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What is "travel writing"?

post #1 of 8
4/8/08 at 12:29pm
Thread Starter 
I'm trying to find examples of it online but I only get websites that give tips to travel writers...

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post #2 of 8
4/8/08 at 8:05pm
I'm not sure what you are asking?
If you want examples of excellent Travel Writing look at the winners of the Lowell Thomas awards.
If you are after a definition of travel writing that is a bit tougher...
post #3 of 8
4/9/08 at 4:24am
I'm pretty sure it's when you write about your travels, and hotels and traveling.

I got a job writing about travel from a stupid blog I write about travel, even though I never travel anymore. SO instead I write about how I want to travel. And planning for travel. But I never really travel. it was good enough to get me a travel writing job. i think it's dumb though.
post #4 of 8
4/9/08 at 5:04pm
Thread Starter 
Aaah that makes sense. Thanks!
post #5 of 8
4/9/08 at 7:09pm
If you want to see some examples of travel writing, look in good-quality magazines (ie. a cuisine or house-and-garden-type magazine, not Woman's Weekly). There'll often be an article about 'how I explored Italy's wine trails' or 'Sunning myself in the Maldives', or themes to that effect. They're usually written in the first person, contain rather a lot of florid adjectives, and are generally targeted towards marketing/recommending a specific location, activity, hotel or restaurant. Travel articles generally mix a bit of personal experience with a lot of subjective impressions of the place, and a bit of history or info about it.

That sounds disparaging, but I'd love to write travel articles--at keast if someone was willing to pay for me to sun myself in the Maldives, which sadly nobody has yet seemed inclined to do.
post #6 of 8
4/9/08 at 11:14pm
The New York Time's current "Talk to the Newsroom" Q&A is with the travel editor. It's a pretty good one.
post #7 of 8
4/14/08 at 7:27am
Travel writing has a fair bit of marketing/PR mixed into it, in my experience, unless you are talking about the Paul Theroux/Bruce Chatwin/Dervala Murphy travel memoir type thing.
post #8 of 8
4/14/08 at 11:47am
Oh I see what you're asking. Probably about 40% of what I do is travel writing. It means I take my family on some pretty great trips

What I do is divided into a couple of different styles. My favourite is narrative or essays. These are just first person stories about a place. Rarely do they mention PR type stuff. These are bought by all sorts of places; magazines, book anthologies, some newspapers...

Service stories are the ones that tell you what to do in a given place. Things like: ten great train trips in Canada or the top five kid friendly restaurants in Vancouver... Usually PR and tourism people help set up stories like these but they still need to be honest - otherwise people are disappointed by a bad experience.

Many stories combine the two styles and that's probably the bulk of what I do these days.

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Mothering › Mothering Discussion Forums › Archives › Mothers' Writing Group › Writing for the Web › What is "travel writing"?