The importance of details

An editor at Outside magazine once told me that the secret to writing well boiled down to three simple things: details, quotes and pacing. Every story of mine I’ve written since has benefited from that insight. Of course, learning how to assemble your sentences into a coherent and engaging narrative is another challenge indeed, but making the right observations, capturing snappy dialog, and packing the pieces into beautifully constructed sentences: these are the building blocks that any story needs and will make you a dream for editors. But to get them, you need to do some research.

I’ll be teaching a travel writing workshop (that includes a few weeks of traveling around Argentina!) through World Nomads, and the application process is rapidly coming to a close. In the meantime, you can read about some of the basic building blocks you need to tell a good adventure story. Fortunately a lot of the concepts apply to almost any kind of story. You can read more about it on the World Nomads site by clicking here.

One thought on “The importance of details

  1. The idea of being mentored by you set a lot of things in motion a few months ago. Not wining the scholarship actually encouraged me to keep improving and learning. Hopefully, we’ll cross paths some day. I was staying a few blocks away from the WNs team when you were in Buenos Aires. Funny coincidence 🙂

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