Leave it Out!

Did you know that what you leave out of your Travel Guide is just as important as what you put in?

Here’s an excerpt from Peter Moore’s “How to write a travel book in 5 easy steps” article that covers what to leave out of your Travel Narrative.

Deciding what to leave out is a key skill and probably the hardest thing to do. We all have trouble ‘killing our babies.’ I’ve been sent the odd chapter or two by people and the biggest problem was that they included every small detail. One guy sent me a document recounting one small part of his journey in Mali that ran to 50 pages and detailed boiling water for a cup of tea.

It’s a problem I still face. One of my latest books was about buying an old Vespa in Italy and riding it from Milan to Rome. I had a fantastic scene where I visited an old Vespa mechanic in Sydney. He had a great workshop with old posters on the wall and a coterie of little old Italian guys hanging around a beat up coffee machine. But I couldn’t use it without slowing down the whole narrative. So I had to cut it free.

It’s like movies. A lot of scenes end up on the cutting floor. A boring all day bus journey can be easily pared down to ‘By evening we were in Esfahan …’

Although Peter is an author of travel narratives, this “LEAVE IT OUT” approach is just as useful for Destination Travel Guides.

How I used the “Leave it Out” approach

One of the biggest stumbling blocks I had when I wrote my first travel guide was that it was never going to see the light of day, because there was no end in sight. The problem?

I kept adding in more and more content and there always seemed to be more content to add.

I was so fearful of creating an “incomplete” travel guide book, that I just kept stuffing it fuller and fuller with more travel tips, advice, activities and sites to see.

When the apathy began to set it.. each new Travel Guide edit started to feel like a chore. That’s when I took a step back to identify how I’d ended up in this position.

I discovered that I hadn’t defined my Travel Guide Audience specifically enough. During my initial planning stages, I’d set my audience as any European or North American who would want to visit Bodrum on a summer holiday. I chose those demographic groups because that was what I was most familiar with, and I wanted to write for who I knew.

My Lightbulb Moment

I realised that if I really wanted to write for a group of people I was most familiar with, I needed to write a guidebook for people just like me.

A guide book for travellers with an independent spirit, who wanted to veer off the beaten path, and get under the skin of their new territory by meeting the locals and having a “local” rather than a “tourist” experience.

I went as far as identifying some reader profiles, so that when I wrote the book, I had them in mind. And then used those profiles as a way to edit myself, by asking “Would this person be interested in this information or activity?”

This process really helped me. I revisited my travel guidebook draft and cut out all of the segments that I or my target readers wouldn’t be interested in.

Out went the glitzy (aka. pricey) restaurants and spas, out went the nightclubs, and out went the local excursions that could just as easily be planned independently.

Defining my target audience more precisely had provided me with a set of parameters that I could use when deciding what to Include and what to Leave Out.

“How to Write a Travel Guide” Tip

Before you start writing your Travel Guide — define your target audience. The simplest way to do this is to set up some target audience profiles. (watch out for my article about how to do this)

Read more articles in my How to Write a Travel Guide Series

I’m putting the finishing touches on my How to Write and Self-Publish a Travel Guide Series, which details a step by step approach for writing and producing your own travel guide. It’s part of a four-part series aimed at helping travel bloggers achieve passive income based on their passions and existing content.

Each month I host a monthly free prize draw and give away a travel writing e-book to the lucky winner. Sign up to join my mailing list to participate.

If you’re a travel blogger who wants to turn their travel blog into an ebook or paperback destination guide, leave me a comment below.

Have you struggled with what to leave out of your travel guide and what to include? Let me know the challenges you faced and how you solved them.

Credit for the excerpt from Peter Moore:

More about Peter Moore, who is Associate Web Editor at Wanderlust and author of six travel narratives including The Wrong Way Home, Swahili for the Broken-Hearted and Vroom with a View. You can find out more about Peter and his books by visiting www.petermoore.net.

Attribution of Feature Image – Asierromero via FreePik