In The Timbuktu Review, travel writer Wayne Curtis offers excellent advice about how to resist cliches when writing about visiting a new place. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Resisting Travel Clichés”
Wayne Curtis is a wonderful travel writer, and writing in the Timbuktu Review, he had some great advice for anybody who’s thinking about travel writing or wanted to get better at writing in general. He says, when I first arrive somewhere, my head invariably overflows with cliches. An Italian plaza looks like something from a Fellini movie. Visiting an historic Vermont town is like stepping back in time. The glaciers and volcanoes of Iceland combine to create a land of many contrasts. One could commit these initial impressions to paper, but one should not. An editor would laugh you off their pages.
Yeah, that’s one of those cliches. An X of contrast is something that teach you not to put in headlines in the journalism field.
Yeah, yeah, there’s so many of those, right?
Well, he says you need to get beyond those early thoughts. And the most fail-safe way to do that is to simply be still. Find a bench or a fallen log or just lean against a wall and pause for a time. Maybe 10 minutes, maybe an hour, and soon enough the place will start to reveal itself.
A cliché only tells the reader what one place shares with another. A travel writer’s job is to find the elements unique to each place, the things that separate it from all the others. And I thought that was just terrific advice.
Yeah, it’s true. Martha and I both love to travel, and we both love reading travel writing. If there’s a travel writer that you really enjoy, make a recommendation and maybe we’ll talk about it on the show. Send those books to words@waywordradio.org.
