Scott Oldford Site

Tag: stories

  • 5 Powerful Tips to Write Travel Stories Only You Can Tell

    5 Powerful Tips to Write Travel Stories Only You Can Tell

    Packing up your writing gear and heading somewhere warm and sunny for vacation? Or just a trip back home?

    It doesn’t matter where you’re off to — there will be a story waiting for you. (And plenty of travel writing jobs and outlets to consider sharing your experience with once you’re home.)

    Our travels are made up of great stories — ones filled with drama, cultural misunderstandings and frustration, as well as serendipity, joy and transcendence. 

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    5 tips for travel writing

    Writing about these stories will not only fulfill your storytelling itch, but also improve your general writing skills. Whether it’s refining your powers of observation or enhancing your ability to reflect on meaningful experiences, writing about your travels can be a masterclass in everything from memoir to nature writing to world-building.

    Here are 5 tips for writing a travel essay.

    1. State your quest

    Every journey is a quest, whether you know it or not.

    Ask yourself: How did it start? What are you aiming to do or achieve?

    Your quest can be as abstract as ‘find myself’ or as specific as ‘swim in the Atlantic Ocean.’ It can be as monumental as ‘change my life completely’ and as small as ‘replace the glass ring my best friend gave me in 1999.’

    This quest doesn’t have to be the ONLY reason you’re going to this new place. It can be part of the reason, or become important once you arrive and spend time in this place.  

    Think about it: all good travel memoir books and essays have a quest at their center.

    In The New Mecca, George Saunders is trying to form his own impressions of Dubai outside of the media’s portrayals of the city.

    In Vietnam’s Bowl of Secrets, David Farley is after the secret recipe to a dish found only in the Vietnamese town of Hoi An.

    We all know that Elizabeth Gilbert has a suite of deep quests in her famous travel memoir Eat, Pray, Love. She wants to move on from the crippling male relationships in her life and find a deeper meaning to her existence.

    Once you start writing about your quest, your readers will want to know: does she achieve her quest? Does she get the thing she wants? Keep your reader guessing until the end.

    2. Plant a question in the reader’s mind

    What’s the difference between a well-read story and a not so well-read story?

    The opening. Plant a question for the reader as early in your opening as you can. The question doesn’t have to be life-or-death or profound. It can be very simple.

    Such as:

    I suppose I should have warned Rand. (from Pranzo in Italy)

    This is a very short and simple opening. But do you want to know more? Of course you do! You want to know what she should have warned Rand about. And who is Rand anyway?

    The question needs to provide enough intrigue to keep the reader interested. There’s a fine line between creating curiosity or puzzlement, so don’t aim to befuddle your reader. You must also answer your question at some point in your story.

    As soon as you plant a question, the reader is going to be curious about what happens next. It’s simply human nature to want to know the answer. It’s all in the way you phrase the opening.

    3. Tell the story of what drew you to this place

    What were your impressions of this place before you arrived? Dive deep into your memory to uncover some specific basis for these impressions.

    Was it the video game Carmen Sandiego and the sounds of those foreign cities names: Jakarta, Katmandu, Kuala Lumpur? Was it a religious studies class freshman year, where you watched a video about monks in Sri Lanka?

    It could be literally anything. Even having no impression is an impression—how did this place slip your radar completely?

    You may think this information doesn’t matter. After all, everyone wants to go to a place like Hawaii, don’t they? Sure, it’s a dream trip for many. But what is that dream for YOU? Only you can tell that story.

    Writing about your initial impressions of a place and how it met or didn’t meet your expectations will make for a much richer travel story.

    4. Tell a small story

    Don’t try to write about everything that happened during your summer in Sri Lanka or even your week in Hanoi.

    Choose a very small story instead.

    For my travel memoir, my story covered the two years I spent in the United Arab Emirates.

    Of course, A LOT happened. But each chapter is made up of a small, specific story that illuminates something larger about that two year experience.

    Here are some examples of the small stories I told within my book:

    • A student who tells me a secret
    • The day I yelled at my all-male class
    • Visiting the Gold Souk in Dubai with my boyfriend, where he buys me a fake engagement ring

    I smoothly connected those stories so that the entire book read as a unified story.

    Nothing dangerous or profound needs to happen. These small stories are satisfying because of their small scope and the change that’s revealed at the end.

    5. End with a change

    Travel changes us. Every time. So how did you change? Did you accomplish your quest?

    Whether your answer is a yes or a no, you learned something in the process of trying to achieve it. All travel memoir stories end with some kind of change. It can be huge, or it can be very small. Just a shift in perspective is quite enough to satisfy a reader.

    Whether the change is a realization that you actually enjoy traveling by yourself or that you do feel a connection with your grandmother’s village in Sicily, telling and showing the reader your transformation will make your story memorable and worth sharing.

    Take these tips with you on your holiday travels. You’ll have something exciting to write about in the new year.

    Remember, no one else but you has traveled to this place at this particular time, and had the thoughts and experiences you did.

    Share them as precisely and deeply as you can.

    This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.

