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Travel writing is writing about visiting different places. It can appear as a newspaper article, informing readers about a specific destination. It can also be a form of literary non-fiction, written as a book, telling a longer narrative about a journey or place. This differs from a travel blog because the writing is more detailed and less informal.

Travel writing:

• is usually written in the first person – using ‘I’
• is often descriptive – telling you about the place
• as literary non-fiction, is aiming to entertain as well as inform

Example

Bill Bryson is a famous travel writer. This extract is the opening paragraph from his book The Lost Continent (1989).

I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.

When you come from Des Moines you either accept the fact without question and settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever, or you spend your adolescence moaning at length about what a dump it is and how you can't wait to get out, and then you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi and get a job at the Firestone factory and live there forever and ever.

The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson

Analysis

In this extract:

• Bryson uses the first person to talk about where he came from. He also tells us the name of the place clearly at the start.
• He uses humour to create interest for the reader.
• He plays around with sentence length, sometimes making short ‘punchlines’.
• He creates a long sentence where no matter what path you take, ‘you settle down with a local girl named Bobbi.... and live there forever and ever’. This also creates a humorous tone for the reader.