The Importance of Editing Your Travel Content: Our Eight Expert Editing Tips

Writers get the glory and the byline. Editors rarely get a mention. Yet their role is vital.

For some, the process of writing seems to be effortless, a natural gift. Their prose is engaging, witty, evocative and always clear. But chances are you’re reading the end product. What if you were to see their first draft?

It might come as a surprise to learn that even the most talented writers don’t get it right first time round. First drafts are frequently sloppy and muddled. It takes some refinement to make them great.14288135_05fd9e848a_o Continue reading

Once Upon a Time: The Importance of Good Storytelling in Travel Writing

It’s that wonderful time of the year again, when the John Lewis Christmas advert has people all around the country reaching for their hankies. Viewers tune in their thousands and they know what they’re going to get: a stripped-down cover of a classic pop number by some young up-and-comer, a cute animal and a gentle tug on the heartstrings that — depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing — stops just short of cloying sentimentality. Why do people love it so much? Because it’s a familiar, well-executed story.

Whether you’ve fallen for Monty the Penguin’s charms or not, there is something to be said for the John Lewis method. Good storytelling works and not just in retail. In the travel industry, it’s especially important.

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Seven Winning Habits That Will Help You Produce Quality Travel Content

Good written travel content is the result of three main factors: an interesting idea, solid research and great writing. Attaining these goals is easier than you think; it’s all about the habits you form. Just as bad habits can ensure bad content, developing good habits can ensure consistency and quality throughout your written travel content.

Here are seven habits that we think are well worth forming…

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12 Travel Writing Clichés to Avoid

Everyone has their personal peccadilloes about travel writing terms like ‘off the beaten path’ or ‘sun-drenched’, but individual qualms shouldn’t mean a blanket ban on these phrases. These may be overused clichés, but sometimes — to borrow another particularly well-worn cliché — they hit the nail on the head.

However, there are some words and formulaic travel phrases that are so overused, they are positively exhausted. Many of them are churned out so regularly in travel writing that they have lost all meaning, and no longer register with readers. And yet, thanks to writerly laziness, these hackneyed phrases keep cropping up again and again.

We’ve named and shamed 12 of the worst offenders below; our own dirty dozen of travel writing clichés.

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Not a quaff

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