Writing Your Travel Book? What’s Your Gimmick?

Whether it’s learning to live ‘Danishly’, or becoming a master flamenco dancer in Spain or testing yourself by travelling alone for a year, most travel books have a gimmick. These gimmicks aren’t necessarily cheesy or superficial, of course. Instead, they serve as a hook, and sometimes even an anchor that gives the story a very clear purpose.

So what’s yours? What is your hook, your anchor, your gimmick?  

If you can’t easily answer this question, that’s ok. But it may mean that your story needs a bit more focus, which some kind of anchor can provide. Once you state the goal of your extended travel journey, you instantly have a clear plan for your book. Your chapters are basically about your attempts to learn or master or test what you set out to, and reflect upon the results. 

Even if the gimmick isn’t a gimmick at all, and is more like an existential quest, that’s totally fine. You can still easily frame that existential quest as the big purpose of your travel. From then on, your encounters and your thoughts will all have something to do with you getting closer to or moving away from that goal.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you come up with that anchor for your travel book:

What inspired you to travel in the first place?

What inspired you to want to write about these travels? What do you want to tell the world about what you discovered, both externally in the world around you, and internally, in the private world of you? 

Were there any readily identifiable goals to your travel?

Such as learning a language or living in a monastery for six months or climbing Mount Everest? If you do have such a goal, that can start you off in the right direction of your hook. But also think about what compelled you to attempt to achieve that goal. You’re going to have to convince the reader that this is indeed a worthwhile goal.

And also, were there any more abstract goals to your travel?

Was it about adventure, or getting away from city life, or the humdrum of a small town? Was it about testing yourself in a way that is not clearly measurable? If this is the case, then you have to do a bit more work to clearly frame that more abstract goal, giving us some concrete scenes that really show us your need for adventure or how fed up you are with the old routine of your home life. 

Another way to come at this big question might be to think about the ending. What were the results of your trip?

Did you fall in love? Did your life totally change and you moved to Ubud to open up a crystal shop? Or was it something more subtle? The answer to the question of how you changed, and what you learned at the end of your trip can tell you what you were looking for in the beginning, even if you didn’t know it at the time.

And that’s something you can also say in the opening of your travel book: “I didn’t know it at the time, but I was ready for love / to move on / to stretch my ability to adapt and accept.” 

Going through these steps can help you to think more explicitly about the big picture of your travel memoir book. Give it a hook, give it an anchor, and your structure will become much clearer.