The earliest known travel writing, as Pico Iyer alludes to in his Why Travel piece we read at the beginning of the term, is the travelogue. These are travel narratives about an adventure to a place often told in linear time, like a first trip to Paris. In travel writing, these are often called Journey assignments—as in, it’s about the journey and the traveler’s time there.

As the Techniques for this module point out, narrative is about building a story with a beginning filled with mystery and apprehension, or sometimes promise and expectation, followed by some sort of conflict or barrier, followed by some resolution. Don’t just write a play-by-play journal of each day, but instead, look for a story in the adventure. If there is no story, then people won’t want to read the article. The number one rule here is to avoid worrying about whether you have a “big” enough conflict—it can be as simple as confronting your expectations of a place.

Your assignment

You will write a travelogue that an audience looking to visit where you are writing about would be interested in. Famous travelogues are usually book-length, so obviously you cannot do that. Stick to a simple story, one that follows the promise, conflict, and resolution story arc. If you are a person who needs a word count, stick to something that is between 500 and 1,500 words.

1. When you are done, compose/paste into a New Post on the Writing Adventures blog.
2. Select Travelogue from the Categories
3. Write in your Tag. If you are using more than one tag, separate them with a comma.
4. Select Publish.
5. Await your Editorial Review task. Complete your review of your peers’ work.
6. After you receive your review comments from me and your peers, revise your work and change it on the Writing Adventures blog.