Working as a travel writer is, generally speaking, a great job. You get to see many countries and, depending on the job, you may visit all parts of the world, from sunny Africa to freezing Antarctica. But, no matter your skill level, it is only natural to want to improve your travel writing. By working on your writing, you will gradually become better, more people will want to read your articles, and you will be able to get a writing gig and sell your articles more easily. With that in mind, we have prepared this article on how to improve your travel writing. Hopefully, it will be of use to you on your quest to become a great writer!
Practice makes perfect
There is a saying: ‘A writer always writes.’ In practice, this means that quality comes through exercise. The more you write, the better you will get, no matter if you are a travel writer, a food critic, or a journalist focusing on politics. This may sound obvious, but some writers expect to write amazing articles as soon as they start working. But what they are forgetting is that most, if not all amazing writers, were not so amazing to begin with. Sure, they had talent, but in reality, talent is nothing without hard work. Lots of it.
You will need to write consistently. Set aside a few hours every day just for practice. Even if you are not writing an article for some web platform or magazine, write something just for the sake of practice. Try to remember the places you’ve been to. You can start with your hometown, the town you are currently living in, or perhaps even your street. While doing so, you can set yourself a word limit, which will help with establishing the structure of the article, but you don’t have to. What’s important is – you will be writing.
In this sense, writing a diary could also come in handy. If you take the task of writing every day or so, this will likely prove to be an excellent exercise. Writing diary entries is good because it doesn’t require much inspiration – just write about the things that have happened to you in the past few days (or better yet, about the places you have visited during that time).
Paint an all-around picture of the place
There are some rules that apply to all writers – work on your writing style, eliminate all unnecessary adjectives that are burdening your sentences, make sure that each sentence logically stems from the previous one, etc. But it is also important to remember that, while style is important in order to capture the attention of the reading audience, information always comes first. Writing melodic and beautiful sentences makes your article better but, above all, readers want to get a sense of the place. This includes objective information, such as prices and other practical info, but also your personal view related to the feeling that this place has established in you.
While working as a travel writer, it is very important to recognize the specific writing challenges that only travel writers face. And accurately describing the mood of the place takes some skill and practice. If you want to improve your travel writing, you will not only have to work on providing accurate, objective information on the place you are writing about, but also on painting a vivid picture of the atmosphere of the location. Travelers want to know this, as it will help them a lot when determining if this will be the next destination that they are going to visit.
Improve your travel writing by… traveling
Those writers who really want to improve their travel writing skills will truly dedicate themselves to this mission. This means that they will travel to other cities, countries, or even continents, even if they are not paid for writing articles on these places. Remember, hard work is what makes a great writer. And the more places you visit, the better travel writer you will become. You will be able to detect what makes a specific place unique, and also the similarities that it shares with other locations. Thus, you will have a better idea of whether you should recommend this place to your readers or not.
On the other hand, you can take this even further. Namely, it is always good for a travel writer to relocate to another country for a period of time in order to gain an invaluable perspective. Especially so if this country is unlike those that you are familiar with. Living there will net you extremely useful experiences, that will help you a lot in the process of writing travel articles. If planning on moving to another country, however, it is always better to do so with the help of a reliable moving company. Moving on your own, packing and organizing the logistics of the move takes a lot of time. The time that you could be spending writing or traveling.
Get expert advice
Even with all the hard work that you will be doing by yourself, you may still need some additional assistance (apart from this article, of course). There is no shame in paying for a writing course run by an experienced professional. Usually, it is hard to give general advice to writers, as the necessary advice is often different on a writer-to-writer basis. In other words, different writers make different mistakes.
Perhaps you need specific tips on improving your writing style or advice on the structure of your article? There is no way to know for sure unless a professional writer reads your work and tailors the advice according to your needs. While we have provided some general advice in this article that all writers should be aware of, it is always much better to give advice after reading your articles. After noticing the errors that you are consistently making, a professional will be able to come up with the relevant instructions that will help you improve your travel writing. No matter how good you currently are, you can always get better. And courses run by experienced writers are a very good way to achieve this.
