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, \u201cbut what about novels?\u201d Novels and stories in general have the advantage of narrative\u2014an unfolding, often linear, tale that has embedded schema. Studies<\/a> have shown that stories lead to greater recall and impact. All this is to say that the \u201cstory\u201d helps us remember because it\u2019s how our brains experience the world, in linear time chunks with certain beats or markers.<\/p>\n Most of the early travel writing was done in a linear time fashion, whether through journals or letters. Fiction authors such as Dickens<\/a>, Stevenson<\/a>, Steinbeck<\/a>, and Wollstonecraft<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n One famous traveler of the 19th century was Isabella Bird. Before airplanes, women\u2019s liberation, and sensible clothes, Bird traveled the world, from New Zealand to China, Hawaii to Persia, and Colorado to India. Her book A Lady\u2019s Life in the Rocky Mountains<\/em><\/a> shares her ascent up Long\u2019s 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, \u201cI much prefer field work to the scouring of greasy pans and to the wash tub, and both to either sewing or writing.\u201d Paradoxically, she wrote over 20 books and articles about her travels).<\/p>\n I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n Techniques<\/strong><\/p>\n Samples<\/strong><\/p>\n Assignment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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