The nature of travel and adventure is that you’re going somewhere, seeing something, doing an activity, or talking to someone. 

When you’re writing for readers who aren’t your mum or best friend, you want to avoid sounding like all you’ve done is gone from a to b to c. That’s a sure-fire way to turn off readers.

The best way to avoid that “I went here, then I went there” trap is to pepper in details that will make readers care.

• Why and what details tell readers your motivation for your trip and why you made the decisions you made along the way.
• Emotional details show readers how you reacted to events and let us into your brain (creepy, but effective!).
• Historical details let us learn alongside you. They can provide context and understanding, and learning new things is always fun.
• Human details let us meet the people you met and let us hear them in their own words.
• Sense details immerse us in a scene with scent, touch, taste, sounds, and vibes.
• Flashbacks take us back to events that happened before your trip and can take us further into your world and motivations.

Peppering in these details is what makes your story more than just a journey from a to b to c.

So, how do you pepper in these details? 

As you revise, look for spots in the narrative where you can make your scenes more immersive or honest or bold. 

These are the types of questions I ask authors when I want them to go deeper with their writing. Take what works for the scene and leave the rest.

Why and what details

• Why did you want to go on this particular trip in this particular way? 
• What did you hope to learn? Did you want to learn about yourself, the place, the history, the environment, the human condition?
• Why did you make the decisions you made? Were you tired, hungry, scared? Emboldened or energised?
• Do you have a connection to this place? Familial, ancestral, religious? Share those connections with readers so we can understand why this place or trip is important to you.

Emotional details

• How did you feel? What emotions – positive or negative – bubbled up? Go deeper than “it was hot and I was cranky.” Let readers into your mental space so we feel your feelings with you.
• What were you thinking in the moment? How do you feel about those decisions when you look back with distance and hindsight? 

Historical details

• What are the hot historical facts of this place? Anecdotes work well at bringing the history of a place into the present.
• Did you learn anything that made you see the place with fresh eyes? Were you shocked about what you learned?

Human details

• Who did you talk to? What were their quirks and idiosyncrasies? What were their mannerisms? What stories did they share? (If they’re sharing personal details, check that they’re okay with you sharing those details with a wider readership.) Give us dialogue to show conversations.

Sense details

• Including senses other than sight make your descriptions immersive and realistic, so lean into touch, taste, scent, and sounds.
• How did the place smell? What foods could you smell as you passed by shops? Did frying onions lure you over to a street stall? Did flowers or perfume make you feel heady? Did rubbish or overflowing gutters or sewerage assault your nostrils? 
• Did certain smells trigger certain memories?
• When you ate, what did you taste?
• What sounds surrounded you? What did you notice an absence of?

Flashbacks

• If you undertook this trip as a way of processing something that happened in your past, use well-timed flashbacks to show readers what those events were. Perhaps a conversation sparks a memory, or a certain smell takes you back. A song on a bumpy bus’s radio could remind you of where you were when you first heard it.

Your turn

Take one of your scenes and read it as objectively as you can. Where does it fall flat? What details can you add to bring the moment to life? What was it about that moment that particularly stands out?

It’s these details that make a travel story come alive. See where you can slip them in. Find the spots in the narrative where they deserve a whole paragraph or scene or chapter. When you take the reader with you, let them inside your head, let us learn who you are.

Not sure if you’re travel memoir goes deep enough? Book a manuscript evaluation with me and get feedback specific to your story.