Improve your Travel Writing
As travel writers, we need to create content that is descriptive enough to transport our readers to a location or helping them imagine the encounters with people you’ve met. Your readers need to be able to experience the scene you’re sharing with them, so they can connect with your writing.
This article is the second in a series of articles about your five senses. We’ll look at each sense, and see how you can use it to improve your travel writing.
“Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences,” Diane Ackerman writes in “A Natural History of the Senses,” a sensory-rich journey. “Hit a tripwire of smell, and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.”
Sense of Smell
Our sense of smell is intrinsically linked to our memories, and research shows that when areas of the brain connected to memory are damaged it negatively affects our ability to identify smells.
If you want to identify the aroma you’re experiencing you have to recall when you experienced that aroma before, and connect that memory to visual information that is tied to it.
The reason house-sellers make fresh coffee or bake just before a house viewing takes place, is to stir up homely memories for the buyer to create an emotional connection to the house.
Don’t just inhale the world. Identify the memory or feeling it evokes. Writing with your nose
Your goal as a travel writer is to transport your reader to a place or time to experience a smell for themselves through their stored memories, rather than just sharing how you experienced it.
There are specific elements that help us figure out how to describe what we see, hear or taste, but when it comes to our sense of smell, it becomes harder to convey.
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived,” observed Helen Keller, whose blindness made her acutely aware of the nose’s powers.
Examples of Smell Elements:
- Chemical/Natural
- Freshness/Decayed
- Pungency
- Sweet/Sour
Take a look at this example from Richard Price author of Samaritan:
“Leading the way, White Tom pushed into the bodega. The reek of the boric acid in roach powder hit Ray between the eyes three steps in from the door.”
This is an example of showing rather than telling. Imagine how uninspiring “The reek of roach powder was really strong” sounds, but by showing that he could smell it three steps in from the door, highlights the strength of the smell without actually telling us how strong it is.
If you’ve written or come across a travel article that uses the sense of sight effectively, please add the links to the comments below.
Additional Resources about sense of smell:
- Life Without a Sense of Smell via Discover Magazine
- Making Sense of Scents: Smell and the Brain via Brain Facts
Are you guilty of using generic words like beautiful, lovely, and amazing to describe what you're seeing? That doesn't help you reader, and here's how you can improve your #travelwriting. Click To Tweet
The above content is an excerpt from my Five Senses Travel Journal
For more articles in this fives senses series:
