Develop your Travel Writing Style: Tone and Author Avatars

Writing your Travel Guide

The core part of travel writing in guidebooks is straightforward, informative, and full of facts and details. But it doesn’t end there. You can also include anecdotes or travel narrative sections that will help your reader connect to the destination you’re writing about.

If you’re new to travel blogging, you might not have settled on a writing style yet, but the more you write, the more your natural writing style will evolve and develop.

There are many elements to consider when defining your personal writing style. As you read through these, you’ll recognize some you’d be comfortable adopting, and others that would just feel alien to you.

The key to choosing your writing style is that it feels natural and effortless. As soon as you try to force a writing style that isn’t you, you’ll run into issues.

Tone

What tone do you want to convey? Friendly, reserved, humorous, serious, scholarly, sarcastic, conspiratorial, logical, emotional, intimate, or opinionated?

Rick Steves Quote, Travel Guide Writer & TV Host

In a similar vein to Rick Steves, I use a friendly and approachable tone in my travel guides, as if I was sharing a conversation with a traveling buddy.

If you are just starting out as a travel writer, the easiest approach is to imagine you’re discussing your trip with a close friend. This will most likely be the writing tone that comes most naturally to you as you’re already using it every day. During the editing phase you’ll tighten up your text to cut extra words, but for your first draft, just capture your ideas using a tone you’re comfortable with.

As you become a more experienced writer, you’ll gain the confidence to experiment with different writing tones. But make sure you can maintain the same tone throughout your travel guide.

Questions to ask yourself

Is your tone appropriate for your subject? (For example, a glib writing style for a serious topic wouldn’t go down very well.)
Will your tone appeal to the audience? (For example, a 20-year-old backpacker partying their way around the world on a budget will gravitate towards a different tone than an empty-nester looking to experience the religious and cultural heritage of a destination.)

If you answered “No” to either of these questions, it’s time to reevaluate the tone, or change the other elements of your book. Basically, you need to make sure that all of your vocabulary, sentence structure, and content tone all work in harmony with your target audience in mind.

Create an Author Avatar

Author Avatar – who are you today?

If you’re struggling to define your tone, try applying a label to your author role. Here are a few author avatar examples to trigger your imagination. Adapt these to suit your writing tone and level of detail, or create one from scratch:

Author as the Educator:

share your expertise and experiences using your in-depth knowledge of the topic. Focus on facts and figures and less on narratives.

Author as the Reporter:

share details and different points of view using an investigative approach. Focus on connecting with the destination through a series of interviews, presented using an objective point of view.

Author as the Story Teller:

share personal anecdotes throughout your text to illustrate key destinations, sights, and experiences. You’ll include basic information, but want your readers to research the full details themselves.

Author as the Explorer:

share your experiences with a been there and done that approach. Focus on sharing narratives to personalize travel experiences, but you’ll also include essential information.

Creating a consistent tone throughout your book will give it an easy flow that will lull your reader with its familiarity.

As soon as you’ve labeled your intent, it’s easier to settle on the tone and vocabulary that aligns with your author avatar. You can combine your avatar personalities to create an interesting mix of content that will keep your readers on their toes.