| Back to Back Issues Page |
 |
|
Issue #426: How to Write Exceptional Ledes January 16, 2023 |
| Greetings Fellow Travel Writers! . . . and WELCOME all new subscribers. Thanks for joining us.
2023 Workshop News
We’re very excited to announce our upcoming Travel Writing & Photography Retreat and our Marketing Master Class for Travel Writers, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, May 14-19, 2023.
Do you want to learn how to . . .
Santa Fe is an outstanding place for a destination workshop! We had so much fun looking around last month. This beautiful city of 83,000 punches well above its weight for tourist attractions. It has great restaurants, fascinating history and culture, museums, creative art galleries, enticing boutique shops, and other interesting attractions to keep travel journalists entertained for a solid week. Best of all, it’s easily walkable! The Santa Fe CVB is giving our travel writing workshop attendees a VIP Tourist Pass to explore the city and find story ideas. This means you’ll get complimentary entry to …
Here’s the link to our no-obligation interest list: Featured PostHow to Write Exceptional LEDES And Why It Matters To Travel WritersDo you want to grab your reader’s attention immediately?To accomplish this, your opening sentence needs to be captivating. In the writing trade your opening sentence is called a “lede” or a “lead.” It’s one of the most crucial and underutilized travel writing techniques. And it makes such a difference to the quality of your piece! If you want to engage your readers right from the start and retain them through your entire story, the lede is your single most important tool. It activates your audience to keep reading and to see where you’re going with your story.
Here are 12 of my favorite ledes placed in ascending order of difficulty. Unless otherwise noted, these lede examples are from my own travel stories.
Upcoming PostsJan 23: Creating a Sense of Place in Your Travel ArticlesJan 30: Nine Questions to Ask Before You Pitch Feb 6: Where to Pitch Your Travel Stories Here's Who Joined Us in Charleston SC for Our Travel Writing & Photography Retreat and Our Marketing Master Class For Travel Writers
Kate Dreger . . .
. . . was born in New York, raised in Europe, and makes her home in Oakland, California. An empty nester, she, her husband, and their dog Mina enjoy local exploration as well as more far flung travel at every chance. From first learning to love food in France and Italy as a kid, and over a decade in the hospitality business in the foodie cities of New York and San Francisco, restaurants are her thing. When she’s not seeking new discoveries in the San Francisco Bay Area – whether hole-in-the wall pizzerias, little-known bakeries, or Michelin-starred establishments, she’s planning her next trip overseas. Kate is equally happy chatting up the beverage cart vendor in a tiny mountaintop town as she is discussing the finer points of fine dining service with a celebrated chef. She’s a travel expert on Paris, the South of France and Sicily, and will soon add Portugal and Spain to her repertoire. “The South of France is my happy place. When I awake from a dream, that’s always where I’ve been.” For a complete list of bios from our 2022 Charleston Workshop participants, follow this link and scroll down . . .
Inspirational Travel Quote
Pitch Travel Write: Most Requested Links About Researching Your Travel DestinationsMost travel story ideas are worthy of publication somewhere. If you spend some quality time researching your destination you can usually find a marketable story idea or two. You just need to do a little work to discover what’s so interesting about a place and to clarify your unique story angle.It takes some experience to know what constitutes a viable travel story. And deciding whether a story idea is a dog or a shooting star is an important first step in the pitching process. So where, and how, do travel writers start their quest for a salable story? Here are 6 tips to help you. Over the past couple of years, I’ve received several desperate requests from novice travel writers, asking me to help them round up some last-minute assignments, so they can request complimentary accommodations, meals, entry to tourist attractions, rounds of golf, fishing trips, boat cruises, and a host of other freebies, at their destinations. There’s only one problem with these requests — they’ve all been expecting to round up some travel assignments from a few days to a week or two before they leave for their destination!
Here's an article I wrote for Travel Writers Exchange about pre-planning and how to do it for the best benefits.
MORE RESOURCES FOR TRAVEL WRITERSFeatured Book of the Month:125 Websites that Want to Publish Your Travel Stories
Our updated eBook, 125 Websites that Want to Publish Your Travel Stories, is a red-hot list of quality websites that are eager to publish your travel articles.
