Stay Awhile and Listen
In the last module, I talked about how humans are poor at remembering lots of things, and that short writing is better than long writing. You may have thought, “but what about novels?” Novels and stories in general have the advantage of narrative—an unfolding, often linear, tale that has embedded schema. Studies have shown that stories lead to greater recall and impact. All this is to say that the “story” helps us remember because it’s how our brains experience the world, in linear time chunks with certain beats or markers.
Most of the early travel writing was done in a linear time fashion, whether through journals or letters. Fiction authors such as Dickens, Stevenson, Steinbeck, and Wollstonecraft all wrote about their travels. Some travel writing today is still written in narrative–that is, a story about traveling to a place and the adventures encountered therein.
One famous traveler of the 19th century was Isabella Bird. Before airplanes, women’s liberation, and sensible clothes, Bird traveled the world, from New Zealand to China, Hawaii to Persia, and Colorado to India. Her book A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains shares her ascent up Long’s Peak (in October), interactions with a slew of strange and wonderful people, and daily chores from laundry to cattle herding that she was asked to do as part of her boarding wherever she went (of which she wrote, “I much prefer field work to the scouring of greasy pans and to the wash tub, and both to either sewing or writing.” Paradoxically, she wrote over 20 books and articles about her travels).
I’m naming the assignment in this module a travelogue, but you might also see that term applied to contemporary video productions. The term was popular in the early days of motion pictures (see the next module for some examples), but originated in 1904 when Burton Holmes would give live stage presentations showing images and telling stories about far off lands. Travel writing was mostly just called travel writing, or sometimes a book of travels, but I wanted to differentiate a particular type of travel writing, and the travelogue assignment, which is familiar to some publishers, is mostly a narrative account in writing of visiting a place.
Techniques
Samples
- Outrunning COVID-19 twice by Rita Liao [3,302 woirds; 25 minutes]
- My first trip to Paris by Mohammed Reza Amirinia in French Entrée [813 words; 6 minutes]
- A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains [excerpt] by Isabella Bird [2,200 words; 17 minutes]
Assignment
Due dates
- Travelogue draft due Wednesday, October 7
- Editorial Comments due Friday, October 9
- Travelogue revision due Monday, October 12