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 tell. And not just one story, but a whole book.
Where do you start?
With Chapter 1, of course.
First, pick an exciting moment early on in your travel journey, and depict that scene.
In my own travel memoir, Abu Dhabi Days, Dubai Nights, I started with my first morning in Abu Dhabi, when I was awoken by the call to prayer, disoriented and uncertain about my decision to move to this Middle Eastern city. This was an exciting moment because it held a lot of personal drama for me: I was finally in the place I had longed to be, but I was newly conflicted about being there and wondering if I had made the right decision.
Then, back track.
Let us know how and why you ended up in this place. What was the motivation behind this trip? How much of a challenge was it to arrange? How did you feel when you finally began you journey (got onto the plane / boat / train, etc)? How did you feel when you first arrived and breathed in that new air?
After alluding to my own uncertainty in the opening page of my book, I then back tracked to describe why it was that I was newly conflicted over my new adventure in Abu Dhabi. I described what I imagined Abu Dhabi would be like, and my excitement over arriving, as well as meeting a man back in Boston who I thought I was falling in love with.
Describe your first impressions.
Your arrival in a new place is such a fruitful moment for your writing. Absolutely everything is new and fresh, and sets up the rest of your experience. So, take some time to draw us into those early experiences, and how you felt about them. Tell us what the place looks like—and not a bird’s eye view, but how things look from outside your hotel / hostel / hut / new home’s window. When you step outside, what did you see? What was nearby? Provide these descriptions within the greater story of your initial impressions of this place, and how well it meets your expectations.
Speaking of expectations, this is also a great time to fill the reader in on how much the reality of this new place meets or doesn’t meet you expectations. Early in my book, I describe my expectation of windswept dunes and a vibrant city, and the realty which was far from it.
Provide us with some early scenes of you potentially accomplishing your desire, or, more likely, being challenged and facing obstacles.
In my case, I desired a reunion with my new boyfriend in France, but my new employer took my passport in order to process my work visa, and didn’t give it back until the last possible moment before I needed to catch my flight. This was a big challenge to my desire, and I describe the emotional turmoil I went through during that time.
Your first chapter should entertainingly inform the reader of all of these elements:
–your initial impressions of this place (an emotional description of your immediate surroundings and how you felt upon first stepping foot in this new place)
–your motivation for going there
–what you expected versus the reality of your experience
–obstacles you initially faced
If you manage to include all of these elements in your first chapter, you’ll be well on your way to setting yourself up to write a great travel memoir story.
