Travel writing – do you include the good the bad and the ugly?
Beth Whitman Author of Wanderlust and Lipstick: The Essential Guide for Women Traveling Solo, includes only the good in her writing. Quoted in the Seattle Weekly by Karla Star, Beth says “I don’t read movie reviews….I just want to know what the movie was about,” she says. “The job of a travel writer is to write about the good, to write about what excites you.” Read the article here
I am not so sure – I think that we should write about the totality of our experience – that is what travelling is about. Not bad mouthing for the sake of a story (some writers seem to build a reputation on this style), but being real about the joys and struggles we encounter along the way – some of them of our own making! What do you think?
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- Hoi An is more than clothes - December 3rd, 2011
Hi Rosemary – Welcome back, by the way.
I’m a little doubtful too. I guess I can see the purpose of mentioning the positive in a certain kind of travel article – one published in the clearly promotional travel section of a newspaper, say – and also if the writer is recognising that their experience of the place was brief essentially a ‘once over lightly’, which could render criticism or negatives unfair or out of proportion.
At times, when reviewing or talking about a book, I’ve taken the approach of focusing on the positive because a) I’m not an expert or b) it’s not my preferred genre but c) there will be fans out there for it. I guess the same could be true of relating travel experiences.
However, if readers are led (by the nature of a publication or its style) to expect a well-rounded, comprehensive, deep investigation of something (be it travel or a book), I think the writer owes it to them to provide just that, with positives and negatives. As readers we can surely be discerning enough to sense whether a negative experience may be personal to the writer or indicative of some wider malaise. However, if we have not been warned of ‘the negatives’ and go on to experience them ourselves, we perhaps have the right to feel aggrieved.
Claire