- Introduction
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- Task
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Travel Writing
Travel writing takes on many forms. There are travel brochures, travel blogs, travel guides, and travel narratives. Travel writing can be persuasive, informational, narrative, or a combination of all three.
Travel guides can even help you plan out your vacation itinerary A schedule. ; there are sections that discuss restaurants, hotels, and activities in that area. In order for authors to write about destinations, they must conduct research. The research may be visiting the destination, searching books and magazines about the place, or talking to locals about specific restaurants or hangouts.
Travel writing
centers on a key event,
uses background information that builds up to the event,
incorporates research to enhance the background information,
describes the setting,
focuses on elements that are key to the story and experience,
describes any important people so that readers feel as if they know them,
uses dialogue where possible to help the story develop,
provides reflections on the experience with the retelling to help the reader see the importance of the experience.
Examples
Open Alabama on National Geographic Kids. Scroll to the bottom of the page (below the purple 'Fun Stuff' box) and watch an episode about Alabama from 50 Birds, 50 States (03:02). [If your school allows YouTube, you can access the video directly by watching Alabama - Feat. Mellow Yellow the Northern Flicker | 50 Birds, 50 States (3:02) on YouTube.]
Does this qualify as travel writing; if so, what kind of travel writing is this?
Next, read about the island of Jamaica in "Need a Tropical Family Vacation... No Problem Mon!"
What do you think of the article?
Read the first two and last two paragraphs in "Finding Paradise..." New York Times: Travel Magazine. Were these more descriptive? If you have trouble viewing open Finding Paradise archive or Finding Paradise pdf.
After you read a travel article, ask yourself the following questions.
Do you agree with the author's viewpoint?
Based on the review, what do you know about the author?
Would you visit this place after reading the article?
Is this review helpful?
Phrases
Varying your sentence structure will help boost your sentence appeal to your readers. Sentences can be written in several different ways and still come out with the same meaning. When writers use complex sentences, phrases, or clauses, they are using sentence structure to their advantage. Try using different kinds of phrases to describe your setting.
An appositive is a word placed after another word to explain or identify it. The appositive is always a noun or pronoun because it provides additional information about another noun or pronoun. The appositive phrase just means that the appositive includes any other modifiers. Look at the two examples below.
Example #1
The student, Marcus Highwater, was the most studious pupil in my class.
Example #2
Deputy Fife, one of the security guards at the mall, doesn't have a bullet in his gun.
If you would like to review the other types of phrases, look back at Lesson 2.03 Writing Concretely.
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