Travel captures everyone's imagination. Whether it be stories about wandering off to far-off exotic places or something as commonplace as the typical family vacation, there are fun and fascinating stories to be told about traveling. Most readers like to dream about the places where they are unlikely to ever go or compare notes about travel to places they've been. Travel makes for good stories.
If we look at the wide range of literature we see that the travel story is a common one that depicts metaphors of life as well as real situations that keep a story interesting. Thinking about your own experiences with going places you probably have a few stories to tell about what happened to you in your adventures.
The stories about traveling can be funny, frightening, or romantic. Anything can happen when you're away from home and it usually does. Isn't that why we travel in the first place. The unexpected, the unusual, and the entertaining are some of the elements that can be injected into your travel stories. Don't forget to include the people you meet along the way as well as the places you see. Be sure to describe the details of the smells, sounds, and everything in the surrounding environment. And definitely don't forget the food! Make your reader's mouth water or even cringe if the food was not so good.
A memoir has an added dimension when travel can be included in the story. If travel is a big part of the story then you have the big plus of place in addition to people. Think of some of your own travels and see what stories you can derive from those experiences.
Have you done much travel in your lifetime? Do you have any interesting family vacations to tell stories about? What travel dreams and aspirations do you have right now?
I've done a fair bit of traveling....more than some, not as much as others. I never really had a burning desire to see the world as I'm not terribly comfortable outside my North American, first world comfort zone. I'd like to see the rest of the US states - I have 33 or 34 under my belt so far. I'd like to see the rest of Canada, well the Maritimes anyway, and the Canadian Rockies in Alberta and Eastern BC. If I were to leave the US it'd be to see the British Isles and Iceland. Maybe Scandanavia, Germany, Austria. But I need first world accommodations because this girl does not and will not 'rough it', and that includes sharing a bathroom in a hotel.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty much with you, JoJo. I like some adventure, but I don't want to venture too far from my zone of comfort. To me there's enough to see here in North America to last me a lifetime. Now if I had unlimited financial resources then that might change some things about the extent of my travel.
ReplyDeleteLee