Travel writing as a skill

Writing as a skill
Steve Keenan

An internet age of travel
writing
Via Just Globetrotting

28 classic travel writers 1870-
2000
1872: Thomas Cook writes a blog for The Times on his first Round-the-
World trip, posted to the paper and published on six consecutive days.
1870s: Late Victorian Travellers: Robert Louis Stevenson (Travels with a
Donkey in Cevannes, 1879); Mark Twain (A Tramp Abroad, 1880); Henry
James (A Little Tour in France, 1884); Mary Kingsley (Travels in West
Africa, 1897)1930s: The Classic Romantics: Karen Blixen (Out of Africa, 1938); Freya
Stark; Evelyn Waugh; Robert Byron (The Road to Oxiana, 1937).
1950s: Post War Grand Tours: John Steinbeck (A Russian Journal,
1948); Jack Kerouac (On The Road, 1957); Eric Newby (A Short Walk in
the Hindu Kush, 1958); Wilfred Thesiger (Arabian Sands, 1959), Dervla
Murphy, Norman Lewis.
1970s: The Classic Decade: Laurie Lee (As I Walked Out one
Midsummer Morning, 1969); Gavin Young; Paul Theroux; Hunter S
Thompson; Colin Thubron: Bruce Chatwin (In Patagonia, 1977); Martha
Gellhorn.1980s-2000: Jan Morris; Michael Palin; Bill Bryson; William Dalrymple; Tim
Moore; Sara Wheeler.

A Short Walk begins with an intro
by Evelyn Waugh, who identifies
“the essential amateurism of the
English” as the bedrock of all
native travel writing.
And it ends with an encounter that
signals the changing of the guard,
when Newby’s party bumps into
the doyen of old-school gentleman
explorers in a remote gorge.
Wilfred Thesiger was midway
through another of the fearsomely
hardcore five-year expeditions that
his dry and patrician travel
literature described.
After the two parties agree to pitch
camp together, Thesiger watches
Newby and his colleague inflate
their air-beds with utter contempt:
“God, you must be a couple of
pansies.” Tim Moore, FT, Nov 2018

The Blood of Kashmir, Part
1
Matthew Clayfield, The Daily Beast, Dec
2018

In 2007, around the time I started getting
interested in food and wine and began writing
the occasional restaurant review, I read
Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. I
don’t remember much about the book, aside
from its whirling-dervish energy. But I do know
that it made me want to become a cook. For
several months, I seriously considered in
enrolling in culinary school. This was the kind
of effect Bourdain had: he could make even
twelve hours cutting onions sound sexy.

“We forget, because of the colour and movement
of the shows, that he lived an existence not
entirely dissimilar to that of George Clooney’s
character in Up in the Air.”

But the similarities were so
much greater: the desire to
keep moving, to hear
people’s stories, to get
beyond the spin and the
stereotypes and see for
oneself what was going on
in the world. All this was
hugely inspiring to me — it
proved, at a time when I
was back in a dead-end
job, that such work could
be done — and, as the
reaction to his death online
attests, to countless others
as well. It also became,
despite Bourdain’s
tendency to play down the
social or political value of
his work, something of a
mission, even an agenda.

Writing in the 1st person
It only works when:
It’s personal – and it works, such as a climb of
Everest, a tough walk through Italy or a search
for your granny’s birth place (“Otherwise, it’s
boring” – The Times)
It’s a rant. Or it’s a funny or humorous account
of an incident or a place
Or you are an expert in a particular field: gluten-
free food, climbing freestyle, sheep shearing…

“Steve recommends writing in
the third person not just the first
person. Most bloggers write in
the first person and while many
readers are interested in your
personal journey, most are
interested in the story rather than
the fact that you’re in it.
“Sophie Collard added that while
interning as a teenager, she was
given the harsh but true advice
that ‘no one actually gives a shit
about you.’”
– Monica, The Travel Hack,

It only works when:
It’s personal – and it works, such as a climb of
Everest, a tough walk through Italy or a search
for your granny’s birth place (“Otherwise, it’s
boring” – The Times)
It’s a rant. Or it’s a funny or humorous account
of an incident or a place
Or you are an expert in a particular field: gluten-
free food, climbing freestyle, sheep shearing…
In this piece, Anthony Bourdain qualifies on
all three counts

Killing a pig in Portugal
“I was already unhappy. I'm causing this to happen, I kept
thinking. This pig has been hand-fed for six months, fattened up -
for me. Perhaps, had I said when this blood feast was first
suggested, "Uh no . . . I don't think so", maybe the outcome for
Porky would have been different. Or would it?
“This pig's number was up the second he was born. You can't
milk a pig! Nobody's gonna keep him as a pet! This porker was
bacon from birth.
“Still, he was my pig, I was responsible. For a guy who'd spent 28
years serving dead animals and sneering at vegetarians, I was
having an unseemly amount of trouble. I had to suck it up. I could
do this.”

Kevin Rushby, The
Guardian
Keep the story bouncing
along in the right direction.
No diversions for
irrelevancies. No boring
sentences allowed.
Someone once said about
self-editing: ‘Slaughter your
darlings.’
There are always lines in a
story that you love too
much. If they don't carry the
narrative forward, get rid of
them.

