How to Brainstorm your Passion to write a Travel Guide

How to brainstorm you passion to write a travel guide

Brainstorm your Passion

In the previous article I talked about the importance and benefits of Writing your Passion. At this point, put your thoughts about a writing a Travel Guide aside and think about your passions.

What topics move you?

Don’t even worry about whether your answers will translate into viable book ideas. Just focus on capturing things that pop into your head when you ask yourself the questions below.

The goal of Steps 1 and 2 is to gather as many ideas as possible. Capture gut reactions as well as more measured responses to any of these questions.

Step 3 is where you’ll edit these responses and pair them down to your potential book idea.

Let’s get started with the exercise to brainstorm your passions:

Brainstorm your Passion Step 1: Consider your Destination

Let’s look at the Destinations you think about:

What destinations are you most familiar with?
What destinations are important to you?
What destinations inspire you?
What destinations intrigue you?

Brainstorm your Passion Step 2: Consider your Destination areas of interest

Using the list of Destinations as inspiration, consider the following:

Are there specific areas of a destination that fascinates you the most?
When you travel, is there a recurring theme to your photographs or writing?
What are you most inquisitive about?
What topics do you research about before you go?
What do you ask other travelers about?

Brainstorm your Passion Step 3: Shelve your Luke Warm Passions

Now that you have you list of destinations and your areas of interest, let’s take a look at them to see which would work best for your book idea. Are there any ideas on the list that seem less appealing, or that you know you don’t want to write a whole book about?

Just put these to one side, but don’t get rid of them. Even if you don’t want to write a whole book about them, they could become chapters within your chosen topics so we don’t won’t to lose sight of them entirely.

Brainstorm your Passion Step 4: Consider your Viewpoint

After this round of editing, take a look at the inspiration for you book idea and come up with your viewpoint and perspective for approaching your destination.

If you plan on writing a general travel guide covering a broad range of topics, then this step is simple. But you can also brainstorm more targeted books. For example, based on my brainstorming topics I could have “The Food Lovers Guide to the Bodrum Peninsula” as a potential book idea. Your guide book could have a specific slant towards culture, history or a specific activity. Think about all the different ways you could spin your destination, and come up with a list of book ideas that excite you.

Don’t just get fixated on one idea, and discard all others. It’s important to use this process to come up with as many book ideas as possible – always bearing in mind about Writing your Passion.

Brainstorm your Passion Next Steps:

You’ll use this list to explore the market place for competition and evaluate the potential audience. Some of your initial idea may not survive these assessments, so it’s key that you have a few ideas to work with. You will need to ensure your book has something that other books don’t, but the important part of this process is to determine what you want to write about.

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What topics are you passionate enough to write about?