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    Photo via Jacob Lund /Shutterstock

  • Writing Advice: 5 Things I Wish I Could Tell My 20-Year-Old Self

    Writing Advice: 5 Things I Wish I Could Tell My 20-Year-Old Self

    I sometimes wish I could offer the 20-year-old version of me — the one just getting started — advice about writing based on what I’ve learned over the last two decades. Considering the mistakes I’ve made, and what I’ve learned from them, I could give myself a good head-start.

    While my mistakes were plentiful, five stand out as being particularly useful lessons to a writer just out of the gate. Here’s the writing advice I’d share with the younger, more energetic me. If you’re a new writer, perhaps it will be useful to you as well.

    1. Write as often as you can, every day if possible

    We all practice things to become better at them, even when we don’t feel like practicing. If you play an instrument, you try to practice as often as you can to become a better musician. Why is writing any different?

    For most of my writing career, however, I never wrote very much. I’d produce a story or two each year, maybe 25,000 words total. If I wrote 30 or 40 days in a given year, it was a lot. During the first 21 years I was writing, I sold a story, on average, once every three years.

    Two years ago, I set out to see if I could write every day. I wasn’t worried about how much I wrote, just that I would write every day, even if it was only for 10 minutes.

    The result? I have a nearly perfect track record. The last day on which I didn’t write was July 21, 2013. I’ve written for 714 out of the last 716 days. In that time, I have produced just over 500,000 words.

    Writing every day gives me the practice I need to become a better writer. I think it shows. During the last two years, I’ve sold a story or article once every 45 days on average. Practice helps. I shudder to think how much better I might be today if I had been writing every day for the last 23 years.

    2. Find a writing group that will read what you write and give critical feedback

    When I started writing, it never occurred to me to show what I wrote to someone else for critical feedback before sending it off to a magazine. For the most part, I was the only one making critical assessments of my work, and — as it turns out — I am not my best critic.

    In 2008, I attended an online science fiction writing workshop run by James Gunn at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. This was my first real exposure to workshopping stories, getting vital critical feedback (as well as giving it), and using that feedback to improve my stories. After completing the workshop, I saw a notable improvement in my stories, and began selling more of them.

    In 2010, I joined a local writing group in Arlington, Virginia, through Meetup. I’ve been a member of that group ever since, and the critical feedback I’ve received from the group members has been among the best lessons I’ve received as a writer.

    Plus, it’s nice to occasionally hang out with people who get what it’s like to be a writer.

    3. Don’t bother your favorite writer by asking him to read and comment on your latest masterpiece

    Yes, I did this. I didn’t know any better. I know that’s not a good excuse, but it’s the truth. Sometime in 1992 or 1993, I sent one of my stories to my favorite writer at the time — Piers Anthony — asking for feedback. Looking back on it, I am horribly embarrassed that I did this.

    I was fortunate. Mr. Anthony not only wrote me a pleasant reply, but he included a critique of my story. I imagine there are other writers who would not have been so genial.

    These days, I am occasionally the recipient of such requests. For several years, I did my best to give what feedback I could; I saw it as my penance for the sin I’d committed. But if I could have a do-over, I would grab the younger version of myself by the lapels and scream, “DON’T DO IT!”

    4. Don’t be afraid of rejection

    When I started out, I was a little afraid of rejection. I got used to it pretty quickly as my pile of rejection slips grew.

    I also learned that (at least in my case) they were never personal. No one ever wrote, “This story is terrible. Don’t give up your day job.” For a long time, the rejections were just form letters.

    What surprised me — what I didn’t expect — was my fear of acceptance. The first time I sold a story, I was thrilled. As it got closer to the publication date, however, I grew nervous. After all, when a story is rejected, only the editor or slush reader sees it. When a story is published, an entire audience can see it — and judge it. That was nerve-wracking the first couple of times. But I got over that fear, too.

    This judgment also comes in the form of reviews and criticism, both formal and informal. An informal criticism, for example, is when a coworker reads a story of yours in a magazine and says, “Even I could have written something better than that!”

    Looking back, the real value of rejection was building a thick enough skin to survive the slings and arrows of acceptance.

    5. Embrace your editor’s wisdom

    I’ll admit it: when I started out writing (and for quite a long time after that) I thought an editor’s role was to reject stories. Or maybe correct a spelling mistake. Or poor grammar.

    When I began to sell stories and actually work with editors, I learned the truth: An editor is like a coach standing on the sidelines, helping your writing look and feel as good as it can be.

    The first editor I worked with, Edmund Schubert, editor of InterGalactic Medicine Show (and a very good writer in his own right) worked patiently with me on the story he eventually bought. I tried to learn from that experience.

    Dr. Stan Schmidt at Analog Science Fiction would send me page-long rejection slips describing what was wrong with the stories I sent him. I tried to learn from those, and not make the same mistake twice. After three such rejection slips, he bought a story from me.

    Every editor I have worked with, whether fiction or nonfiction, has been a great help, and made my story or article better than what it was when I submitted it. These days, I try to learn something from every interaction I have with editors.

    What I’ve learned most of all is that editors are not there to reject stories. They are there to find the best stories, and work with the writer make them even better.

    Writers, what do you wish you could tell your younger selves? What advice would you share with a writer who’s just getting started?