Burgett_travel_writing

When do you write travel in first person?

Using the "I" voice is less sought than you imagine, unless, of course, the editor (or the publication's style) insists.

Three areas, however, don't make much sense without it.

Vicarious travel is one, where the reader wants you to take the perils and bruises and tell them what it's like. That's mostly high adventure. I led a gold hunt up the Chapano River, as high up the Negro (Upper Amazon branch) as you can go in Ecuador, and we were without food (flood dumped our dugout) for six days. Readers were pleased to read about it but not highly motivated to repeat it! So that saw print in many first-person manifestations.

Another is where the story is so unique, a once-in-a-lifetime happening, that again the "I" voice is required. I call these the "I was locked in King Tut's tomb" stories, and appropriately, one of the best was told by a person who fell asleep in the church where Shakespeare is buried and was locked in for hours until his mates found him missing and not in a town bar.

The third always provokes funny stories in my "Writing Travel Articles That Sell!" seminar. It's the love story angle, and that travels best in print in first person. Readers don't want to read highly intimate copy about somebody else. You just blend the travel into those, but the emotions are what carry the words.

Other than those three cases, keep it third person and avoid the diary approach, which editors derisively call "Me and Joe stories" and reject them immediately.

You see, it's all first person, really. But it's not "My trip to Novato." It's the reader's trip to Novato, built around the five most interesting things to see or a season enjoyed at a site or mountain cycling in which one pedals through various towns, including Novato, and what one sees or experiences on the trip. You do it, or get info about it, and write it so the reader lives it. That's how you earn money writing travel.

There's a lot more about this in my book The Travel Writer's Guide. 

Who buys travel writing?

Almost any magazine uses it, as blatant travel ("Visit Volvoland!") or other reporting on a foreign or different setting ("Teaching Kindergarten in Bavaria"). In fact, the latter is far easier to sell because too few teachers with something to share, like kindergarten in Bavaria, see themselves as writers or see much value in sharing their unique experiences or knowledge with others. (No, you needn't have done it. Just get the facts and quotes from others who did--or observed it--as you would for any other piece.)

As you can imagine, those magazines with travel built into their reason for existing, like Travel Today, buy the most. But so do magazines at the side of travel. I used to sell regularly for RV publications though I can't ever remember being in a moving RV. Skiing magazines, where you must go to exquisite locales to do it. Magazines about cars, cycles, boats, hiking, and so on.

Then the regular magazines, with at least one major article every issue. And the vocational magazines with stories set in other locales, as mentioned earlier: "Plumbing in Poland" pieces.

Alas, newspapers are buying less as they  shrink and others disappear, but most of the bigger ones still carry three or four pieces a week and somebody is writing them.

So don't let anybody tell you that travel is hard to sell. It's the easiest form and it pays the best. The demand is high, people have more leisure time and loose cash then ever before, and they want to know where to go, what to do, and how to stretch that cash as far for as long as they can.

There's more in my Travel Writer's Guide.

Gordon Burgett

 

Who buys travel articles at the newspaper?

Usually one of two editors, but if the piece has a travel base, say cooking in Cancun, you can try the other section editors, like food in this example.

The travel editor handles most articles and related shorts (under 1,000 words). To see the volume bought, check the issue on "travel day," usually Sunday, sometimes a week day. If they buy a full piece (usually written by the editor or another editor they know) that may run as long as 3,000 or more words and use both color and b/w photos. Sometimes they also buy "seconds," two or three pieces from 1,000-1,600 words. (I've found 1,200-1,350 words a good submission length.) One b/w photo usually accompanies them. You have a far better chance submitting seconds, and telling of the photos you can send, if interested. 

If the paper has a Sunday magazine (sometimes this comes out on Thursday), much more common in the Midwest and East, that too almost always includes the occasional longer travel pieces. These are almost always regional in focus, the site written about within 100 miles of the newspaper. Ask about length and if all photos are in color.

The most sensible way to tell who the editors are is to check the newspaper's website. Google it and search for "newspaper+city+state." If it doesn't give names, either the paper has no travel or magazine section or you just mail your copy to "travel editor" or "magazine editor." You can complete your address list by seeing who responds.

I go into this more fully in the Travel Writer's Guide or at my travel seminars, mostly given in California. But this will get you pointed the right way.