Travel Writing

This 2nd book in this series focuses on how to write your travel guide, and navigates you through the pitfalls so that you can write and publish with confidence.

STEPS TO WRITING YOUR TRAVEL GUIDE

Jay has broken the writing process into a series of five manageable steps:

• Step One: Planning Your Content
  
• Step Two: Pre-Trip Research
  
• Step Three: Your Research Trip
  
• Step Four: Travel Writing
  
• Step Five: Polishing your Draft

By approaching the travel guide process in these segments, you’ll maintain the momentum required to finish your project. With so much detail and information needed for a travel guide, it is easy to get overwhelmed with where you are in the process and what your next step is. But when you segment your tasks into these bite-size chunks, you won’t choke on your own travel guide.

Travel guide writing has a chicken and egg dilemma—what comes first, content structure or research? Should you plan your content organization and hierarchy before you research so you have a framework to work within? Or should you research without a plan and then use it to create a content structure?

Writing is a personal process, and what works well for one writer, spells the kiss of death (with a healthy dose of writer’s block) for another.

Whether you plan your content up front, or at a later stage, it will have to get done. It’s not something you can skip, and you’ll need to do it before you begin writing your first draft. 

Even if you live in the location you’re writing about, you should still do pre-trip research. It’s amazing what you’ll discover about your own location if you put your travel writer’s hat on to dig below the surface of your day-to-day activities. You will have researched your destination during your initial planning phase, but now it’s time to go deeper.

The pre-trip research activity is different from your research trip, so they're covered separately. This section of the book looks at the many sources available to leverage prior to your research trip.

The more pre-trip research you do, the more productive your research trip will be.

The more productive your research trip, the easier the writing process.

Trip research is a lot of traipsing around streets taking reference photographs, and popping into businesses, sights, and travel service providers for information or brochures. There are multiple sources for getting relevant and accuracte information for your travel guide, and this book provides you with an invaluable list to get you pointed in the right direction.

The main thrust of this guides delves into how to develop your travel writing style and the questions you need to ask yourself to create harmony in your writing, tone, and vocabulary. If all else fails, you may need to rely on creating an author avatar, and Jay shows you examples and how to create one to make sure your writing resonates with your readers.

As well as looking at the type of language travel guides are built upon, this travel writing guide explores the complex world of anecdotes and travel narratives and simplifies the process so that the ones you write are memorable and engaging.

The last section in the book focuses on polishing your draft to get it ready for prime time. There's step by step instructions that show you how to self-edit, and advice for getting professional input for your draft manuscript. You'll also receive tips and advise for finding and working with beta readers.

If you want to publish a travel guide, this book is an invaluable resource for writing a professional book that will attract readers in your niche. All you need to do is share your travel stories with passion and confidence, to make passive income from your travel writing.