Should You Write a Travel Narrative?

Iguana park -- Guayaquil, Ecuador

Here’s a follow-up on my March 1st post, “Should You Write a Memoir?” – because I went genre fluid within the very same book, All Roads Lead to Austen: A Yearlong Journey with Jane. Back when I was writing promo copy, I struggled over what to call a book about holding reading groups on Jane Austen in six Latin American countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, and Argentina). I settled on billing it as a travel memoir. Why not travel narrative? Because the book turned out to be as much about me as about the countries I visited. A travel narrative/travel guide would focus on the locale itself. My previous post examined the memoir element. Here, I’ll shift to travel.

Let’s assume you like traveling – do you have enough to say about it for a whole book? Or would it be best to go with travel essays or blog posts? I had the luxury of a full year’s travels (a mixed blessing – more on that below . . .) – but good books have been written about much shorter trips. And blog posts can be done on something as simple as a daytrip. If you’d like to share your thoughts on travel with readers, here are a few things to consider:

Do you have an angle or question? In my intro, I framed my book with a scene from Clueless. Sweet but ditzy Cher offends Lucy, her family maid, by saying: “You know I don’t speak Mexican!” The fact that Lucy’s from El Salvador is lost on Cher (and that there’s no such language as Mexican). Aren’t ‘those’ countries, like, totally all the same?

We probably all have a little Cher in us. Whatever your race or ethnicity, how much do you know much about Latin American countries? Where they are? How they differ from each other? Not all the 52 million Latinx people in the US come from Mexico – so where are their roots?

Turns out Ecuador has a lot more to offer than bananas, and volcanos are not the only thing to see in Guatemala. Chileans and Argentineans don’t much like each other (although if you’re a soccer fan, you already knew that). Paraguay is officially bilingual – the only South American country still broadly using an indigenous language: Guaraní. As for Mexico – they’re a “United States” as well, and theirs (32) are just as different from each other as ours. One of my favorite things to hear from people who’ve read my book: “This really makes me want to travel to all of these countries!” If you’re going to offer vivid and honest portraits of places abroad, keep notes, save every ticket stub, and take lots of pictures.

Having a project helps. A project (in addition to an angle/question) is especially important if you’re traveling in a popular destination for English-speakers, like France or Italy or the Caribbean. When you’ve got activities planned, readers can take part with you. I’ve had a life-long interest in Japan, and currently on my bedside table are Michael Booth’s Super Sushi Ramen Express: A Culinary Adventure Through Japan and Leslie Buck’s Cutting Back: My Apprenticeship in the Gardens of Kyoto. The subtitles say it all. Projects. Activities.

The more focus in your travel, the easier to hold a narrative together. “I saw this, then this, then that!” will be a hard sell for an agent. This advice might only seem helpful if you haven’t done your travel yet – but if you think back over your experiences, maybe there was a theme. Like athletic activities, or wine tasting, or hitting every local festival you could find.

This is probably the right moment to bring up cultural sensitivity. Not all travel projects are equal. If yours is sex tourism, for instance, that’s pretty gross. I’m sure there’s a market for the topic . . . but still, gross. How many bars and nightclubs can you can get thrown out of in Germany? Entertaining, but also gross. Any project that relies on treating fellow humans like bedpost notches or props in your personal drama is exploitative. And gross.

A sidebar: while my agent Lisa Adams was shopping my book, one huffy editor (at a press that shall remain nameless) called my Austen reading groups “an insulting anthropological study.” I was, apparently, indoctrinating Latin American readers with colonialist literature, while simultaneously dehumanizing them as test subjects. This criticism raised a bit of self-doubt – so I reached out to the readers after the groups to check. Each one was taken aback by this perspective. Dehumanizing, to share their thoughts on Austen and how she compared/contrasted with their own national literature? Que tonteria. So, lesson learned: cultural sensitivity matters – but steer clear of white-knighting.

How about language? Learning the local language might not be part of your agenda – but could be an interesting sub-thread. These days you can get along nicely with translation apps (although amusing errors are bound to happen). Still, if part of your goal is to speak with citizens in their native language, make sure you take notes about your encounters.