Great 20th century travel
writersNorman Lewis: I look for the people who have
always been there, and belong to the places they
live. The others I do not wish to see: I prefer to
produce revealing little descriptions. I think of myself
as the semi-invisible man.”
Travels in Indo-China (1951)

Norman Lewis (1908-2003)
The writer Norman Lewis,
who has died aged 95,
once claimed to be the
only person he knew who
could walk into a room
full of people, and leave it
some time afterwards
without anyone else
realising that he had
been there. That there
was only limited truth in
the assertion was
unimportant; it says far
more about his modesty
that failing to attract
attention was the only
claim he pretended to.
“His prose was like eating
cherries” – author Luiga
Barzini.
“One of the best writers, not of
any particular decade, but of
our (20th) century” – Graham

Dervla Murphy: Most of my books are what I call
‘mongrels,’ mixing travel with considerations of
social, political and ethical problems.
Ireland to India with a bicycle (1965)

Dervla Murphy (1913 -
The key to travel, she
believes, is to embrace
the unpredictable, the
unexpected, the
unforeseen, “but I feel
sad that these sort of
experiences are no
longer possible –
mostly because, and I
know I’m just an old
fogey, of the mobile
phone. The Guardian, Jan
2018

Interview with Paul Theroux
Author of The Great Railway Bazaar
(1975)

‘mongrels,’ mixing travel with considerations of
social, political and ethical problems.
Freya Stark: To awaken quite alone in a strange
town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the
world. The Lycian Shore (1956)

Freya Stark (1893 -1993)
‘One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes
what every place brings without trying to turn it into a
healthy private pattern of one’s own - and I suppose that is
the difference between travel and tourism’.

The Danakil Diary – Journeys through Abyssinia 1930-34
(1996).
“Djibouti is a jostle of black volcanic rock, flat plains haunted
by
dust devils and a brilliant-blue coastline bulging out into the

writersNorman Lewis: I look for the people who have always
been there, and belong to the places they live. The others
I do not wish to see: I prefer to produce revealing little
descriptions. I think of myself as the semi-invisible man.”
‘mongrels,’ mixing travel with considerations of social,
political and ethical problems.
Freya Stark: To awaken quite alone in a strange town is
one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. The
Lycian Shore (1956)
Ernest Hemingway: My aim is to put down on paper what
I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. A

Keep it simple: nice and
slow
Random travel
narrative
Switch from linear
Write with passion
Avoid 1st person
Slaughter your babies
Stay in the shadows
Wake up in strange
town
Leave the phone
behind
Go to Sweden when
80
Let yourself go
Keep it simple

Keep your ears open!
Dialogue brings a
scene to life,
gives personality
to the people in
your story, and
allows you to
convey important
information in a
punchy way.
Make a note of
what people say
and how they say
it.
Steve Keenan @stevenkeenan

Keep your ears open
Mary T opened a bottle of blueberry wine from a winery in
Harpersville: we stood and clinked schooners and toasted our
meeting. Something about the wood paneling, the quality of the
curtains, the closeness of the room, the sense of being in the
deep countryside holding a glass of wine on a hot day — it was
like being in old Russia. I said so.
“That’s why I love Chekhov,” Mary T said. “He writes about places
like this, people like the ones who live here — the same
situations.”
The sunny day, the bleakness of the countryside, the old
bungalow on the narrow road, no other house nearby; the smell of
the muddy fields penetrating the room — and that other thing, a
great and overwhelming sadness that I felt but couldn’t fathom.
“Have a slice of poundcake,” Randall said, opening the foil on a
heavy yellow loaf. “My mother made it yesterday.” Paul
Theroux

Learn to listen: don’t wait to
speak
“Spend a day on a bus or a
train with a notebook and
practice getting down as
much detail, and using as
many of your senses as
possible. Get used to making
conversation with other
travellers, finding out their
life stories and writing down
the conversation as they
speak. Fight your own
shyness: it’s only by
engaging with strangers that
you will find out their stories:
the heart of modern travel
writing.”
William
Dalrymple

Don’t rush that ending
Many travel articles finish like a high-speed train hitting the
buffers, leaving readers dazed and confused. Show your
readers that the end is nigh.
Think about where you started, and reflect on the journey. Try
to sum up the experience, the circular narrative. And never
finish with: ‘I would just have to come back another time.’
Walk away from the feature. Come back the next day. Then
re-read, polish and check. Only send when you’re really
happy with it.

Land of the Giants:
Wildlife in Guyana
FIRST PAR: “It looked like the birth-cradle of a
predator from Alien. At least ten metres high, a
diaphanous web of silken threads was suspended
between a towering mora tree and a mass of vines
and creepers. At first it seemed devoid of life, but
watchful and waiting. Then we saw them – hundreds
of spiders, busily extending their skyscraper realm
and feeding on fresh prey….
LAST PAR: It’s the sheer scale on which Guyana
does everything that can inspire humility in even the
most experienced traveller. Epic waterfalls, giant
trees and enormous spiders’ webs – this is truly a
supersized land, largely untouched by tiny travellers
like me.” Gavin Bell, Wanderlust Magazine

Andy Pietrasik, The
Guardian
In the writing, vary the focus, rather like
storyboarding
You need wide angle (descriptions of landscapes,
social/cultural history) for context; close-ups
(characterisations, conversations) for colour and
detail
Steve Keenan @stevenkeenan

Wide angle for context, close-up for
detail

A beginning, a middle and an
end

Travel writing as a skill

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (20)

Último

Último (20)

Travel writing as a skill

Notas del editor