BootsnAll Travel Community

I'm off in October and plan to use the website www.travelpod.com to document my travels. But how can i write up my travels interestingly without sounding like a boring "then i met this girl called kate and bloke called jim and we went to a pub" diary entry!

any suggestions would be great, cheers

Hey Matty-
We host travelblogs as well....check out some of ours here ...I especially like The Global Trip.

Court

Check out the sort of writings that the rest of us have done in our travelblogs.

Avoid telling us about the plane ride, the taxi cabs, the pubs and avoid filling our heads with useless "ya had to be there" type stuff.

Spend more time describing the minute details of stuff that you saw; specifically ordinary people going about their daily lives in a slightly different manner than ours.

Tell us about the colors, the smells, the sounds. Don't tell us about your digestive problems or the lack of any hot water in the showers.

Take short notes during the day to order to jog your memory when you are sitting down at the internet cafe later.

Hope that this helps.

Court:- I did consider your travel blog, but after comparing the two websites, travelpod won it on ease of use, not for me mind, but for all the computer illiterate people like my mum! Travelpod email them a link they click when ive updated it... fool proof i hope!

Joe:- The diary idea was a very good one, cheers.

on my last trip, i kept two accounts:
i had a notebook with a monthly planner type thing in the back. each day i wrote a short account of all the things i'd done that day in the planner part. i.e., "went to museum, met german guy, etc" then in the front of that book i would keep whatever notes i felt like: observations, lists, ideas, whatever.
then, whenever i felt the urge and had the time, i'd update my blog, with a story, or a description of a place, or whatever. the notebook helped me remember details and the blog is (hopefully) entertaining for my friends and family to read. the cool thing about the daily planner style is that you don't feel compelled to write a ton, so it doesn't feel like a chore, but you have a brief record that will jog your memory later on.

Hey, check out my blog:

Central America At Last

hey,

I would suggest you check out this blog (it's not mine, it's some traveller I just happen to read once, and then I was hooked).
Daniel Wallace

Joe already mentioned it but... Sensory details!!

Put the reader in your shoes and make them feel as if they're experiencing what you are.

Easier said than done of course...

_____________________
[Still Wandering] [Halcyon Climbing]

Hey!

Totally new to this forum, but this is just exactly the kind of stuff I need to learn! I often forget how to make the transition from personal journal entires (which are often about the extent to which my friend-cum-travel-buddy is getting on my last nerve) to something other people might want to read. Thanks!

Wow...

It is 7am here and i have been reading posts for 6 hours now...during my finals week...

I am new here n'all so i just want to let ppl know how much i enjoy their writing, it's really addicting...i've learned a lot since joining and of course all that does is add to my wanderlust. i like that word, wanderlust. if this was pee-wee's place house, it should be the "secret word"..we'd all be screaming...

"rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond. call me what you will."

ahh, bliss!
like kevinnedy im also new here. but man, im enjoying every minute, and every hit of the button! didnt realize that travel could be acknowledged as passion. iv been denying myself for soo long! and now, im on the brink on tapping into this marvelous resource!

and i just want to read & write as much... call me a sojournalist, why doncha? :P

nomadic dreamer

Hey Rogerio, thanks for the cheer!

Matty, my suggestion would be to make your writing as personal as you can. By that I mean focus on how events make you feel rather than just recounting a chronology of what happened. Like you say, there's little interesting in telling people about going to the pub, and, unless you are Somerset Maughn, it isn't really possible for most of us to describe what the Gobi Desert looks like at dawn, or what it feels like to take peyote. The thing that I think everyone can write about, and that readers also seem to be interested in, is how travelling affects you and the emotions it brings up in you. Then someone can easier imagine what it would feel like to be there - how would they feel in the same situation?

I also enjoy writing about the thoughtful side of travel. What's the point of travelling the world to be able to say: I learned the best
bungee jumping is in Lebanon?

Another very good tip, echoing what has been already said on this topic, is that line, "Don't tell me, show me". I think it's generally better to use language and some remembered dialogue to convey someone's character or something you've noticed about a country. Use memorable examples instead of prentious generalisations like, "All Nicaraguans love rocking chairs", or "that bloke Jim was really annoying" - I am rather guilty of this myself however...


Good luck on getting out of Southend!

