I spent quite a while trying to get my travel memoir published, and here’s what I learned. Write the whole thing first. Forget about trying to get an agent when you’ve only written a few chapters. Agents and publishers want a full manuscript for a memoir. In that way, memoirs are much like novels. Sample […]
Craft
What to Include in the First Chapter of Your Travel Memoir
You’ve had an amazing travel experience that you want to tell the world about. Perhaps you taught English abroad, or served in the Peace Corps, or travelled through Latin America and fell in love, or backpacked through Southeast Asia and discovered your purpose in life. Whatever it was, boy, do you have a story to […]
How to Write about Meaningful Characters
You’ve met some amazing people in your travels. Whether you met a monk on a meditation retreat in Thailand or a baker in Rome, a fellow traveller in India or a local family in Dubai, the people you’ve met during your travels have taught you invaluable lessons about this new culture, and about yourself and […]
How to Write a Good Ending
You’ve written a great story, full of drama and description and meaningful characters. But you can’t quick stick the ending. What’s going on? Endings are notoriously tricky. First of all, where should it end? Endings aren’t always about the moment you pack your bags for home. Rather, they should focus on the change you’ve experienced. […]
How to Write a Good Scene
I write about scenes a lot in my blog posts, but what exactly is a scene? A scene is simply an event that takes place in a particular moment in time. It isn’t a summary of events. It isn’t what happened over the course of a month or a few days. It isn’t like a […]
How to Write about Your Quest
Quest might sound like a dramatic word choice, but your travel story, and the meaning you derive from it, is indeed a quest. Besides, a quest is simply another way of saying: a want, a desire, a goal. Once you’ve read my previous blog post on How to Find Your Quest, you’re going to be […]
The Key to your Travel Stories: Backstory
Along with identifying and writing about your quest with care, another key element to any travel story is well-placed backstory. The backstory you choose to include must connect to your quest. Your reader needs to know WHY that amber ring in Prague is so meaningful to you, or WHY you have decided to reconnect with […]
How to Find Your Quest
Why did you travel? What did you want, search for, desire? The answer to these questions is your quest—the reason for your trip (whether intentional or not, whether known or secret) and the reason readers will want to read your story. Without a quest, your story is just a bunch of events strung together. Your […]