How To Write A Travel Piece And Stay At Home

I’ve just completed a travel piece about a place I’ve never visited. It may seem a strange thing to do, but this was the commission that my writing client gave me. Usually a travel piece is full of local color, but how do you add that if you’ve never set eyes on the place?

Researching The Venue

Thanks to internet research, anything is possible. Wikipedia may be much maligned, but it’s a good starting point for an overview of many cities and countries. Don’t get me wrong, this does not replace researching your topic on other sites, but it does give a guide to the other information that might be out there. It often has good information on the weather, climate and geology, too.

City Information

Many cities and towns have websites, especially in the US. These sites are great places to find out about history, attractions and major events. There are usually links to offsite pages for the attractions, where you can get more information, and if you’re looking for a comprehensive listing of festivals and exhibitions, then you can’t do much better than Eventguide.com. To round it out, check out TripAdvisor or the Lonely Planet site for guides to most places.

Nightlife Reviews

That takes care of most of the daytime entertainment, but if you’re profiling an area, then you’ll need to know about places to eat and nightlife. Again, TripAdvisor can help you, but Yahoo, AOL and others also provide listings of restaurants with type of cuisine and brief reviews. If you are lucky, you’ll also find a user review that tells you what it’s like to be there. There are also similar sites which list bars and clubs. You can find out if there’s a DJ or live music, which night ladies are free and much more.

Putting It Together

Let me give you an example of how you can put this all together to create a decent travel piece. I recently had to write a piece on Jacksonville, Florida. Although I have been to many other parts of Florida, I have never been there. However, I used my knowledge of the climate to set the scene, evoking hot summer days and balmy tropical nights.

Using Your Experience

I checked into the history of the town, including the earliest settlers, and found out a bit about its evolution over the years. After a bit of info on the climate, I was ready to move on to the attractions. You can actually use your own experience to write realistically about places you have never seen.

For example, if you have ever been to a zoo with lots of exotic animals, or gone down a water slide, or ridden a big roller coaster, you can talk about the feelings people will experience while doing those things in another city.

Similarly, if you like searching for antiques, or attending events with live stage shows, it only takes a little imagination to evoke those for your readers. When it comes to rating meals and nights out, I blend my own experience of similar venues with the reviews I find on TripAdvisor and similar sites.

So that’s how you can write a decent travel piece about a place that you’ve never seen. It’s true that it won’t have quite the same feel as if you had been there, but if you’re a competent writer, you can still make the article come to life. Have you ever had to write about somewhere you’ve never seen? What techniques helped you?

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