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From "A Sense of Place"
Presentation by Gary A. Warner
National Writers Workshop
Cal State Fullerton
April 29, 2006

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."
-- St. Augustine

"Being a famous print journalist is like being the best-dressed woman on radio.”
- Robin Williams

There is no gospel of good writing. The travel writing of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain,
Ernest Hemingway, Jan Morris, Paul Theroux and P.J. O'Rourke have common themes
told different ways. They have their own style, tone and point of view. Find your own.
Here’s how I find mine:

Reporting: Put the story in "travel story."

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to
move.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson

What is the story in your travel story. What is the idea, the hook? Is there a beginning,
middle and end? I look for juxtapositions or transitions. I’ve written about China’s clash
between ancient values, communist history and the steamroller of capitalist commerce.
There’s Berlin’s constant reinvention - it’s the chameleon city, changing political and
cultural hues with each new generation. Southern California has moved from a Beach
Boys stereotype to a fragmented, complex and fascinating world of mini-villages tied
together by the concrete strands of freeways. What a travel story is not: The itinerary of
your last vacation. A laundry list of sites, hotels and restaurants cribbed from
guidebooks. The first question I ask is, “Where’s the journey?”

Reporting: Be There Now

"If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you
might better stay at home."
– James Michener

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Or Parker Dam. Or Amish Country. Or
Mongolia. Be there, now. Beware denarration: The mass tourism that smooths the
edges off travel. You’ll most often find that in mass market cruises, tours and
attractions. While on the road, turn off the computer, turn off the cell phone, turn off the
television. All these things take you back to where you are from. That isn't the point of
travel. I prefer to take notes, then transfer notes to a journal at the end of the day. It takes
discipline. But what I gain is immediacy. Wait to write later and memory will flatten out
the details. Now becomes then. Better to write when you don’t know how it will turn out
in the end.

Reporting: Listening instead of talking.

“If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y
play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.” - attributed to Albert Einstein

It's very difficult to be shy and be a good journalist. By nature we ask the pointy
questions that people want to know. We break through social barriers. We are voyeurs
with a license to intrude. But this strength is also our weakness, because we can
dominate interviews so that subjects are giving us what they think we want instead of
how they really feel.
Things I learned from psychology school interviewing class: Listen rather than talk.
Don't let subjects see any reaction, positive or negative, to what they are saying (no
nodding, uh-huhs, raised eyebrows). Don't fill the silence - let the person you are
interviewing fill it.

Writing: Know the rules, then ignore them when it suits you.

“Hold, cabin, steerage, hencoop’s cage - tour, journey, voyage, lounge, ride, walk, skim,
sketch, excursion, travel -talk...
”-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Go out and buy a copy of Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style.” It’s like the driver’s
manual for writing. But like a driver’s manual, we don’t always obey its law. “The
Elements of Style” is a safety net for practice. But once you are comfortable with the net,
remove it from time to time.

Writing: Use Other's Voices

"Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter."
-- Izaak Walton

A colleague once described photographs of sunsets and other pretty scenes as
"Neutron Bomb shots." The Neutron Bomb is a weapon that kills humans with radiation
and leaves the landscape intact. Sometimes I see Neutron bomb writing. Depopulated
of all voices, with just the landscape left, and the sound of the author picking lint out of
his or her belly button. One of my teachers at Columbia was Dick Blood, the former
night managing editor of the New York Daily News. He taught us the concept of bricks
and balloons. Bricks are easy - the facts and descriptions of a story. The what, where,
when. But quotes are the balloons. Enough good balloons and the bricks are lifted up.
They tell us the why. They tell us the who.
One of the joys of travel is meeting interesting people. Good travel writing introduces
them to the reader.

Writing: Use All Five Senses

“You know the three best sounds in the world?...Anchor chains, plane motors, and train
whistles.”
- George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Because we're writing for a visual medium, we often overdo what we see to the
detriment of the other senses. After writing my stories, I try to go back and find logical
places to insert each of the five senses. How things look is usually already in there. But
what about touch, taste, sound and smell. It adds texture to the story..

