Looking for some inspiration for your travel memoir writing? Look no further–I have 21 prompts right here! All 21 probably won’t apply to you, but I hope many of them will, and that you give some of them a try. See what resonates with you, set a timer for 25 minutes, and see where your free writing leads you. I’d love to know how you go. Send me an email though my contact form to let me know!
1.It starts as _____________________________.
How did it start for you?
Example: It starts as a name, a place, a squiggle on a map. Japan. A country as far away from familiar as familiar can be. I try to imagine the country, what its streets look like, how its air smells. I touch the country on a map, fingering the page of a weathered atlas, spine broken, yellowed pages flying apart. As big as a thumbprint, as small as a canoe. Japan. I like the sound of it.
(The Men in My Country by Marilyn Abildskov)
- In (place), I liked myself more than I ever had before.
Example: In Bath, I liked myself more than I ever had before. I left Boston a shattered, friendless virgin, but after few weeks in Bath, I was rapidly turning into someone new: a version of myself I’d only dreamed of.
- It is impossible not to fall in love with (place) in (month).
Example: It is impossible not to fall in love with Hanoi in November. (Single White Female in Hanoi by Caroline Shine)
- There’s something to be said for being in new places. (State what being a new place does to your sensibility.)
Example: There’s something to be said for being in new places. Accidental death notwithstanding, it extends your life. Subjectively, that is. When you got to a new place, your brain has to make so many new neural connections that, experientially, time elongates.
(Single White Female in Hanoi by Caroline Shine)
- If I lived in (place), and wasn’t just a visitor, I would _________.
Example: If I lived in Chiang Mai, and wasn’t just a visitor, I would still eat out every night.
- At (age), it was (list of 3 or more activities indicative of time and place).
Example: At 21, it was stomping through the streets of Bath under a perpetual pissing of rain, reading the obscure poetry of Anne Finch and Lady Mary Montagu, hanging around pubs in between class waiting for English men to talk to me. It was liking myself more than I ever had before. I had left Boston a shattered, friendless virgin, but after only a few weeks in England, I was rapidly turned into someone new: a version of myself I’d only dreamed of. I spoke up in class, made my new friends laugh, and managed to capture the attention of English men, at least for a little while. And this was only the beginning.
- I never wanted to go to (place).
Example: I never wanted to go to Istanbul. Not then, anyway. I didn’t have the money or the time. But my sister claimed to need me, so I bought my ticket.
- That first morning in (place), I woke to the sound of …
Example: That first morning in Istanbul, I woke to the sound of my sister moaning. Eight months pregnant and sharing a bed with me, I couldn’t blame her.
- That first night in (place), I dreamt of …
Example: That first night in Abu Dhabi, I dreamed of a woman wearing a dazzling back headscarf hurrying through a maze of clay-coloured alleyways.
- I wanted (idealized expectation of place), and I got (reality of circumstances).
Example: I wanted moonlit walks on warm Parisienne nights. Instead, I got dumped in the most romantic city in the world.
- (Person) warned me about this (or specific activity.)
Example: My mother warned me about attractive men offering to buy me drinks.
- If I ever returned to (place), I’d do it exactly the same.
Example: If I ever returned to Bali, I’d do it exactly the same.
- If I ever returned to (place), I’d do everything differently.
Example: If I ever returned to Bali, I’d do everything differently.
- While I was (activity) in (place), (list news events).
Example: While I was hang gliding in Byron Bay, Donald Trump got elected president of the United States.
- The best picture of me ever taken was in (place). (Describe exact moment.)
Example: The best picture of me ever taken was on a desert safari in Abu Dhabi. My hair tossed in the wind, my hip jutting out so just a peek of a flat stomach showed, I was at my most confident and happy then.
- I don’t regret _____________ or, _________________ or ____________________, but I do regret _________________________.
Example: I don’t regret the wine, or the dancing, or the flirting, but I do regret walking home at 2am barefoot, my high heels dangling over my shoulders.
- Despite everything, I wish I’d known _______________ about (place.).
Example: Despite everything, I wish I’d known about the undertow in Bryon Bay.
- Describe a significant or vivid moment during your travels.
After, start another paragraph with: I thought about why I’d come to (place).
Example:
Above all else, you must believe. Tibetan horns taunted the air—ululating, oboe-like sounds meant to catch the sins of the crowd and send them heavenward. The people around me gaped at the giant spread of embroidered silk as it slowly lowered from the fortress roof, revealing a montage of Tibetan Buddhist deities. Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Infinite Compassion. Maitreya, the Future Buddha, a Jesus-like savior prophesied to lead humanity from suffering. The tondrel, easily 40 feet high, laboriously hand-stitched, filled the entire end of the courtyard, its silk gleaming before the candlelit dais.
…
I thought of why I’d come to Bhutan—the real reason, the reason I’d told no one about. I tried to clear my mind of all doubt and, like the rest of the crowd, made a wish. We waited. And watched. As the rising sun sent its first rays over the mountains, striking the top of the tondrel, the sounds of the horns stopped abruptly, almost belligerently.
(Bhutan: Journeys Into the Void by Kira Salak)
- Describe the streets of one of the places you have been—the smells, the sounds, how it feels to walk down these streets. Address the reader directly with “you”.
You can pretend you’re in a tunnel. You can make believe you have on blinders. You can walk with urgency or purpose. You can look prickly or preoccupied. You can wear an Ipod. You can make a cell phone call. You can fake a cell phone call. You can write a text message to no one.
These are the ways foreign women get down the street in Cairo. These are the tricks they share, the ways they teach me to “beige out,” as one woman put it, to fog up the glasses, whenever outside. Outside is the sphere of Egyptian men. Men run markets, crowd alleys, fill every subway car but the very middle one, marked by a huddle of headscarves. Females are scarce on Cairo’s streets, and those who do appear seem hurried, like mice suddenly exposed in the middle of a room, rushing for cover.
(Blot Out by Colleen Kinder)
- Set your story in motion. Write in the present tense. Tell us about the city waking up.
Don’t be mad, I telegram James, care of the American Express office in Amsterdam. HEADING OFF ALONE. SEE YOU IN INDIA. The telegram takes a startling $4.50 out of the $70 I have left after paying for my hotel. James has the other $600. I feel some concern about this, but I stuff the $65.50 into my jeans pocket and walk out of the telegraph office into the streets of Luxembourg. It is a cold, drizzly, metallic winter day. I am scared, but I like the feeling.
The city is just waking up; delivery trucks park on the sidewalks, and men in wool jackets lower boxes and crates down steep stone steps to men waiting in basements below. Bare bulbs hang in the gloom; voices come in bursts of yelling and laughter. I can’t understand a thing they are saying.
(Without a Map by Meredith Hall)
- Write in specific detail about a particular moment in one of your travels—it could be a meal or a ritual. What did it mean to you?
And later, after the mussels, after the pulpo a la gallega, the swirling bits of octopus flesh in a sauce of garlic and tomatoes, after the glasses of wine and loaves of bread broken and passed hand to hand, after the strong local blue cheese spread thick on thin crackers and the apples drizzled with honey, after we have eaten as much as we can and then picked the remains from one another’s plates, tucking into our mouths one more bite, one more spoonful, one more tangy or sweet or salty fingertip, then we turn, lights dimmed and candles aflame, to the Queimada.
(Queimada by Michele Morano)
