense of the place, scenes and elements that reflect the culture
- Document the people – people make the place and this is where you can get up close and personal
- Document the details – this is basically anything other than people and can include details like colours, patterns, textures, motion, clothing, food or any other unique details that personifies the destination
It was a good reminder that there are many different options for capturing what you experience, and you can use a combination of all 6, or just focus on a couple. It really all depends on the type of content you’re creating and your preferred method of capturing it.
These two perspectives make up the HOW of travel documentation. But first you have to capture the visceral or emotional reaction to what you encounter during your travels. To be a successful Travel Writer you need to incorporate all 6 senses into your writing.
Use 6 Senses for Travel Writing:
I’ve always looked at documenting my travels by focusing on my 5(+1) senses – which is the WHAT of travel writing:
- What did I see, taste, touch, hear and smell
- And most importantly … what did I feel
By combining the Matador Network words and picture approach with my 6 Sense approach – you really have a solid methodology for documenting your travels. It boils down to the “How” and the What”, to use words and pictures to capture your senses.
This is a good reminder of Travel Writing 101 – to capture what you experienced with your senses. When your writing captures that emotional connection to your experience, it’s easier for your audience to connect to your experience too.
Travel Journal Inspiration
Here’s a selection of travelers who use Travel Journals to capture elements and reminders of their trips and adventures. I included excerpts from their websites to tickle your imagination, and you can click on their names and websites to visit the source.
Erik Gauger (Website: Notes from the Road)
Instead of carrying around dozens of heavy guidebooks when I travel, I condense my useful information into a small size Moleskine travel journal. I use Moleskine journals to organize all my travel plans, make all my notes, record my conversations, draw travel sketches, make notes on animal plants, and draw people and street scenes.
I always compress everything for my trip into a single moleskine journal – itineraries, contacts, airplane tickets and so forth. I also add notes about the places I am going. The process, before and during travel, helps me learn about different subjects.
Dave Fox (Website: Globe Jotting)
Get specific and dive deep. Travel journals, by nature, tend to skim the surface of a journey. That’s okay; we use these diaries as tools to remember our adventures after a trip is finished. But travel stories we share with others are more compelling when they hone in on a specific moment, event, or topic.
Instead of telling us in one article about your entire week in Paris, write with lots of detail and emotion about getting lost on the Métro, or tangling with the chaotic crowds around the Mona Lisa, or haggling at a flea market, or… the possibilities are endless! Encounters with individual people can also make great stories.
Focus on something specific in each story.
Amanda Kendle Guest Blogger (Website: Vagabondish)
Do not make the mistake of writing down every single thing that happens to you. Just because it’s happening in a foreign country doesn’t necessarily make it interesting, even to you. Whenever you sit down to write in your journal, recall the sights or events of the last days that have made the biggest impression on you. Try and paint a word picture describing your feelings and thoughts about your new experiences, as well as explaining the history or culture behind it.
Do make the effort to spend your first few words identifying the when and where. I always include a heading with both the day and date, plus the town I’m staying in, and the place where I’m writing the entry — the name of the hotel, a train line or a bench in a park.
WanderLust Magazine
Although the writer’s guidelines from WanderLust and intended for Travel Writers who want to submit a guest article to the Magazine, there’s core content in their “Do you have any general advice for aspiring travel writers?” segment that includes some good prompts for your Travel Journal.
Think about how you can avoid blandness in your descriptions of a destination – recounting a seemingly unimportant incident can bring a place to life more than a detailed adjectival description of its physical appearance. And don’t forget smells, sounds, flavours and even temperature or air quality as well as sights and emotions.
Jennifer Magnuson Guest Blogger (Website: The Writer’s Digest)
Not only does travel writing help create a time capsule of sorts, it fosters my ability to remain present, allowing for the transformative nature of travel to encompass all of my senses. And, as a writer, I am better able to place a reader in scene if I have remembered to capture the ephemeral details such as the scents, sounds and feelings of a particular moment.
My Travel Writing Prompts
One final thought
There are many different ways of capturing your travel stories in a journal, and you method needs to be as individual as you. Don’t adopt a method or approach that another blogger or writer is using it if doesn’t work for you. The only way to maintain a travel journal is to make it fun and meaningful.
Have you blogged about your Travel Journal? Leave me a comment below so I can check it out.
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Great post! I like the ideas that do not make the mistake of writing down every single thing that happens to you.
Hi Carl … it’s an art retraining yourself to only focus on the right details that you’ll need for your travel articles, and not to laboriously try to capture every second of the day.
Jay Artale recently posted…3 Travel Writing Tips to engage your Readers