Part of the series "How to write for Trail & Timberline"
How to write about a trip
for Trail & Timberline
Introduction
Members of the Colorado Mountain Club go on trips. Whether they go on an afternoon's A-hike along a pleasant trail near their home or travel to the far corners of the earth to enjoy a different culture or bag an 8,000 meter peak, people in the CMC are always going places.
It makes sense that after they have enjoyed the restorative beauty and adventure of their trip, they would want to share it with other members of the club. This guideline will help the writer prepare a trip report for publication in Trail & Timberline magazine.
What not to do
The easiest way to write a trip report is to follow the chronology of the actual trip, telling the reader a sequence of events as the writer remembers them happening. At its worst, such a report goes something like this:
"First we got off the plane and met our trip leaders at the airport. We waited around until the rest of our group arrived on different flights. (Insert impressions of airport and group members here.) Once we were all assembled, we took a bus to our hotel. (Describe bedroom and food eaten at dinner that night, as well as songs sung after dinner; who led the singing; and what a wonderful sense of camaraderie the singing engendered.) The next morning, we all assembled in the lobby. It was time to begin our big adventure!"
Articles organized in this way will continue chronologically with selected details of the trip, interspersing descriptions of the landscape, challenges of the trip, internal musings about what the trip meant to the writer, and similar observations. The article ends with the writer bidding farewell to new friends and concludes with thanks to the trip leader(s) and a final impression of the trip.
This is probably the least successful strategy for organizing a trip report. To be effective, such a chronology must be gripping for the reader. Unfortunately for the writer, such trip details are rarely of interest to a reader who did not participate in the trip in the first place. Additionally, the chronological strategy invariably inserts too many details that have little connection to one another. In short, there is no organizing principal to the article except for the chronology. And this is almost never enough to hold a reader's interest.
Better ways to write about a trip
Writers need to distance themselves from their experiences on their trip and ask themselves a series of questions. Most importantly, a writer needs to think like a reader: "What event (or person or experience) made the most impression on me on my trip? Then the writer needs to be brutally honest with him/herself: "Will other people be as interested/fascinated by this as I am?" If the answer is "no," then the writer must search through his memory for something that will interest readers, then use that as an organizational principle for the entire article. It is critical that a writer make a connection with the reader and that the narrative not be self-absorbed. Below are some suggestions on how to structure an interesting article.
People Readers are infinitely interested in other people: what they do, how they do it. They are interested in what people look like and how they behave under adversity. Readers are fascinated by people who are different than themselves. (Note that readers usually are not interested in what other people think. ) Consequently, one of the best organizing strategies is to focus on a particular person and use the person as a mirror to reveal particulars about the trip. (It's probably best to get permission first.) Note that the article is not about the person; the person is only a foil to tell about the trip.
Exotic places or things People are interested in places they've never been and experiences they've never had. The secret here is focus. Don't attempt to give a sweeping National Geographic travelogue; instead, carefully choose a few things that will illuminate what was best (or worst) about the trip that will keep the reader's interest.
In sum, think of an organizing principle as the skeleton upon which you can hang the meat of the article. And if you have a choice of putting in more or less, always choose the simpler of the alternatives.
Writing an effective lead
To write a successful article for a magazine, the writer must think like a journalist. Journalists don't have the luxury of one or more introductory paragraphs before getting to the focus of the article. They must capture the reader's attention in the first sentence, then build interest in the rest of the sentences in the first paragraph. Here are examples of effective leads that reference the organizing strategies mentioned above:
Jane's new bicycle was clearly demon-possessed. I lost count of the number of times we stopped on our trip around Lake Geneva to repair a flat or adjust her deraileur. From Geneva to the Castle of Chillon, the outing to Switzerland was a bicycle mechanic's nightmare. Yet, through it all, Jane kept herself and us smiling, and as a result of her misfortune, the ten of us on the trip visited some incredible places that we would have cycled past if we hadn't been waiting for a tire patch to dry.
Or
I promised myself before I left Colorado on the CMC outing to Tibet that I would never drink yak butter tea. I'd heard about the national drink of this high-Himalayan country, and I'd convinced myself I'd instantly drop dead if such a disgusting beverage ever passed my lips. My eleven new friends on the trip promised me it would be easy to avoid. Why is it, then, that we hadn't been in Lhasa for two hours before I had my first encounter with the greasy drink? And not a day passed that we didn't get at least one offer of hospitality that included it. Our leader, John Doe, said that in all his years of leading trips to Tibet, he'd never experienced anything like it. "All this yak butter tea is your fault," he told me.
Or
I don't think it's possible to count all the colors in a wildflower meadow above timberline on a warm summer day in Colorado. And certainly, no perfume made in France will ever capture the gentle fragrance of the alpine air that made the six of us dizzy long before we had climbed high enough to notice the lack of oxygen.
Notice that in all cases, the lead paragraphs are written in the first-person. The writer makes reference to her experiences, but the burden of the narrative is carried by description of objective experiences or thoughts, not of interior responses. Even when the feelings are very personal, there is still a distance between the experience and the narrator. Notice, also, that each of the leads points clearly to where the narrative is going to go, and how the writer intends to get there. It gives the reader clues to the tone of the article and makes definite promises about what will follow.
Honest style
Perhaps one of the most difficult things to communicate through writing is feelings. Again, the easiest solution to the quandary of how to write about an emotional response to an event is to point to the object eliciting the feeling and not attempt to describe the internal state the object elicits. This gives the reader the freedom not to share in the feeling or internal state. For example, here is a common mistake:
My heart swelled within me when I contemplated the beauty of the tulips stretching out to the horizon.
In this example, a reader might just respond with, "Who cares?" because nothing in the sentence could possibly elicit the same response in the reader. Adding descriptive detail will just make the situation worse. On the other hand, it is possible to describe a feeling objectively and give enough description that readers will be willing to accept the feeling as honest, even if they can't share it:
I was unprepared for the feeling of peace that swept over me the minute we stepped into the cathedral. The place wasn't particularly clean, and the air felt damp and clammy after the heat of the Spanish street. But something about the way the sun pierced the stained glass of the clerestory windows far above but never quite made it down to the gloomy floor of the enormous space made me content to sit in the quiet shadows while the rest of the group explored the various chapels dedicated to the saints.
It is tempting to adopt a different tone or style when describing emotions. However, it is usually preferable not to elevate the style or attempt "purple" prose when describing an emotion. Too often, the result is a cliché that indicates the writer has "borrowed" an emotional description rather than struggling to be authentic and honest.
Conclusion
Writing an effective article about a trip is not easy. For most writers, the struggle comes not in finding enough to write about, but in finding an organizational strategy and limiting the focus of the article so that the reader is not overwhelmed by detail. The second problem frequently encountered is not spending enough time inviting the reader into the article through the crafting of an effective lead. Finally, writers all-too-frequently do not go through the work of self-reflection to discover their own feelings, but instead depend on time-worn descriptions as a substitute.