Writing: Show, don't tell

“On the horizon was the moon. She fattened, she grew huge and rusty, she mellowed
and rolled, till the morning star contended and dews began to blow in our windows...”
- Jack Kerouac, “On the Road.”

I try to stay away from "telling" the reader what something looks like - "luxurious
furniture," "intricately carved wood," "gorgeous sunset." Instead I try to show it. For the
sunset I'd describe the thousands of diamond-like sparkles on the waves, the way the
long, thin clouds turn from cottonball white to iridescent orange then fade to purple. The
way the sun stretches out into a deflated golden orb at the horizon. How the wind kicks
up as it settles below the distant chop, and the way that once gone I'm more aware of
the rhythmic lapping of the breakers on the beach.

Writing: Tell, don't sell

“The world, which is a curious sight
And very much unlike what people write.”
-- Lord Byron, “Don Juan.”

Don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me a place is pure paradise. Don’t tell me tourism hasn’t
reached it. Don’t tell me that the clog makers and rug weavers are doing what they are
doing for anyone other than tourists. E.M. Forester wrote “the age of independent travel i
sdrawing to an end.” That was 1920. There is an old Amharic saying, “ “To lie about a
far country is easy.” Tourism is a reality, in the words of That goes for Kansas as well
as Cambodia. All the world is found. So be honest with your reader. Hold a mirror, and
show a place, McDonalds and all. I'm a big fan of texture and that includes the ups and
downs of the travel experience. A story that omits all the discomforts, hassles, and other
bad experiences isn't a travel story, it's ad copywriting. Readers want to read about a
good experience - their need for stories that are a litany of woes is very limited. But they
also want stories that ring true.

Writing: Be a funny, flawed human. Don't be a travel "expert"

“We love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie...they open
their throttle-valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and
blaspheme the sacred name of Truth. Their central idea, their grand aim, is to
subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the blaze of
their cosmopolitan glory.”
-- Mark Twain, “Innocents Abroad,” 1869

The title page on my personal website is Gullible’s Travels. It’s an old line, used at
least back to the 1920s. But I like it because it conveys the frailty of my grip on being a
“travel expert.” I feel that people want to walk in the shoes of a real human being, not a
tour guide. I try to show my expertise by the volume and breadth of my reporting. But in
the writing I usually inject self-deprecation. I try not to preach at my readers. That is why I
prefer first person to third person. There is no other trip than my own. Any other trip is
yours.

Editing: The ear is sometimes better than the eye

“Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud”.
~Hermann Hesse

A trick I learned from my two abortive attempts at becoming a theater major in college.
When it comes to the written word, sometime the ear is a better editor than the eye. After
I have finish my first draft, I’ll take it up to the newspaper cafeteria or go sit in my car -
someplace where I won’t look like a schizophrenic - and read it out loud. If I find myself
huffing and puffing, I know a sentence is too long. If find myself stumbling, I know the
construction is off. If I find my voice growing flat, I know the story is losing emotion

Editing: Write for the reader

“Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.”
-- Elizabeth Drew, 1964

How much space is a story worth? I had an editor named Larry Burrough who was a
sworn enemy of long stories. Larry once wrote “(Writing is) a process sometimes
riddled with self-indulgence and intellectual dishonesty... we fool ourselves regarding
the level of reader interest. Smiling. Proud. But naked — and unread.”
Ask yourself. What’s for you? What’s for the subject of my story? What’s for the reader?
Remove everything that isn’t for the reader alone. Ask yourself: If it weren’t mine, would I
read this story?

Editing: Heart, Mind, Then Heart Again

“I was not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land”
- Seneca, 1st century A.D.

F. Scott Fitzgerald had a way of writing and self-editing. First came the emotion, the
pouring out of images and phrases. From this mass, he would instill intellectual
discipline, fashioning it into a story. Many writers might stop there. But the third and
most important process for Fitzgerald was to go back and selectively get the emotion
back into the story. To err on the side of heart over the mind. Travel at its best is a
passion. My old boss, Tonnie Katz, once told me she didn’t care where I went as long
as I took the reader there. Passionless writing of any kind is a tough slog. Travel writing
without passion is deadly.

COPYRIGHT GARY A. WARNER, 2006
No reproduction without permission