All the places I visited speak Spanish – but boy does it differ from country to country, and even city to city. In Mexico I learned to call hummingbirds “chuparosas.” In Lima, Peru, I sent two salesgirls in a jewelry store into thigh-slapping hysterics when I used that word. Turns out the proper one around there is “colibri” – not rose-sucker. Oh well.

But I’ll say this – in all six countries where I held groups and the two others I visited (Peru and Uruguay), people were super, super patient with my fledgling Spanish. The Hummingbird Incident is one of the handful of times I got mocked during 12 months of travel, and that ended on a friendly note. Both in Central and South America, people tried their best to understand me and to be understood. Think about that the next time you hear an American giving somebody grief for not speaking English well.

City kitty, Valparaiso, Chile

Be a good travel companion. A through-line keeps a reader turning pages in nonfiction of all types. But even a great “how is this going to turn out?” thread won’t stop a reader from bailing if they can’t stand your company. Especially in travel books. What kind of traveler are you? Do you jump in and savor new experiences, or do you whine and fuss nonstop? I still cringe at the memory of breakfast in Paris at the Hotel de Nesle in 1994. We were served delicious coffee in lovely French coffee bowls. A fellow American protested, full voice, “What is this thing? A soup bowl? Don’t you have real coffee cups?”

I’m a lot more flexible than that – but do have my weaknesses. Being open about them can help readers identify with you. Don’t paint a rosy picture of yourself as the Perfect Traveler, unless you are. Chances are, you’re not. The first sentence of my opening chapter reads, “I can be a little . . . impatient” (a beloved niece told me she laughed out loud when she read that). I figured I’d get it out of the way up front, because one of the things I learned on the road was how to be less impatient. How to settle into the rhythm of other cultures. How to stop assuming, for example, that zippy restaurant wait-staff and a check on the table, pronto is the only (or best) way. I already understood this, intellectually. But I need to learn to live difference.

Earlier I mentioned that I traveled for a whole year in Latin America – the luxury of a sabbatical from my university teaching job. But anybody who’s taken a really lengthy trip knows this: it’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. Seeing new places, meeting new people, is exciting. It’s also, when weeks turn into months, exhausting. Being away from your own comfy bed, thousands of miles from loved ones, takes a toll. I found it best to be honest about that, without belaboring it. Describing the occasional grocery store meltdown (mine happened in Guayaquil, Ecuador) or panic attack keeps things real.

You never really know somebody – no matter how long you’ve actually known them – until you travel together. Getting lost on an unmarked road or getting your gear stolen at the beach either cements your friendship or leaves all the cracks showing. Try to be the kind of traveler readers would like to stick with, warts and all.

Who’s keeping track of you back home? I had the good fortune of being assigned an amazing content editor by my publisher, Sourcebooks – Shana Drehs. She pointed out that my manuscript could benefit from an emotional anchor as a through-line; it was too episodic (here’s one country, here’s another). What relationships were important to me? Was I in touch with anybody consistently while traveling?

Enter my mother. She solidly supported my project while simultaneously fearing I would catch a tropical disease and never return. I’m the youngest of four siblings, and once the baby, always the baby. Turns out readers could really identify with her anxiety. I’ve heard from many readers that they enjoyed this element of the book – one I never expected to include when I was planning and drafting.

So, consider that: who else is affected by/involved with your travels? This could provide very rich material. Maybe they’re with you, or maybe they’re hoping for an email or a call back home. I traveled without a cellphone, but these days, keeping track of texts – maybe even screenshotting them – could be engaging and give you a nice through-line.

Hitchhiking -- San Sebastien, Jalisco, Mexico

Back to the original question: should you write a travel narrative? Not everyone is cut out to be Freya Stark or Bill Bryson. Still, you might just have at least one awesome adventure worth sharing. Give it some thought.

Keep an eye out for upcoming posts on – plus guest posts by Genevieve Beltran, Christy Lenzi, Hanna T. Brady, and more!