What would you expect from travel story? [closed]
Closed by System on Mar 11, 2019 at 18:25
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I want to write travel story novel.
My plan is to have 4 characters (2 guys and 2 girls), which decided to visit 4 European cities (probably I will choose Frankfurt - Germany, Reykjavík - Iceland, Uzhhorod - Ukraine and fourth must be invented).
I want to show culture and details of not very well known cities (that is why I did not chose London, Paris etc.) and in every location highlight one of four heroes.
All 4 heroes would be special, but I am aware that novel can turn to something like documentary film (which is not bad, but probably the reader would excpect some action, which is missing in my idea for now).
What would you force to read such novel to the end?
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I'm not sure what a travel story is supposed to mean.
A story has a problem for the MCs to solve, an answer to find, something to discover. Most of my stories involve travel and discovering new things. If Frodo, in Lord of the Rings, did not have to travel to all kinds of new and interesting places, there wouldn't be a book!
Just tourists going on a trip is generally not that interesting. They need a mission, some underlying reason to go to these cities and look around. They are trying to find something. Solve a mystery. Find out what happened to somebody they know. Find out what happened 25 years ago. Or maybe they are trying to solve a puzzle that is a hundred years old: They found a new clue, and there may be a treasure at the end.
Also, although setting can be excellent, in general for a story what we are interested in is the MCs. What they think, how they feel, their relationships with each other (or others) and how those relationships are changing, or how their lives are changing. If they are new adults, this may be the last real trip they can take together, they have just graduated college and will soon disperse: The military, two jobs, and graduate school.
If they are looking for something, somebody can oppose them; you have a villain.
But you don't have to have a villain, the circumstances they are in can be the villain. They get lost. They get robbed. One of them is in love with another, and this trip is the last chance to do anything about it.
The setting is always the background. It can be most of the story, like Lord of the Rings, and it can seem to dominate the writing, it can be very interesting, but it is the background. You need a story, a struggle, a mission, to drive the characters through the setting, so you can show it to the reader.
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I am not sure of what you expect from a travel story, but after what you described I would think of a coming of age story: characters are naive and learn valuable life lessons throughout their adventures.
Being in another country, confronted with new cultures and ways of thinking, may be a good starting point for characters that are ingenuous, had lived in their comfort zone for a long time, and have to compose with people they would have never met in their previous lives.
Not all characters may learn something, or they may learn and grow, or learn and toughen themselves, not necessarily in a good way.
The example I would give for such a story is L'Auberge Espagnole, a french movie about an exchange student who went living in Spain for a year because he is unsure of what he wants to do later in his life, meeting others students from all across Europe. Coming there with stereotypes in mind, eventually, he will learn to live, love and what kind of person he wants to be.
Speaking of the locations you picked, Reykjavik is a beautiful town and Iceland a definitely great place for growing characters: I went trekking in Iceland years ago, and I definitely learnt alot, from setting up a tent to knowing more deeply the people I went with, earning and losing friendships, and discovering marvelous landscapes that will stay forever in my memories.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43303. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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