Daniel
No Place As Home

i think i'm just gonna put all my thoughts to paper and when i get back, type it up, or when i'm at my friends, towards the beginning and near the end of my trip, i'll type it up and save to floppy disk.

ppl don't need to read it while i'm there, i'll just send a few emails to keep ppl updated and so they know i'm still alive and kicking.

on LP a writer sent me a message saying LP might publish my story as he thought i had a real talent for writing, a nice command of the language and i express myself well.

well needless to say, i was delighted. best comment i'd received in a while in fact.

although i wonder whether there will be enough stuff to happen to me to fill a story, well i guess it wouldn't be a book so just to fill a story wouldn't be that difficult. peter moore (vroom with a view) said at his first book reading in the UK (!) that he was lucky that all these interesting occurances happened to him and he was just lucky and some of the dialogue that he uses, he said you just can't make that stuff up!

ahh i can't wait. i'm going to look at the US travelblogs on here now, i think there are some of the US.

"Her particular speciality was to cook things while they were still in the packaging. I was almost full-grown before i realized that clingfilm wasn't a sort of chewy glaze." - Bill Bryson

Whether or not there's be enough to fill a whole story, write what makes YOU happy, and what YOU would want to read.

I don't think it has to be a professional piece of writing, just the best you can manage, and remember to include the details of little things you'd like to remember when you read it in five years. Otherwise, what's the point?

After reading dozens of these, the thing I want to mention is PLEASE don't end every single sentence with an exclamation mark. It drives the reader mad! Or maybe its just me. I'll give you an example:

"...and then I reached the top of the mountain! It was fantastic! But the I realised that I couldn't get down! Oh my god, I thought! But it all ended up OK!"

See what I mean? Loads of people do that.

Daniel's one, listed above, is my favourite travelogue so far, I think its brilliant. But we can't all be that talented, so all you can do is try your best. And perhaps go back to things and re-read them before publishing them for the world to read. It gives you a clear head and helps spot mistakes.

That said, I've never done one! But that's the way I'm going to do it...

I've just been reading this one as I saw a post he'd made on here. English isn't even his native tongue, but I found it really enjoyable. Not factually amazing, not full of long-winded prose, just an enjoyable read. I was glued to it!

Anyway, there's my five cents worth.
Riz

Wise words Rizwell.

Well, mine will be rubbish by your standards then, as we both know about my love affair with the exclamation mark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have been making a conscious effort to cut down.

Hi Matty, how you doing bud?

I think Riz is right - write it for you, with what you think is interesting. Just think about what bores you in other peoples blogs, and try to avoid those mistakes.

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying" Oscar Wilde

Hi laura, how you doing mate.

been a bit quiet recently as got as ive got a new job in canary wharf, and they dont know i'm leaving in 4 months, so no travel based websites at work!

I'll see you at the party mate.

Matt

Hi everyone, new to this site, and enjoying the forums (fori)? enormously.
I haven't yet looked at the writing guidelines, so probably what I'm writing here is regurgitation of what is said there, and it's also regurgitation of what has already been said here, but I don't mind being a fly for just one message.
My own experience of writing is the old adage (almost a cliche), 'show, not tell', as mentioned above. And yes, readers are not interested in your dysentry unless you can somehow make it really interesting.
I think the person who mentioned ordinary people doing something differently probably has it right.
Unless you're a fantastic writer, go easy on the adjectives. They are often shorthand. 'A beautiful place' doesn't really tell us much about the place (except that it is beautiful). Avoid too many adverbs. Instead of walking slowly, think of a few verbs which mean walk slowly. I am sure you know all that already, but an improvement in style often leads to an improvement in content.
Avoid cliches. (Actually, it can be very hard to avoid them. I, the lone wolf, silhouetted against the evening sky, is so cliched that it sounds cheesy)
As for exclamation marks, I couldn't agee more!
Too many of them drive me mad too! Exclamation marks are often shorthand for striving for effect, and they clutter up the flow of writing that makes reading an enjoyable process. Travel writer, eat your heart out!
But mere style is not enough. As someone has also mentioned above, concentrating on what really entertains you is the first step, because if you don't enjoy what you've written, you can be sure as hell no one else will. At the risk of boring the pants off every person reading this forum, I once listened to a man reading his travel journals to a very receptive audience, only to find that halfway through they were all fast asleep. He thought that describing him and his wife eating round a campfire and his motorbike breaking down detail for detail, exactly as it happened, was magnificent for a few laughs. But think what a good writer would have done with even that. There are loads of books on writing that are full of good ideas on how to make your 'boring' diary interesting, for example, believe it or not, the Teach Yourself books.

Daniel Villiers