The most common topic you can have for travel writing is describing a place. This is the beginner’s exercise in travel writing, but at the same time, it is the leitmotif that remains constant throughout your career. Travelling is about getting to different places around the world. Travel writing is more or less about describing those places. Therefore, the first thing any travel writer puts in their quiver of literary “arrows” is the magic potion of describing a place. How to describe a place as a travel writer?
Describing a place is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. What’s more, it may not be your favorite part. But it is essential because it puts the reader into the ‘action’. Some articles focus exclusively on describing places. These usually have a touristy flavor, but there are also more elaborate articles. Even if the place doesn’t play the leading role, it has to be described for the reader to fully understand the scenario.
To describe a place, you must introduce the reader to its atmosphere. The description of a location should not be very long so as not to bore, but it should not be condensed into two trivial sentences either. When describing a place, use your senses. As many senses as possible.
It’s essential to make the description of the place vivid and use a convincing tone. Buildings, trees, rooms, and many other elements must come alive in the reader’s eyes. You’re not writing fiction; you’re writing about a place that exists, but you must be believable. And plausible.
Start your article describing a place with something interesting about the site – anything that grabs the reader’s attention from the very start. An anecdote. A lesser-known event. A startling statistic. This is the trigger for your story, the starting point.
Describe a place through images
It’s the details that make the difference. And the ability to capture the details and set them in the spotlight (the worthwhile ones, of course) is essential for any travel writer. Make a note in your travel notebook of all the details you detect when you’re in a particular place, so you can remember them when describing the place. Photos will also help you a lot in reconstructing the scenes in writing.
Although most of the time, your travel article will be published together with photos that are as evocative as possible, one publication or another may not ask for pictures. Or they may be few. Moreover, perhaps your text will be part of a book, a collection of travel texts.
You can start by describing a place through images and, therefore, your visual sense, starting with a photo. For example, when I arrived in the village of Olympos on the Greek island of Karpathos, the first image I saw (and remembered) was the one above.
Simplistically, I would have written something like: “The village of Olympos sprawls on the slopes of a hillside on the island of Karpathos, with white houses nestled under each other”. It seems, though, the image inspires you to do more.
“Suddenly, the village of Olympos appears before your eyes like a huge beehive. The mostly white houses, but with pastel “infiltrations” that subtly color the landscape, are squeezed under each other in a geometry with its own rules, which you don’t have to try to understand, but take it as it comes, as it is served to you. At the village’s highest point, the steeple of St Mary’s church stands like a queen under a clear blue sky, looking down on the slopes of the hill “conquered” by Olympos, like a perfect mistress of the place.”
Describe a place through sounds
The sense of hearing must also be put to work. Are there noisy children playing football in a square? Is the forest rustling like a symphony of nature? Is there an explosion in the distance, and nobody knows what happened? Are the sirens of police cars getting louder?
Don’t neglect the auditory aspect. Many travel writers forget about it, ignoring adding spice to the dish that might make it taste better. You don’t have to (and often can’t) go overboard describing the sounds, but generally speaking, sounds should be present.
Following on from the description of the Olympos village, I would add this: “A soft, Sunday lunchtime silence is occasionally interrupted by a boisterous tourist’s voice, which is quickly lost in the place’s grandeur. Suddenly, the church bell bursts the day’s lethargy, urging me to explore this village full of mysteries.”
Describe a place through smell and taste
The sense of smell should be included, too, if there are enough reasons. Write about identifiable and recognizable smells. The scent of lavender? Lime blossom? Freshly baked bread? The smell of burning wood?
Smells often remind us of sensations and images long gone, perhaps from childhood, of certain events or loved ones. If the reader resonates with the memory of a particular type of smell, you’ve taken another step by winning them over. Sometimes you can even resort to the innocent trick of inventing aromas that characterize the place, even if they don’t really exist, but you feel they would fit in wonderfully.