And, you can make some money while you’re boosting your bylines. Our latest book includes more than 50 travel websites that actually PAY their writers!
This reference book for travel writers is one of the most valuable resources you can have in your toolbox. You won’t find a list like this anywhere else. The list of 125 websites - and the advice in this eBook — is your short cut to success. It will accelerate your travel writing career by rapidly enhancing your online presence.
Latest News eBooksNew eBooks Coming SoonWe’re about to publish another eBook to help you get your travel stories published. It’s called The Best of Roy’s Blogs: Roy’s Solutions for Selling More Travel Stories, Writing Better, and Earning More Money. You need to have a lot of skills to be successful in the freelance travel writing game. In the past fifteen years I’ve been bombarded with hundreds of email questions about many aspects of travel writing. The blogs you’re about to read are my succinct answers to these urgent questions. These blogs are gathered from my email replies, Facebook posts, LinkedIn posts, blogs, and newsletter editorials. They provide quality solutions in summary form to the myriad challenges travel writers face. Even better, at the end of each blog I give you the link to a more detailed and comprehensive coverage of each topic so you can continue on to a more in-depth post on our website PitchTravelWrite.com. Follow the advice dispensed in this eBook and you’ll earn more from your travel writing by selling more stories and improving your travel writing. We’re excited to announce that we’ve finished the draft of our ebook 500 Print Magazines That Want To Publish Your Travel Articles. Rather than revise our current eBook, “100 Print Magazines That Want To Publish Your Travel Articles” we decided to write an entirely new book. We’ve tossed out the magazines that have folded since the 2016 edition and added in a whopping 450 NEW magazines (maybe more) to this eBook. Yes, you read that right! This compilation is far more specialized for travel writers than what you’ll find in Writer’s Market. Compiled over fifteen years from a wide variety of online sources, field resources, and book references, this comprehensive list includes international publications for the English-speaking market. The magazine lists include . . .
Watch this newsletter for release dates soon to be announced. Group Coaching Registration is ClosedWe'd love to have you in the next session starting in Q2 2023.If you want to get on our Interest List, follow the link below . . .
Did You Know . . .Our Complete Marketing Master Class for Travel Writers is ranked #1 on TravelWritersExchange.com’s Top Ten Travel Writing Workshops.Your next opportunity to attend these classes be in 2023. Our travel writing & marketing workshops are highly informative and a blast, socially. Our travel writing & marketing workshops are highly informative and a blast, socially. Get on our interest list for updates:
At Your ServiceCoaching
and
Consulting PitchTravelWrite.com, is our information-packed website for travel writers. This e-zine, a series of travel writing books and reference guides, coaching programs, and our workshops all work together to give you guidance in this field. Our aim is to provide you with practical, nitty gritty information to help you gain entry into the travel writing realm and all the enjoyment that comes with it.
Awards and AccoladesWe're thrilled to announce that www.PitchTravelWrite.com is once again on The Write Life’s list of 100 BEST WEBSITES FOR WRITERS!You can see the entire list by visiting their website - click on the graphic to view the list now.
We're proud to announce that our travel writing website has made Writer’s Digest Magazine’s 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 101 BEST WEBSITES FOR WRITERS. Writer's Digest Magazine also lists us on their Best Genre/Niche Websites for 2021. Writer's Digest doesn’t bestow these awards lightly. And we’re the only travel writing website on their lists!
And the accolades for PitchTravelWrite.com just keep pouring in! Our website helps travel writers successfully sell their travel stories. Thank you, Writer’s Digest Magazine, for listing us on your “Best Genre/Niche Websites for 2020, 2021 and 2022.”
Friend me on FacebookMy Facebook page is about freelance travel writing. I frequently post about:• links to other well produced travel websites and blogs • links to my travel articles • magazine cover stories and back stories • links to resource pages • links to coaching and mentoring resources . . .and plenty of other useful information to get you up to speed Link to Roy's Personal Facebook page That's all for now. Until next week - just keep pitching! Roy Roy Stevenson |
| Back to Back Issues Page |
