Writing travel features: "Do I tell readers about the machine guns?"

Writing my travel feature on Israel and The Palestinian Territories this week, I had to ask myself a few questions: “Do I tell readers about the Hummers mounted with massive machine guns? Is this the forum to sprout forth my own political views on the wall around the West Bank (pictured)? What about the t-shirts with 'Guns and Moses' written on them; shall I tell potential tourists not to buy them because they’re so lame?"

Working out what to put in a travel feature – and, just as importantly, what to leave out – always puts me in a spin.

Okay, so it’s obvious no-one wants to read about how the kid on the plane next to me farted continuously for 14 hours or that the only place I could scoff food privately in Dubai during Ramadan was in a toilet. But finding the right mix of informative detail and personal experience to make a travel story good can be tricky.

I am not a dedicated travel journalist so I don’t claim to have a magic formula to turn every travel feature into a Walkley winner, but I have been commissioned to write stories on just about every junket, personal holiday (including my honeymoon) and weekend away I have had in the past 20 years.

Let me say at the outset, though, that the key to writing a good travel feature is to entice readers from the start and to avoid anything at all that makes your article sound like a travel brochure.

So, here are my five top tips to writing a good travel yarn:

1. Avoid cliches. Go to your nearest travel agent and pick up a few brochures. What do you see? Phrases like: “frolicking in the crystal-clear waters” and “sun-bronzed beaches, soaring peaks and lush rainforests”? If it sounds like a brochure, then it is a brochure.

You want your article to sound like an article, free of clichés and unimaginative descriptions. Sure, clichés are popular because they paint a good description, but readers tend to skim over them because they are so unoriginal.

So, yes, you need adjectives and descriptive prose, but try to come up with new ways to include them in your travel stories.

2. Make your holiday a little less ordinary. I am not suggesting you take up base jumping or rock climbing, but think of different ways you can approach standard holidays.

For example, when my husband and I headed to the Hunter Valley one weekend I wondered how we could make the trip a little different. So we packed the bikes and decided to ride between the vineyards instead of driving.

Not only did it make for an interesting travel feature, it made our weekend a whole lot more fun.

3. Make your travel feature personal. It's important to make your story different to every other feature ever written on the same destination.

Don’t just write detailed blurbs about the sights you see. Again, they belong in a brochure. Tell readers about the quirky, funny, sad, happy, unexpected, expected experiences that made your trip unique and that help paint a picture of what the region and its people are truly like.

When one of my former writing students from the Sydney Writers Centre asked me to look at a travel article she hoped to sell, I knew immediately she was onto a winner. Her entire article centred around one thing about India that I, personally, had never before read about: going to the movies. Obviously the Sun-Herald thought her idea was original enough to be published also.

4. Plan ahead. Before you go on your trip, research your destinations thoroughly so you know what sights your readers are likely to want to read about.

Pack a diary and write a daily journal or jot down notes as you think of them. It can also be a good idea to scribble captions to your photos as you go so you can identify them more easily when you get home.

While we're talking about pictures, I highly recommend you either invest in, or borrow, a good camera and try to take publishable shots while you are away. It doesn't have to be the lastest SLR, just something with a zoom that produces quality photos. Ensure you take pictures at a high resolution too.

With digital cameras you have the freedom to take squillions of photos and to get them as well-framed and focused as possible.

5. Lastly, don’t be shy about approaching people. Ask tourist operators as many questions as you need to get the answers you want, and talk to locals and ask if you can quote them and take their photos.

In my yarn about Israel and The Palestinian Territories I decided that telling readers about the lame souvenir t-shirts didn't add value to the story, and that sprouting forth my personal feelings about the way the region is being managed was self-indulgent. I didn't even go into detail about the machine guns, riot squads and water cannons we saw, but I did feel it prudent to mention that security here was high and that men with guns were unavoidable.

So, what do you take out - and leave in - when you're writing travel yarns? Better still, tell us what you like to read about in a travel feature.

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For more information about Pamela Wilson or WriteSmart, log on to http://www.writesmart.com.au/