I also have had the opportunity to discover some great smells in Olympos: “Along the narrow alley leading to the mills at the end of the village, I pass taverns where the skilled village women are pulling dishes from the ovens that whet my hunger and desire to try them. Irresistibly, the smell of hot gyros, next to which I see plates of thick tzatziki on tourists’ tables, wins me over for good. A cavalcade of heady flavors seems to pull me to sit at a table. But what makes me stop in my tracks and throw myself into a tavern chair is the desire to try a portion of makarounes, the local pasta with grated cheese and caramelized onions.”
This is an excellent moment to continue using your senses in describing a place, using your sense of taste. The sense of taste should always be brought out when you are in a restaurant, a wine cellar, a cooking class, etc., and to a large extent, it creates sensations in the reader’s mind in the same range as those caused by smell.
Describe a place through the sense of touch
Touching different objects you are standing nearby help to describe them better and thus complete the picture of the place. Cold armor metal. The soft velvet of the skirt on the mannequin. The weight of the cannonballs used in 16th-century cannons. What’s more, weather phenomena also have a say in this sense. Cold rain. Freezing snow. Intense heat. All of these must be in your sight. Especially as, at times, they can cause significant problems. “The temperatures were so low that my fingers were frostbitten”. “The temperatures were so high hot that some tourists fainted.”
“I enter the church of St. Mary in Olympos and, after the classic crosses made in front of the icons, I want to buy some candles to light, according to Orthodox tradition. The woman selling them hands me the candles, and when I hand her the change, she gently takes my hand. I feel her dry but unexpectedly warm skin, and it’s as if someone has suddenly gently caressed my soul.”
Describe a place through the characters you meet and the emotions they generate
The moment above, where I mention the brief encounter with the woman in the church, also fits with the idea of describing a place through its characters. The people we meet on our travels are vital, and, of course, they are often our stories’ delight. However, when we describe a place, it is not the people who are the ‘main character’. But there is a Romanian saying, “a person sanctifies the place”. We can use it by saying that the person defines the place.
The locals’ feelings define the place where they live. How do people feel here? Are they happy? Are they sad? Do they feel pressured by their daily lives? Do they like having visitors? How do they relate to tourists? We appeal to emotion by including people in the place’s description. Because, as we know, nothing is of spiritual value unless it produces emotion.
On the other hand, any place can provoke emotions. Describing the place through the emotions, it emits in people is essential. “The rollercoaster in the amusement park creates adrenaline.” “The dark cave gives a feeling of claustrophobia.” “The ruined houses in the deserted village inspire fear.” Some places can even be defined by excitement. Paris is known to everyone as the city of love, isn’t it?
Describe a place through historical landmarks
History is an element that marks, more or less, any place you come to. Every place has a history as long as it wasn’t inaugurated a couple of days ago. Which can be so interesting that it defines it, above all else. The types of buildings, the shops on the main street or boulevard, the traditions that have been preserved to this day, the stories from the past that made the place famous – all of these, and more, can be included in the description of the place as long as the author finds them attractive to the reader.
Sure, you don’t write fiction in such a way that you have to transport the reader back to a certain time period. But it would be nice if you could bring that time period into the present through the power of words to inform the reader about the historical trajectory of where you are.
“This semi-isolation for centuries has meant that today, Olympos remains an extremely traditional village that leaves you with the impression that time has stood still. And this traditionalism brings out some exciting things you’ll not find elsewhere. The Olympians are descendants of the Byzantine Empire, and Byzantine traditions survive in their most vivid form.”
Conclusion on how to describe a place as a travel writer
Carefully note all the details you notice in the place you are in. Use all your senses and capture with them, as in a fish net, everything that strikes you as attractive about the place to recount later accurately. Write it all down, then select – you don’t have to include everything in the final version of your travel story. Construct beautiful sentences in your personal style, and you’ll end up with the perfect description of the place you visited.
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