Travel writing is riddled with cliches. They make your writing predictable and unmemorable. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.
The best way to be familiar with those cliches is to read a lot. If you’ve got your brain switched on, the cliches start popping out at you after a while.
Here’s a glossary to the most popular (oh, and I promise never to use any of them).
Steeped in history. A town or city where loads of things happened once. People were separated from their heads in the town square, invading armies heaved themselves uphill towards the castle (now open for guided tours) and pustule-riddled plague victims were wheeled off on a cart. We’ve loads of places like this in the UK.
Iconic. A building, a person or an image. As long as we’ve all seen it, we all know what it is and we all recognise it, then it’s iconic. Anything can be described as iconic these days. Everything is described as iconic these days.
Seething mass of humanity. Crowds of people, probably poor, somewhere abroad. Usually a market place or bus station. The world appears to be full of humanity having a collective seethe.
Teeming with life. Sea with lots of fish in it.
Crystal clear waters. ‘Nuff said.
Quirky. So overused, this brilliant word has lost it’s original meaning and is now flat and mundane – there’s an irony for you.
Very few people, places or things are genuinely quirky. Quirky means odd, thought-provoking perhaps, a little twisted maybe with a dash of the unexpected. Quirky people, places and things make you stroke your chin and say, ‘hmm… erm, that’s odd. I’m not really sure what to make of that.’
Nowadays, anything is quirky: a hotel with crooked floors, mismatched plates at the breakfast table, a guy wearing a hat with a bloomin’ feather in it …. they’re all quirky.
Surreal. Another word devalued from overuse. Hardly anything is genuinely surreal but in both speech and writing nowadays, anything a bit unusual or unexpected gets the ‘surreal’ adjective slapped on it. Like you took your umbrella in case it rained and got bright sunshine instead so there you were standing at the bus stop,clutching your umbrella, blinking in the sun and it was like, totally surreal.
Awesome. The most overused adjective in travel writing. ‘Awesome’ is everywhere. Big waves, massive desert, lions killing zebras, something really, really good but I can’t think how to describe it so it was, er… yeh, like, totally awesome.
I’ve had awe-struck moments on my travels: At the Grand Canyon I could barely speak apart from half formed sentences like, ‘Oh my God it’s… Look at that…. it’s so, so….’ Rounding a corner and being confronted with the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe with a friend, she spluttered, ‘BLOODY HELL!’ then we both inexplicably burst out laughing. Snorkelling in the Red Sea, I once felt tears seeping into my mask, I was so moved by the exhilarating beauty of this rich new world.
To me, these places are properly, genuinely, awesome. But to describe them as such in writing? Never. It wouldn’t be doing them justice. The challenge in travel writing (in any descriptive writing) is to find a new phrase or word, something fresh and different that will make the reader take notice instead of glossing over it.
The cliche siren needs to come on every time you find yourself at the keyboard, bashing out a word or phrase that has been done to death so much so that it’s no longer has any impact on the reader. Then it’s time to frown at the ceiling and chew your lip while you think of something new. Or use the Thesaurus. Or ask a friend. Or think, ‘Oh sod this, I’m off to make a cup of coffee and come back to it later.’
