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. 

Comments

[Richard Rynkowski]

Mr. Burgett:
I have read three of your books: The Travel Writer"s Guide, Sell and Resell your Magazine Articles, and Sell 75% of Your Travel Articles. All three are very good, and I recommend them to any magazine article writer.
In your book, "Travel Writer's Guide," I found your "Feasibility Study" very interesting. Part two was especially interesting where the question is, "Is it feasible to sell?" I find step 1, who would be interested in reading about this topic, and the deduction method a great idea. Our library no longer has the "Readers Guide to Periodical Literature," and has gone to Info-Trac databases. I have tried researching subjects so I could find potential magazines, as you suggest, but it doesn't seem to work well. Would you expand on this idea in your blog with a possibe example we could research?
Thank you.
R.Rynkowski
www.RFranko.com

[Gordon Burgett]

My heavens, Richard. What kind comments--when I've been most lax on my blog! Let me shake the holidays lassitude loose and post again, then focus on your request.

Thanks for letting me know that someone is reading the blog, too. There is the feeling of writing to space...

Thanks again,

Gordon Burgett