Travel Writing Tips

Being an prolific and effective travel writer can be overwhelming, so I’ve put together this series of A-Z Travel Writing Tips.

Each article provides a concise list of prompts from A to Z, which provides your travel writing the TLC it needs. We cycle through all letters in the alphabet in turn, and provide links to additional resources and examples of how to implements each tip.

See the grid at the bottom of this post to view other letters in the series.

is for Improve

Writers and creatives tend to have perfectionist tendencies, but when it comes to your writing, achieving that perfection is something you never stop chasing. Even when you’ve finished your third draft and you think, “That’s it. Perfect. I’ll let it rest before I sent it.” When you go back to it, you’ll find words, sentences or paragraphs that you end up tweaking one more time!

Just because you’ll never achieve perfection doesn’t mean you should stop trying to continually increase your writing skills, so here’s a list of some effective ways of improving your travel writing:

Write your Passion:

There’s lots of crap travel writers, and I’m not talking about the one’s that use bad grammar and spelling, and their articles are filled will cliches (e.g. it’s a hidden gem) and empty adjectives (e.g. the sunset was lovely), but those that don’t have any passion for their topic, and their writing has nothing that grabs you. There’s two elements to travel writing, the technical side – grammar, rules, etc, and the creative side. You can’t be creative if you don’t have any passion for your topic.

Read More:

Find books, magazine or articles in your in your travel niche, and absorb it. For example, if you want to write for Lonely Planet, buy their monthly magazine and read it from cover to cover. Don’t just read the content from an observers perspective; analyse it, assess it, figure out what elements you like and what one’s you don’t. Search out travel writing competitions and read the winning and runner’s up entries. Read blog posts by other bloggers and travel writers in your niche, and when you find a writer whose writing you admire, take an analytical view of what makes it appeal to you.

Write More:

Sounds obvious, but the more you write the better you’ll become. Don’t just focus on writing articles for publication. Write for the joy of writing. Use Freewriting to warm up your writing muscles, so that when it’s time to write an article, you’re already in the writing zone.

Write what you know:

It’s difficult to be a generalist in today’s travel writing world. How many Top 10 Things to do in Paris, blog posts can you read before you become numb to the words and the destination loses its appeal? You have to find an angle to write from and write what you know. The only thing that is unique about your travel writing is your personal experience and perspective. It’s unique to you, and it’s what will make your writing stand out. Looking for some inspiration. Here’s an article about 18 irresistible types of travel writing.

Learn to Self-Edit:

If you’re writing a book then you should get a proofreader, and maybe even a line editor to improve the quality of your writing. But how many of us can afford to get every blog article edited? So you need to learn to self-edit. I use ProWriting Aid to edit all of my articles. I tried free and paid Grammarly, and free Hemingway, but ProWriting Aid combines the best of both worlds, and it integrates with my writing program Scrivener. Whichever tool you use—use it. Learn to self-edit your articles. Make them easy to read and avoid using all the bad elements that make travel writing weak and inferior.

is for Images

Show me a travel blogger and I’ll show you a person with tens of thousands of photos that are saved in the cloud or on an external hard drive. Make sure you have a robust back up process so that you can lose your phone, or your computer can crash, and you have back-up copies of those treasured images.

We take photos of our destinations, and photos of signs to capture reminders and opening times. We take photos of memorable scenes and beautiful doors that capture our imagination. For most of us, our most dominant sense is sight, and what we lack in note-taking we more than make up for with the volume of images we take during every trip and adventure.

To take better images, learn the composition concept of The “Rule of Thirds”, which will help you create well balanced and interesting shots. In learning how to use the rule of thirds the most important questions to be asking of yourself are:

• What are the points of interest in this shot?
• Where am I intentionally placing them in my 3×3 grid?

Studies show that when we view images our eyes naturally go to one of the intersection points, rather than the center of the shot. So when you use the grid, your image will organically resonate with your viewers.

If your composition doesn’t fit within the grid, shift to a different angle or perspective before you take your shot. This can dramatically increase the impact of your image.

is for Instagram

Instagram is a mobile photo-sharing app and social network that was created in 2010 and was bought by Facebook in 2012. It’s a photo/video-centric platform that is one of the premium social platforms for travel bloggers. Even short Instagram descriptions are a form of travel writing, and you can write a compelling or inspirational paragraph or two that shares your story or travel experience.

Here are some different ways to build your audience and engagement:

• Take a look at other travel bloggers in the same niche as you and see what photos and videos get the most engagement.
• Post travel tips and travel quotes.
• Ask your followers to post their own photos using a custom hashtag, and then re-gram (re-post) their images onto your feed with a photo credit.
• Post images from your latest blog posts. You can’t include active URL’s in your Instagram posts, so you’ll need to direct your followers to the one active link in your bio. You can either use this to direct them to your blog or use XX, which directs them to a list of active links.
• Participate in social media sharing groups on Facebook, that reciprocate on likes, follows and comments. We host these in a group I’m admin for, Not So Young Female Travel Bloggers. This is a great way to connect with other travel bloggers in your niche.
• Use relevant hashtags. These are especially useful when you blog in different niches. Instagrammers may not follow your profile, but they’ll be able to find you through your hashtags. I monitor hashtags within my niche, and it’s an effective way of finding relevant images and content creators.
• Link your Instagram to your Facebook profile, so that you have the option of automatically posting your Instagram feed to your Facebook page. But don’t forget to hop on over to Facebook to get rid of that long list of hashtags. They just look ugly in your Facebook Feed.

It’s better to write a good description, and follow it with a list of hashtags, rather than stuffing the description with hashtags.

Follow me on Instagram

is for Inspirational

Travel articles and books have different goals, like entertain and educate, but the strongest and most impactful is to inspire another person with your tales through your travel writing. We can recount facts and opening times, and how to reach a destination, and that is educational, but it’s not inspirational.

In order to inspire your fellow traveller you have to weave in your first hand knowledge, and an anecdote or two. Your writing has to have a story that engages your reader, so that they’re taken along the journey with you. Stories grab our attention, and engage our curiosity, emotions and imagination, and you can use them to inspire others to travel in your footsteps. You may not be able to inspire armchair travelers to leave the comfort of their home, but you may inspire them to read more of your writing, or read more books or articles about the same destination.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of the A-Z series. Look out for the next letter in the series.

Discover an alphabet’s worth of Travel Writing Tips

Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast
Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast	Read the Article Listen to the Podcast
K	L	M	N	O
P	Q	R	S	T
U	W	X	X	Y
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